February 5, 2014

 

Feb. 5 Agenda

 

 

Today involved a lot of journal writing. I wanted to see where the children are at regarding grammar, spelling, and printing. While waiting for friends to finish writing in their assignment notebooks, others practiced "tunneling" on cursive.

It seems that most of them have improved in their writing journals, while a few needed a little help. By doing so, I prompted the children with questions that helped them with their writing. By providing visuals and reading material, we started with brainstorming on what is Groundhog Day and what is a groundhog. When they came up with words on their own, the children were able to put words into sentences, thus creating a paragraph (for the AM children) or paragraphs (for the PM children). It was so much fun that the children want to continue their writing project tomorrow. I will heed to their requests, but I do expect them to be done within a few minutes tomorrow as I want to talk about Harriet Tubman (tonight's reading homework). Time permitting, we will do the same thing on what we did with the Groundhog Day journal writing today. I do proofread their work, so if it seems "perfect", it's because I helped them make their sentences sound "better" or helped with their spelling, and most especially, punctuation (there was one child who went comma-crazy!). 



AM Groundhog and Groundhog Brainstorm

PM Groundhog and Groundhog Brainstorm
 









For the newest children, at first they seemed apprehensive, but as soon as I prompted them with simple questions, they came up with answers on their own. I then say, "I like how that sounds. Now how about writing exactly what you told me?" And they do with my help in spelling. In other words, they are dictating their own words and ideas. I do guide them with printing as well. In time, they will do this on their own. In the meantime, I spend a lot of one-one with them.

 

The topic on Harriet Tubman is ELA-Civics combination. If you have read my lesson (blog) on Harriet Tubman http://leilaniverangonlmscivics.blogspot.com/2014/02/february-4-2014-harriet-tubman.html, you will notice that the children took home the top half of the sheet today. I want them to concentrate on who she was rather than answering questions. The questions will be for ELA to check for understanding of the material; the Civics part is to remember who she was and the importance of her work and influence on those successors who idealized equality.

 

Thanks to all who helped the children with their homework last night. I'm so glad that they are on a get-go when it comes to Comprehension work and grammar.