Oct. 1, 2007 - wk 5 (N-3)
October 1-5, 2007
This week I'm going to work hard at timing the individual elements of our lessons to get an idea how long each activity is taking us. The total time for the lesson is listed at the end of each day's entry. This includes transition time from one activity to another within the lesson. I hope that makes sense.
Monday, Part 1
WARM-UP We started with a phonogram card review of all 70 phonograms. The children read them in unison with full spelling dialogue, not just the sounds like last week. (4.5 minutes) Next followed a warm-up quiz with eleven review words. (4.5 minutes) These are words that have been misspelled in previous post-tests or end-of-the-week tests. Any words missed on this test (there were very few) were added to the student's word bank, if they weren't there already. Finally, we went quickly through the rule cards. (3.5 minutes)
Monday, Part 2
Per the Preliminaries for Section N-3, we covered the Y's Exchanging Rule, which was entered into our Learning Logs on page B13. Although I've discussed this rule with the children in the past, this was the first time we'd ever officially covered it on a Reference Page. I feel so excited to breaking so much new ground with them. Per the instructions at the bottom of page 105 in the Wise Guide (WG), we entered the words "cry," "study," and "try" in the left column on our Reference Page. My daughter wanted to also include the word "baby" so it was added as well. (Encourage interest by including their suggestions when it is feasible to do so.) After adding the questions to ask at the bottom of the page, we analyzed each word when adding the suffixes -ed, -ing, and -ish (babyish). This tied in very well with the work on the ED rule we did last week. (28.5 minutes)
Monday, Part 3
McCall-Crabbs reading. Since I'm following the order for the readings in the McCall-Crabbs Answer Key which BHI publishes, we are no longer staying in Book B for every reading. We're currently reading passages which are around the 6.3 grade reading level. Therefore, today's reading was out of Book D. This one was harder for the kids, but I have to say they are handling it quite well when a score on their plot graph dips down now and then. They truly enjoy these readings, and they're pretty patient with themselves. Fortunately, it is not becoming a competition with one another. Since they each have their own graph, they're working to beat their own best scores.
Last week we averaged the first nine readings and drew a red line across those scores on their graphs. We only averaged nine, instead of the typical ten, because I had messed up on the first one with the timer. We're also using the record form that's included in the Answer Key, so when we fill up the answers for ten readings, we'll automatically know it's time to calculate an average.
Another thing I do with the McCall-Crabbs readings is that I let the children finish all the questions even after the timer goes off. They change to their red pencils when the timer goes off, but they continue until they answer them all. This helps them get more out of the passage and they don't feel quite as defeated if they missed several questions. It also gives us more material to discuss when we're reviewing the answers. Today we took extra time to discuss the questions they missed. One of the questions was asking for some "main idea" type of thinking. My younger son said, "But they don't have the words here on the page to answer that question." What a great opportunity to discuss how to "read between the lines" and infer a character's intent. Other questions the children missed included misreading a question and misunderstanding vocabulary. We had a great time talking about how to solve these problems when they're reading a passage. (15 minutes)
Today's lesson took an hour.
Tuesday, Part 1
WARM-UP included phonogram review with JD reading sounds only and beating his record. (1:14) The children took a quiz on review words and the phonograms from WG pg 104. (6:00)
Tuesday, Part 2
DICTATION of the first 10 words from N-3 (#821-830) followed. Before moving on to the next activity, I reviewed the words on the board with the children. I asked questions like, “Which two words have double consonants in the middle?” “Which word has a three-letter phonogram?” or “Which word has the ‘stand-in’ vowel?” This was a fun, quick review for us all. A quick post-test on these ten new words was next. (25:00)
Tuesday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT Since all three children got 100% on their post-tests, no words were added to the Word Banks. They immediately got to work on writing original sentences with their spelling words. Each sentence was required to have a quality adjective, our dress-up of the week for our writing class. The kids very much enjoyed writing outstanding sentences, and my daughter dug into the writing tools she was given at our last class for better word choices. (15-20 min.)
Our lesson today was about an hour.
Wednesday, Part 1
What is it about Wednesdays? Another day of wiggles and distractions, but we still persevered with our lesson.
WARM-UP included phonogram review with JJ reading sounds only and he, too, beat his time. New scores are recorded on our scoreboard. (1:24) A quiz was next on the review words, some of yesterday’s new words, the multiletter phonograms that would show up in today’s new words, and one extra word from past lists for a total of 25 items. (7:45)
Wednesday, Part 2
DICTATION of the next 10 words from N-3 (#831-840) followed with a post-test after that. (18:24)
Wednesday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT A couple words were added to the Word Banks, and the students worked on writing original sentences with their new words. They were required to (1) use all ten words in at least five sentences, and (2) have at least one quality adjectives in each sentence. They received extra points (chips) for correctly spelled past-tense verbs, Y’s Exchanging words, or plurals. The children amazed me with their work! Here are samples of their sentences:
“The radiant oyster seemed so alluring that I bought it without a second thought.” (SE)
“The savory chicken was very nutritious.” (SE)
“I made a dire mistake on the oyster saute.” (JD)
“His saturnine burial was mentioned in the bulletin.” (JD)
“Tearing thick leather is energy consuming.” (JJ)
“Get the silver pearl, you oyster,” said Jack. (JJ)
Lest you think my children have this kind of spoken vocabulary, remember they have been given word lists and have been taught to use a Thesaurus, so they are able to come up with quality synonyms for the ordinary words they would normally use.
I lost track of the time on this activity, so I’m guessing it took about 20 minutes.
Wednesday, Part 4
McCall-Crabbs reading. We were back in Book A, and as a result the children did much better than they had on Monday. (5:00)
Overall, the lessons today were about one hour.
Thursday, Part 1
WARM-UP today started with a review quiz on our 15 current review words, one of which is “study.” The children were also given the words “studied” and “studying” to practice the rules we’ve been learning. (5:00)
Thursday, Part 2
REINFORCEMENT I dictated all of the N-3 words to the children, which they wrote down the left column in their spiral notebooks. Then I dicated the review words from WG pg 105, which they wrote on a separate paper, again down the left column. Their assignment was to take the list of N-3 words and write each word in the right column in its plural form. They contested the word “empty” as a noun, and declared that it was either an adjective or a verb. They still practiced writing its form “empties” in the right-hand column. :) (16:30)
Next, they used the A-I review words (all useable as adjectives) to form noun phrases with their N-3 words. They liked only having to come up with a phrase rather than a whole sentence. (30:00)
Thursday, Part 3
McCall-Crabbs reading in Book A again. (5:00)
Total time for today’s lesson was a little over an hour.
Friday, Part 1
The children took a test on this week's words and all of the review words they have accumulated thus far. They did very well, and we were able to "retire" nine of the review words. This means those words were spelled correctly on two consecutive end-of-the-week tests. The cards for those words have been marked for the second successful test date and moved over to the "retired" stack. Words that were missed on this test were added to the Word Banks.
Because I'm trying to get out the door for a weekend get-away, we are going to hold off on starting our ER page until Monday. Today's lesson took 15 minutes. Yippee!
