Interactive Skills Block

Skills Block is a favorite part of the children's morning. Each day they have an activity that enhances their learning and helps them in some way make sense of their word wall words and word families. Today the students worked in teams to find the letters and make the words that they have been learning with all week. On the back they will build the word families by just changing the beginning sound. For instance, they make say, "If I can spell -ake, I can spell make, cake, bake, take, wake, and fake."  By learning the word families, they have the opportunity to learn so much more about how words work.

Spicing Up Skills Block with R-Controlled Words

After brainstorming r-controlled words today in Skills Block, students were invited to play a game using the these types of words. A wooden block was used as a die. On the "die" was written "ar", "er", "ir", "or", and "ur". A sheet was given to each pair of students with various "r-controlled" words. After a child rolled the die, he/she had to find a word with those two letters, say the word, then cross it out on the sheet. When they had a straight line crossed out (just like Bingo), the game was over and they could play again. This proved to be a wonderful way to review r-controlled words and have great fun at the same time.

Jeopardy Anyone?

Spicing up Skills Block is always a great way to get the children excited about learning new things. After the charts are chanted and the morning message is corrected, we like to kick up Skills Block with fun and interactive activities. Upon our return to school in January, we reviewed diagnostic data, and noticed that our students were confused with some vowel patterns. So an activity last week was a chart divided into three parts to list words that make the "long a" sound: ai, ay, a__e. Words were said and students stated in which column the word should go. Another exercise was a sorting activity with a three column sheet and the words were sorted into the corresponding columns. This week, we decided to introduce the children to "Long A Jeopardy" and see if this high energy, fast paced game would also enhance understanding of these spelling patterns. A student is invited to pick a category, for instance, "ay" for 100 points. A clue is given, "This is something you do at recess." All of the students will then write "play" on their white boards and receive the 100 points. These spelling patterns are not only being noticed during this exercise, but also in Reader's and Writer's Workshop, where we want this understanding to transfer. "I'll take a__e for 200!"