Monday-September 19, 2011 and Tuesday-September 20, 2011
I’m combining both days since I didn’t have time to write a post last night about yesterday.
Our words this week are words that we will work with for the rest of the year: personification, simile, metaphor, synonym, antonym, idiom, fluency, homonym, persuade, and propaganda
I decided to review everything we have learned in English so far this year-in other words I am reteaching it since lots of students are still having problems with parts of speech and subjects and predicates!!!!! I don’t want to go on to something new that is going to blow their minds when they still need to get what we have learned. I can’t believe only about 7 or 8 students decided to memorize the preposition song last week for a 100 point grade!!! I thought many more would do that since there are several BAD grades in English right now! That’s about the only “extra” thing I do for english!
Yesterday and today we reviewed prepositions and prepositional phrases-today we had a quiz on them. Tomorrow we will have an English test on all that we have learned so far. We are having to get 10 grades each 6 weeks for each subject instead of only 6 like in the past so I had to get caught up since we took that first week of school to get organized and didn’t test on anything!
This week I also decided to reteach how to complete the comprehension thinking sheet that they do for homework. I am actually modeling on the ELMO HOW to write in each box. There should be no excuses for them just slopping something down or saying they don’t understand what to do. I am EXPLICITLY teaching and showing them how to think while they read and write about what they are thinking. This is the key to reading comprehension-Thinking About Your Reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We also took a reading passage yesterday and today and read it together. Then I showed them some different test taking strategies to do:
Underline important headings, dates, special names, etc./Read the test questions first-then read the passage/Eliminate answers that are obviously NOT correct
I also showed them how to use the “check for understanding” reading strategy. This is where they stop after a section (or page) of what they are reading to ask themselves: Do I understand what I just read? Do I remember what I just read? This is monitoring their own reading. If they know they don’t understand or remember what they just read they need to do something about it. It doesn’t do them any good if they do nothing when their comprehension breaks down. One thing they can do is “reread” that section. I told them that I sometimes have to do this even as an adult! 🙂
Today we got to do our read aloud-6th Grade Can Really Kill You
Instead of focusing on making predictions we focused on Helen’s character. After I read 1/2 of the chapter I had them write down 2 things that could describe or tell more about Helen’s character. They then had to share with a partner (since some might not have been able to think of 3). We then shared out loud-I wrote what they shared on 2 sticky notes. These sticky notes are what helped me write on the comprehension thinking sheet that I mentioned earlier. I told them this is what I want them to be doing when they are reading!!! If they jot things down on sticky notes-then use the sticky notes do complete their comp. thinking sheet-then use this sheet to complete their reading response letters, they should do well and become better readers. It’s all connected in my class!!! Nothing is just busy work!!! 🙂 Although, our work does tend to keep us busy!!!! 🙂
We had a little time to do Read to Self.
This is what I have not gotten to: Writing (I’m wanting to teach them how to write a compare and contrast essay) AND small group instruction!!! How am I supposed to fit it all in unless I take something away from whole group? And I know what is taking up TOO MUCH TIME! English!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Uggghhh!!
I did confer with 2 different students today about their reading-I even gave one student a strategy to use:DO NOT SKIP SECTIONS WHEN YOU ARE READING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
🙂
i run read teach 