another question
Jenn, who is one of my MLS classmates, asked me another question! Good thing, too, because I had no idea what to post about this week...
---Oh by the way, I still read your blog and I tried to comment on there when you asked what questions your readers wanted answered, but I could never get anything to post for me. Anyway, I am always interested in activities teachers do in their classroom. So that would be my question: What are some of you favorite classroom activities?
I try to do a lot more than just read a story and write about it. This is a little bit counter-intuitive to me. I was definitely a student who just wanted to read a story and write about it, but my students always get excited about fun things, which is pretty affirming.
My favorite activity that I've ever done in my classroom is this one, where my students create life-sized(ish) versions of the characters from our novel, then add character traits as we read and the characters develop.
Another thing I've recently discovered that I like to do/have students do is annotate articles and stories. We've done this several times this year. Maybe it was fun because they did so well after just a couple of days of scaffolding (gradually releasing responsibility from me to the student). I guess this is a little bit like reading a story and writing about it, but it's fun to read their thoughts and see what strikes them as important.
We just finished rehearsing and performing a skit about Harriet Tubman (we're reading/discussing courage these days). It's kind of nice for me because my kids were excited about it and worked well together, meaning I could sit back and observe their interactions and problem-solving.
For review (for state assessments) my kids work in small groups to create posters with all the terms on them. It was so cool last year, when they really got involved and came up with themes like "Under the Sea" and "Birthday Party."
These are just a few of the things I can think of, off the top of my head. I might be back with more later...
---Oh by the way, I still read your blog and I tried to comment on there when you asked what questions your readers wanted answered, but I could never get anything to post for me. Anyway, I am always interested in activities teachers do in their classroom. So that would be my question: What are some of you favorite classroom activities?
I try to do a lot more than just read a story and write about it. This is a little bit counter-intuitive to me. I was definitely a student who just wanted to read a story and write about it, but my students always get excited about fun things, which is pretty affirming.
My favorite activity that I've ever done in my classroom is this one, where my students create life-sized(ish) versions of the characters from our novel, then add character traits as we read and the characters develop.
Another thing I've recently discovered that I like to do/have students do is annotate articles and stories. We've done this several times this year. Maybe it was fun because they did so well after just a couple of days of scaffolding (gradually releasing responsibility from me to the student). I guess this is a little bit like reading a story and writing about it, but it's fun to read their thoughts and see what strikes them as important.
We just finished rehearsing and performing a skit about Harriet Tubman (we're reading/discussing courage these days). It's kind of nice for me because my kids were excited about it and worked well together, meaning I could sit back and observe their interactions and problem-solving.
For review (for state assessments) my kids work in small groups to create posters with all the terms on them. It was so cool last year, when they really got involved and came up with themes like "Under the Sea" and "Birthday Party."
These are just a few of the things I can think of, off the top of my head. I might be back with more later...
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