Skills Block - Interactively Fun!

We have a jammed-packed Skills Block in the morning. This is where the students get to practice phonics, phonemic awareness, and word building. Each day we "work on" a morning message. This message is written on the board and contains about three to four sentences. It usually includes what the day is; what the resource for the day is; and a miscellaneous sentence. The sentences do not contain any punctuation. They may contain any of the following: contractions, misspellings, punctuation, capitalization and/or vocabulary words. Students take turns putting quotation marks, commas, circling vocabulary words, and correcting misspellings. After this exercise, (about ten minutes), we take five minute increments and teach a few antonyms, new contractions, new word families, or introduce another skill. For the last ten minutes of the Skills Block, students have the opportunity to practice a learned skill. In the picture, the children are playing "Concentration" with contractions. Partner groups are given cards with two words on it and asked to find its' contraction. For instance, "do not" would be on one card and the student would have to know the contraction is "don't". The cards are placed face down and students take turns flipping over two cards at a time and trying to find the match. Interactively practicing these skills are a favorite time of Skills Block for the children and it also allows us time to monitor their learning while everyone is having fun!