Compound Words

Pancake Chefs!
This week we had so much fun learning about compound words.  How can it not be a good week when there are pancakes involved?!

Last week we worked with CVC words so the next step in our Ortan Gillingham phonics instruction is to read and spell compound words made up of two CVC words like sunset, pigpen, upset, etc.  I like to make sure I teach those compound words, but also expose them to compound words like pancake, butterfly, cupcake etc even though we haven't yet taught those more complex sounds.  And of course we do have several students who are able to decode those more complex compound words, so it makes it easy to differentiate these lessons.

I was browsing through my own kids' books and came across a few books with pancake in the title and it got be started on the whole pancake theme!

The first thing we did was create our chef hats.  (I have been making these for a few years ever since I saw the idea on The First Grade Parade.  The kids always love them!)  They are very easy to make.  I wrote "Chef" and each student's name on a white sentence strip.  Then I gave them a few minutes to decorate them.  I did this at the end of the day during my IE time.  The kids were happy decorating their soon to be hats as I pulled individuals for intervention (no instruction time wasted:).  They went home already excited about the next day's lesson!  After school, I simply took one sheet of white tissue and staple it around the hat.  It kind of puffs out naturally and transforms into a chef hat.

When they came in the next morning, they grabbed their chef hats and we gathered on the carpet.  I told them that sometimes we do something really fun like being pancake chefs because it helps us remember what we are learning.  I told them that the word pancake is a special type of word called a compound word.  I explained that a compound word is two words joined together to make a new word.  We talked about the words in pancake.  I wrote a few other words on the board (both the CVC/CVC and more complex ones) and then briefly talked about our learning goal and wrote in on the board.

I read If You Give a Pig a Pancake and we made predictions before and during the story.  Then I asked students to tell me if they heard any compound words in the story.  As they told me each one, I help up the word on a pancake and we read it together.

Each student then was allowed to choose a mini pancake with a compound word to create a recipe card.

As students finished one, they were asking to do another one, so I thought that was a good sign!

Then we moved into our center routine.  I met with each student in a small group to practice reading compound words on pancakes.  To make it fun, I gave them each a pancake flipper and when they read correctly, they could flip their pancake.  Wow, I had some motivated little readers!!!  I don't post pictures of my students' faces, but oh how I wish I could.  (I post pictures on our parent blog and I have so many great ones of concentrating readers and big smiles as they flipped their pancakes!)  Their excitement was contagious. I was so happy because when I plan lessons like this and am spending my evenings doing things like cutting out laminated pancakes and making a trip to the dollar store for pancake flippers, I never know if it will be worth all the effort.  You just never know for sure how they will react.  But this was worth every moment of my time.  For 3 of my groups we focused on reading the CVC/CVC compound words and with my enrichment group we also read the more complex compound words.

The next day we met as a whole class and reviewed what we knew about compound words.  We created an anchor chart.  (I planned on drawing my pancake stack ahead of time, but ran out of time so please don't mock my obvious artistic talent!)  

It looks better in person. Really.

Then we broke into small groups with the goal of writing CVC/CVC compound words.  I first had them use a dry-erase marker to divide the compound word into its two smaller words and read to review what we worked on yesterday (and to use the pancake flippers again:)  

For writing, we would say the word and pound (lightly!) the 2 words.  Then we would pound the first words and segment the sounds (putting a finger up for each one).  They would write the first word and then do same for second word.  

It went really well and even my enrichment group really needed the direct instruction and guided practice in tapping out the sounds and writing the compound words.  Their confidence certainly went up when they saw the big words they were writing!

I read the Pancakes, Pancakes book by Eric Carle and Curious George Makes Pancakes to lead into the "How To" informative writing piece that I thought fit right in with our chef theme.  They had to choose a food/meal/snack that they knew how to make.  I modeled with How To Make Pancakes of course!  This page from the Curious George anchored the lesson.  How perfect is it with those transition words?!

I think that they really enjoyed that they weren't just writing all on one page.  They liked that they were making their own book.  I liked the freedom of not giving them a definite number of steps.  I was prepared with suggestions for the students who would say they don't know how to make anything: peanut butter and jelly, ice cream sundae, popcorn, cereal. etc.  It didn't take long for them all to have something they were excited to write about.  

And I just couldn't resist bringing them in some pancakes to enjoy as they finished their informative pieces on the second day.  They were so appreciative!!  (Again, wish I could show their sweet faces enjoying their treat!) 

Here is the link to my TPT store for these these materials.  And now that it is officially fall, it's apple time!!!  This morning I ventured to my favorite orchard.  I took my two boys to pick some apples for next week's follow-up informative piece on making applesauce and picked up a couple more apple themed books to add to my collection.  Happy Fall!!!

CVC Words

So this week my phonics instruction centered around reading and writing CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.  As always, there is a wide range of what students can already do with these words so it was important that I have diagnostic data and then differentiate my instruction based on that.  So I divided my students into 4 groups based on a pretest for CVC words and met with them during my small group reading instruction block.

I went searching for ideas on Pinterest and TPT and there are a TON of great resources for CVC words and many of them are FREE!  However, my issue was that I wanted to include words with digraphs (sh, th, ch) in addition to the basic CVC words.  (After analyzing my pretest information, it was clear that many students need work with the digraphs within words.  The other observation I made was that although almost all of my students demonstrated mastery with their short vowel sounds in isolation, they made many errors in the context of words).  So I decided to create a few of my own materials to use for my small group CVC instruction with all of that in mind.

I created simple task cards (and glitter letter cards) which I used with every group.  I just modified the amount of support and the pacing for each group.  It worked out beautifully!  And what I love about using task cards is that then I can then place these in my phonics center for next week as a review.  Since we worked with the materials, it's one less thing I need to go over before starting new centers.  I also will give them to my parent volunteers who will provide interventions for a couple of students after I give a formative assessment.

The students first had to alphabetize the glitter letters.  This went very quickly for my enrichment group and took more time for my intense intervention group.  Then I used one of the task cards to model the process of tapping out the sounds and writing the word.  I would say the word.  Students would repeat the word.  Then I would point my finger in each box and say the sound.  Then students would do the same on their task card.  Students would then place the glitter letters in the sound boxes (magnetic letters, bottle cap letters, alphabet beads, etc would also work).  I would check each student's sound boxes and if the letters were correct, they would move on to writing the word on the lines.  If there was an error with identifying the letter for the sound, I would provide some extra instruction for that student.  I was surprised at how much instruction and guided practice they needed with writing the word on the lines.  It gave me the opportunity to provide immediate feedback and instruction on proper letter formation.  Oh the beginning of first grade writing!  I sometimes forget just how much time and instruction they need just with printing their letters:)

Lots of opportunity to give instruction on letter formation for individual students.

My favorite aspect of using task cards is that it allows students to work at their own pace.  We are all working on the same concept, but each student is working at their own pace at their own level.  They aren't concerned with their neighbor because everyone is working on a different card.  I can provide specific, individual instruction for each student.  I can easily adapt the pacing during the lesson.  For some students, I would give a pile of cards for them to work through and I would check.  For others, I slowed way down and we worked together through each step of writing the word.  I even added tracing lines with my dry-erase marker for a few of the letters for one of my struggling little ones.

I also used blank cards.  I used these in two ways.  For my one group that needed much more direct instruction with the process of segmenting the sounds and then writing them, we did several all together as a group.  I put mine up on the easel and they each followed along on their blank task card.  For my other groups, I used the blank task cards to dictate some nonsense CVC words.

On our second day in small groups, I had each student create a few pages to create a mini book of CVC words.  Again this was the same activity for all students, but I modified the support.  For my intense intervention group, we did a work on the laminated task card (all the same word) and then once the student was able to correctly identify the letters and write them, I gave them the paper and they copied.  This group needed the extra step of doing the process on the task card first.  My intervention group wrote the words I dictated right onto the paper.  The on-level group students were able to choose a word on their own from the picture cards.  And the enrichment group, had to write a word (they could generate their own, use picture card for ideas, or I provided them a word if they wanted) and then use the word in a sentence.  All of the students drew a picture for each word.

So there wasn't anything fancy going on, but they were all so engaged and I felt like I really made some progress with all of the students. I love small group instruction and using task cards.  (And it seems about half of my class has such trouble attending and focusing for more than a few minutes in a whole class setting, so the small groups are essential!)

You can check out my CVC task cards, glitter letters, and pages for the mini book in my TPT store here.

We are going to add a couple of pages to our CVC mini books and make some CVC word bracelets for them to take home as a culminating type of activity.  They are SO excited to use those alphabet beads.  (First graders are so easy to please:)  I will post a picture of the bracelets after we make them.

Stop by next week to read about our work with compound words using a pancake chef theme!  So excited!

The Day the Crayons Quit

I think my favorite aspect of planning is selecting a read aloud and creating meaningful learning activities based on the book.  We all know the power of reading aloud to our students.  I love the opportunity to expose them to a new story, new vocabulary, and model a comprehension strategy like making connections, visualizing, asking questions, summarizing etc.  Since I would be overwhelmed trying to share all of the books at once, I will  put the title of the book as my post title and share whenever I can.  I hope you can add some of these ideas to what you already do with read alouds in your classroom.

This year was my first year reading The Day the Crayons Quit and it will for sure be one I do every year.  They LOVE it and there are so many directions in which you can go.  For those of you who don't know the story, it is about a boy named Duncan who goes to use his box of crayons and finds a stack of letters.  The letters are written by each crayon and describe the reasons they want to quit (overused, not used enough, etc).  In the end, Duncan creates a picture using all of the crayons in his crayon box.

I think this story is great for modeling and providing guided practice for making predictions.  We looked at the cover and had a whole class discussion about what might happen in this story.  Why would crayons want to quit?  After we read the first letter from a crayon, the students knew that there would be more letters from other crayons.  They predicted which crayon would write next and what the crayon's complaints would be.  We also made predictions about the story would end.  I would sometimes do a think aloud and share my predictions and the details in the story that made me form that prediction.  I also had students sit knee to knee with a partner.  They would share their predictions (and supporting details) with each other.  Then we would have volunteers share their thoughts with the whole group.

We did two activities in response to the story.  Since we read this at the beginning of the school year, I had students create "All About Me Crayons."  I drew a crayon outline for each student on large construction paper.  The students drew pictures of themselves and things about themselves inside the crayon.  The only rule: They had to use ALL the crayons in their crayon box!  They loved that part.  It was so sweet to hear them chatting with their neighbors about how they were incorporating each color and using details from the story about why that crayon would be so happy.

As the students shared a little bit about themselves, we enjoyed these "crayon popsicles" that my own son spotted in the grocery store.  So fun! (In the picture of the book above, I'm holding one in front of the cover if you want to see what they actually look like).

We also did a writing activity (on a different day) and I have to tell you I was so surprised at how excited they were to do it!  Even my one little guy who can barely form letters was excited and really worked hard at writing to one of the crayons.  I provided a writing template.  

You can download a copy for free here. 

 I originally intended the words to be a sentence starter and students would simply list things they like to draw with the crayon they selected.  However, these guys always keep me on my toes and I had some put a period at the end and then begin new sentences with their own things to say to the crayon.  It made sense, so I rolled with it!  They had so much fun and I think it was a very motivating, fun beginning of the year writing activity.  

Here are a few of their letters!