Oct. 22, 2007 - wk 7 (N-5)
October 15-19, 2007
Our read aloud this week is The Cat of Bubastes by G. A Henty, which coordinates with JJ’s Ancient History lessons.
Monday, Part 1
WARM-UP The children read the phonogram cards together in unison with full spelling dialogue. We’re not trying to beat our group record as it gets too chaotic. (4:48) They took a quiz on their review words and the multiletter phonograms listed in the preliminaries for N-5. (12:00) We reviewed all the spelling rule cards for the rules we know thus far. (4:00)
Monday, Part 2
DICTATION of the first ten words (#861-870) in N-5 followed. We were doing this part of our lesson late in the day, and so it took bringing out the chips for attentive behavior to get the kids on board with me. Our quarter ends this Friday, and the children are trying to see who can have the highest points by that time. They were on task for this today! (15:00)
A POST-TEST on these words was next. Since everyone got 100% on this test, no words needed to be added to the word banks today. (8:00)
Monday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT Thus far this year I have only had the children read from their learning logs once. I’ve been missing out on a great review activity. Therefore, today the children read their spelling words from Sections N-3 through N-5. They took turns reading the words in the “think to spell” manner and then as we would say the word in normal speech. I’ve included this kind of review in our lesson plans for the week. (10:00)
Monday, Part 4
REINFORCEMENT The children were sent off to their desks to write sentences with today’s words. The requirement was to include strong verbs, either words they learned today or ones they came up with. They were also required to use our writing class indicators (underline and label for strong verb). This was a revealing activity; my daughter needs work on verbs. She had underlined adjectives and adverbs, calling them verbs. She had great word choices; they just weren’t verbs. I’ll work on that with her this week while she completes her writing assignment for our class.
Monday, Part 5
McCall-Crabbs reading (5:00)
Our lesson today took approximately 75 minutes.
Tuesday, Part 1
WARM-UP We started by having JD read all the phonogram cards, sounds, only. He has not been able to beat his record. I told him that he basically has come within one second of the goal which is70 seconds. If I can just flip the cards faster for him, he might be able to make it next time. He has worked very hard on remaining calm and focused during this activity. (1:18) The children took turns saying the spelling rules with the cards without my help. They have been learning these rules well! (5:38) They also took a warm-up quiz on their review words, on the multiletter phonograms that would come up in today’s words, on the multiletter phonograms that were missed on yesterday’s warm-up quiz, and on the names of two days of the week. (10:00)
Tuesday, Part 2
DICTATION I dictated the second ten words of Section N-5 (#871-880).
A POST-TEST on the new words and words that were missed on the warm-up quiz immediately followed. The score on this test for the student who had been sent from the room reflected just how lousy of a time we had. :(
Tuesday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT The children wrote any words they missed on either the warm-up quiz or the post-test in their word banks. The children were asked to write 10 sentences with the new spelling words, each with a strong verb. My daughter had no idea how to do this, so I had her write sentences the way she wanted, and then we worked together to edit them, trading ordinary verbs for strong ones. She enjoyed this, and is starting to get the idea of where the verbs are in her sentences. Another student claimed he didn’t hear the “strong verb” requirement, but he had decent sentences. The other student wrote great sentences and even used indicators for a few strong verbs and quality adjectives. His spelling on non-spelling words, however, left me discouraged.
We had the following distractions during our lesson today: (1) the phone company repairman was working on our phone lines; (2) the dog was barking at him while he was in both the front and the back yards; (3) the phone was going off several times while he tried the line; (4) a glass of water spilled all over the table, on our papers, and in the plastic tub where I have been storing our phonogram & rule cards (praise the Lord for laminating!), the stacks of review word cards, and two envelopes with math manipulatives and our suffix cards -- all of which became drenched, (5) religious solicitors knocked on the door, and (6) one of the children threw a fit over something and was sent from the room. To say the least, I do not have a time for how long our lesson took, but it was certainly longer than any of us liked.
Afterthought: I read on another blog this evening by a homeschool mom who shared all the interruptions of her day. (Coincidence or the Holy Spirit? I believe the latter was at work. ) For each disruption she thanked the Lord and discovered the blessing hidden therein. How convicted I was of the bad attitude I had had about all our interruptions. If nothing else, the Lord was certainly trying to teach me patience, a quality I need desperately. So here’s my list of what I’m thankful for: (1) my phone is working again, (2) we have a dog who faithfully does her duty to alert us to intruders on our property, (3) my phonogram and rule cards are laminated, so they were not damaged, all the papers dried out, and water is so much better to spill than juice or soda, (4) the ill-tempered child was repentant and we had a chance to work on this aspect of said child’s character.
In his heart a man plans his course,
but the LORD determines his steps. Proverbs 16:9
...always giving thanks to God the Father for everything,
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:20
Wednesday, Part 1
WARM-UP We started by having JJ read all the phonogram cards, sounds, only. He did not beat his time. (1:38) I need to be a better card-flipper for them. The children took a warm-up quiz on 15 review words. (8:00)
Wednesday, Part 2
REINFORCEMENT The children took turns reading their spelling words from the learning logs (Sections N-1, N-2, and N-5) in the “think to spell” format. If the word was a single syllable, they would merely read the word sound by sound. If the word had multiple syllables, they would read each syllable, and then the sounds within the syllable. Why am I doing this? To encourage them to focus on the syllable breaks, the special ways we remember how to spell words, the sounds which are heard as the “schwa” in normal speech, and to get them to look at the markings for the words yet another time. They need this kind of review, and they have been patient with it.
Wednesday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT I dictated the A-I review words listed at the top of WG pg 109 while the children wrote these down the left side of a page in their spiral notebooks. They then matched the review words (“helping verbs”) with verbs from the current or any past list to write verb phrases. They had the option of writing sentences, which they did for a few of the combinations.
We finished with a McCall-Crabbs reading. (6:30)
Today’s lesson took a bit over an hour.
Thursday, Part 1
WARM-UP We started with SE reading the phonogram cards, sound only. She took off some time on her record. (1:23) The students took a warm-up quiz on review words and all of the N-5 words. (5:00)
Thursday, Part 2
REINFORCEMENT I had the children format a page in their spiral notebooks to allow for conjugating six verbs. Down the far left column (to the left of the pink margin line), they wrote the following pronouns:
I
you
it
we
they
They did this twice, leaving two lines between each set. Then they folded the page in thirds. On the top line, they wrote the verbs I dictated (capture, practice, and inspect) at the top of each column. Then , on the line above the second set of pronouns, they each chose three verbs (from this week’s list or a previous one) that they wanted to conjugate. Finally, in each column, they wrote out the appropriate form of the “to be” verb and the correct form (and spelling) of the verb. For example, for “capture” they wrote:
I am capturing
you are capturing
it is capturing
we are capturing
they are capturing
The children worked very diligently and quietly during this activity, and there were no errors in their work at all!
Today’s lesson was about 30 minutes in length.
Friday, Part 1
END-OF-THE-WEEK TEST The children took a test on the Section N-5 words and all review words they have collected thus far. They did very well!
Friday, Part 2
REFERENCE PAGE We added words from this week’s list to the ER and Numbers Pages.
Friday, Part 3
REFERENCE PAGE In preparation for next week’s list, we worked on the Dismiss L Page [B22]. I followed the instructions in SWR pp 176-177 for teaching this page, and I found the chart on pg 177 most helpful for quickly identifying which words would have been taught before our current Wise List.
Friday, Part 4
REFERENCE PAGE Finally, we also constructed the SH/TI Page [B7 & B8] per the instructions for next week’s word list. Following the instructions in SWR pp 110-113, we added words for each category except the second sound for the SI or CH phonograms, as we have not yet taught any words in the Wise List with these phonograms. As with the Dismiss L Page, I was so thankful for the work Wanda has done to make this easier for the teacher! I can quickly scan these charts to find exactly the words that fit our pages for where we are right now in the Wise List. This varies for every “class” and it makes these pages so much more relevant to our studies.
Today’s lesson took at least an hour.
Miscellaneous Observations
I typically do my lesson planning for the following week on either Saturday or Sunday. Although I carefully selected what I would be teaching, I did not do as well this week in looking ahead to the reinforcement activities and reference pages to make sure I understood how I was going to teach them. I also realized I am behind in building my Master Teacher’s Learning Log which I started at Mary Tanksley’s Advanced SWR Seminar in mid-August. Yes, I’ve built one of these before, but the Reference Pages were different back then, and I really need to have an up-to-date Master Log. Yikes! I need to do some homework so that I can work through this material before I’m standing in front of the children teaching. Yes, friends, I must practice what I preach! Keep ahead of your students in your own Master Teacher’s Log.
I realized something today as we were building our SH/TI page. We have been doing a lot of work building the Reference Pages, and this has been taking a good deal of time. However, once we get these pages formatted, adding words here and there to them will not take nearly as long. We are spending valuable time building a firm structure now so that as the year progresses, we can add shape and texture to it, and these concepts will be more firmly established.
The children are pointing out words in their other studies that would use various rules we have been learning. My daughter identified today a word which would qualify for the 1-1-1 rule. She is thinking about spelling in other classes! Yeah!
We had a celebration this week, which you can read about in a separate entry I will entitle, “Changing a Habit.”
