Opening minds…

We’ll be starting Lois Lowry’s novel, The Giver next week.   I’ve been working with my PLC (Professional Learning Community) on how to better weave the MCA-II prep into our existing curriculum.  The MCAs have what is called a constructive response type of question.   It’s like an essay question, but the students are not required to write an answer out.  They can  make a T-Chart, a bulleted list, a Venn Diagram, a mind map (or story map or web) for their answer.   However, we’re trying to get them to not only do that but then also write a statement tying it all together to show that they know how all the information in the answer interconnects.  Easy task, right!   LOL!

I struggled with whether or not to read this story in my classes, but this story has sparked some amazing conversations!   My students have reading and writing disaabilities, and many of them could really relate with Charlie (before the experiment).  As the story goes on, the students raised many questions about the experiment and the underlying storylines.

We’re listening to the story on CD as it is difficult to read the progress reports when Charlie has difficulty spelling.

After the story, we’ll be watching the movie, Awakenings and comparing and contrasting the characters from the story to the ones in the movie.   This is a HUGE skill that will be on the MCA (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments), so it’s important that I integrate this into the existing curriculum…as just teaching “Test Prep” seems to heighten anxiety levels!

I had 2 resources for the kids to use in class for examples.

• Scholastic Dictionary Of Idioms by Marvin Terban
• There’s a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me by Loreen Leedy and Pat Streets

I had the students choose 4 idioms after looking through the books.  They made a poster of each one writing the idiom, its meaning, a sentence with the idiom used properly, and then an illustration of the literal meaning of the idiom.

This went over well!   The kids did a great job on their posters!

We studied alliteration.

We then went through these alliterations in class - reading them aloud.

• Angela Abigail Applewhite ate anchovies and artichokes.
• Bertha Bartholomew blew big, blue bubbles.
• Clever Clifford Cutter clumsily closed the closet clasps.
• Dwayne Dwiddle drew a drawing of dreaded Dracula.
• Elmer Elwood eluded eleven elderly elephants.
• Floyd Flingle flipped flat flapjacks.
• Greta Gruber grabbed a group of green grapes.
• Hattie Henderson hated happy healthy hippos.
• Ida Ivy identified the ivory iris.
• Julie Jackson juggled the juicy, jiggly jello.
• Karl Kessler kept the ketchup in the kitchen.
• Lila Ledbetter lugged a lot of little lemons.
• Milton Mallard mailed a mangled mango.
• Norris Newton never needed new noodles.
• Patsy Planter plucked plump, purple, plastic plums.
• Quinella Quist quite quickly quelled the quarreling quartet.
• Randy Rathbone wrapped a rather rare red rabbit.
• Shelly Sherman shivered in a sheer, short, shirt.
• Trina Tweety tripped two twittering twins under a twiggy tree.
• Uri Udall usually used his unique, unusual unicycle.
• Vicky Vinc viewed a very valuable vase.
• Walter Whipple warily warned the weary warrior.
• Xerxes Xenon expected to xerox extra x-rays.
• Yolana Yvonne Yarger yodeled up yonder yesterday.
• Zigmund Zane zig-zagged through the zany zoo zone.

As a class, we then wrote one for the letter O.

The kids made alliteration books

Cover: Alliteration…what is it? (Students wrote the definition “repeating the same initial consonant sound in neighboring words”)

Page 1 : Choose 4 of the above alliterations and illustrate them.

Page 2: Choose 4 more of the above alliterations and add 3 or 4 alliterative words to each one.

Page 3: Write 5 of your own alliterations.

Page 4: Write 3 alliterations about famous people.

Page 5: Write 3 alliterations about products you use.

Overall, this was a good assignment. Depending on my students, I had to modify the number on each page. Some kids couldn’t handle the 5 of their own.

We went through some comic strips I got from the Garfield, Peanuts, and  Archie official websites.  I ran them off and presented them on the overhead.  We went through the definition of onomatopoeia (a word that resembles the sound it represents).

My students are currently on laptops working on the Comic Creator on Read Write Think! What a great lesson! The kids are printing out their finished work and are quite proud of it! I spent 1 day planning and 1 day designing online. If I do this again, I think I’ll plan better by using a different worksheet that shows the options they have for background, props, characters, etc. It was too hard for them to visualize their plans.