Beach Day!
It finally feels like winter around here and the kiddos and I thought it was so fun to have a beach day when the snow was falling like crazy. Like I've mentioned in other posts, I like to do a memorable anchor experience when introducing a new phonics sound. Some are more fun than others and this simple beach day is one of my favorites.
I brought in some small beach balls with ea words written on them. I put students in groups and they took turns tossing the beach ball and reading the word their thumbs landed on. Each ball had different words so then we would rotate the balls. They were working hard to sound out those ea words. Needless to say they thought it was amazing to be tossing around a beach ball in class.
We brainstormed our own list of ea words and then spent time on a ea word hunt using our classroom library books. I had them write down the words they found to create our ea anchor chart.
In small reading groups I did various activities depending on the needs of the group. The a to z reading site has two books that focus on long e words. I choose The Bee and the Flea for one of my higher groups. We applied our reading comprehension strategies of making predictions, asking questions, summarizing, and clarifying. Students highlighted ea words as well.
To provide a pretty significant challenge for my highest group, I gave them a book with tons of long e words and a chart. With my support, they discovered the many ways e can make the long vowel sound. This was a great activity and I was surprised at how much effort they had to put forth to find them all. In fact, I gave all 4 of these students our "Determined" brag tag because I was impressed with how they did not give up!
For some of my groups, I created these ea word cards. I flashed these with the group to practice reading ea words as a whole group. I also had them play "Shark Attack." They loved this simple game. They each took turns pulling and reading a word card. If they read the word correctly, they kept the card. If not, it was returned to the pile. When they pulled a shark card, they had to put all of their cards back. The winner is the one with the most cards at the end. I will put this activity out during our next round of centers. I love using activities and materials in my small groups for my centers because I already modeled and played the games with the students so they know exactly what to do. (See my post here about how I do my literacy centers).
For our whole class reading, I found a great book called Amazing Beaches. As a whole class we reviewed and I modeled using our four comprehension strategies. We also reviewed the nonfiction text features and used them to help us make our predictions and ask questions. The students then had to write a paragraph about which beach they would like to visit and use details from the selection when giving their reasons.
We had fun with the beach theme and the students are still begging to use the beach balls to practice reading their ea words. How can I resist students asking to read?! I'll have to hide those beach balls soon:)
We brainstormed our own list of ea words and then spent time on a ea word hunt using our classroom library books. I had them write down the words they found to create our ea anchor chart.
In small reading groups I did various activities depending on the needs of the group. The a to z reading site has two books that focus on long e words. I choose The Bee and the Flea for one of my higher groups. We applied our reading comprehension strategies of making predictions, asking questions, summarizing, and clarifying. Students highlighted ea words as well.
To provide a pretty significant challenge for my highest group, I gave them a book with tons of long e words and a chart. With my support, they discovered the many ways e can make the long vowel sound. This was a great activity and I was surprised at how much effort they had to put forth to find them all. In fact, I gave all 4 of these students our "Determined" brag tag because I was impressed with how they did not give up!
For some of my groups, I created these ea word cards. I flashed these with the group to practice reading ea words as a whole group. I also had them play "Shark Attack." They loved this simple game. They each took turns pulling and reading a word card. If they read the word correctly, they kept the card. If not, it was returned to the pile. When they pulled a shark card, they had to put all of their cards back. The winner is the one with the most cards at the end. I will put this activity out during our next round of centers. I love using activities and materials in my small groups for my centers because I already modeled and played the games with the students so they know exactly what to do. (See my post here about how I do my literacy centers).
For our whole class reading, I found a great book called Amazing Beaches. As a whole class we reviewed and I modeled using our four comprehension strategies. We also reviewed the nonfiction text features and used them to help us make our predictions and ask questions. The students then had to write a paragraph about which beach they would like to visit and use details from the selection when giving their reasons.
We had fun with the beach theme and the students are still begging to use the beach balls to practice reading their ea words. How can I resist students asking to read?! I'll have to hide those beach balls soon:)
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