Get Up and Teach!

Good Morning Ladies Today is MONDAY May 14, 2012. We are rounding that corner and racing towards the finish line. Yes the school year is coming to a close soon. At this point lessons are beginning to repeat themselves and students are itching to get up and play. So I have a few i ideas for you today. These are a few things that I have done over the years and they can be adjusted to whatever grade levels you have. I used them on my oldest when i began homeschooling him in second grade and that was 12 years ago and they work still on my 4th and 6th grader. So give them a try, get those children up and excited about learning, and as always "Enjoy Your Day (Happy Monday)"!

                                                   "Go Fishing Activity"
The kids took turns fishing for verbs and nouns. I set up four different plastic fishing bowls. Nouns (Person, place or thing) and verbs (actions). If a word could be acted out it was a doing word, if not the student had to decide what type of noun it was-person, place or thing. The kids really seemed to enjoy it and it was a great hands on activity. ( This activity worked best this way for grade 2 and 3 ) It can be adjusted to an older grade by having the student place the noun in a sentence being sure that they use all parts of speech taught ex: the word is Boy the sentence will have to include the noun, a verb, adverb and an adjective. Variations are at the teachers (Your) discretion.

                                                      " Verb Safari"
 While students aren't in the room hang about 20 or so words of various parts of speech around the room. Try to put them in places that are somewhat inconspicuous but not that hard to find. Talk to the students about what a safari is and tell them they will go on a safari for verbs (or nouns,or adjectives whichever you'd like to do). They need to carry a clip board and paper around the room with them and must work independently and very quietly. I always tell mine to be careful not to be to obvious when they've found a word because that gives it away. The trick is they can only record the word on their paper if it is a verb(or whatever you are looking for).  When time is up I allow students to share the words they found and where they found them. I take down each word as the student shares it. If the word wasn't a verb I have them decide what part of speech it is.

For irregular verbs: (go-went-have, has, had gone)
I write each irregular verb on an index card and display them in a pocket chart. We chant them:
go, went
have has
had gone.
 We do this several times a day until they have them memorized. Then I'll challenge them to recite. I'll give them the present tense verb (go) and the student gives the next two (went, have has, had gone). I also let them get a treat from the treat jar if they get their verbs correct.