Word Pictures for the First Day

I've been meaning to share this activity since the beginning of school LAST year. Ugghh...I'm the slowest blogger ever. Lucky for me, the first day of school tends to roll around again, so I get another chance to post it!

My friend/fellow teacher/mentor/new neighbor, Ms. Jones, has her kids create this "word picture" of themselves on the first few days of school. Not only is it a great way for the kids to introduce themselves (and keep busy on those wild and crazy first days of school), but the pages also serve as bulletin board material...possibly for the rest of the year!

Time: 2-3 hours 
Materials:
- Notebook paper (for brainstorming)
- White copy paper
- Thin markers
- Colored pencils

1. Have students brainstorm a list of as many words as they can think of that could tell something about themselves. The words can be nouns, adjectives, or verbs...as long as they tell about the students interests, values, dreams, family, hobbies, talents, etc. (School appropriate words, of course!)

2. Once the kids have a LONG list of words, they are ready to make their pages. Hand out white copy paper and make sure they have access to markers and colored pencils. The markers are bolder, but the colored pencils allow them to be more artistic.

3. Explain the objective - "Today, class, you will create a page that tells me all about YOU." - or something like that. The student's first name on the page should be prominent. The rest of the page should be filled with words from the brainstorming list. Students should use only WORDS and/or WORD ART. There should be as little white space showing as possible once they've finished. Remind them that these will be displayed for everyone to see, so they need to take their time and be creative with the placement of words on the page.

4. Voila! Now you have a stack of student work to display! You can put them all up at once or hang a few at a time throughout the year...depends how many students and how much space you have.

Here are a couple of examples close-up:

Books, Books, and more Books!

It's still summer...and I'm going to enjoy every fun, lazy, sunny minute of it...but I have to admit I'm getting excited about next fall. I LOVE books...I LOVE reading, writing, and talking about them. So I don't mind giving up a few days of my summer to attend a workshop...Literacy Lab with Ken Stamatis, a man who loves books even more than I do! I'll be posting Lit Lab ideas and activities throughout the year. Here is Ken's "So Many Books, So Little Time" list for 2012-13. Looks like some great summer reads. The Lost Crown, about the Romanov princesses, will be on my Nook before the day is over! I took these crooked pics with my phone. Click HERE for a nice, neat (straight) PDF of the list.

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Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

Here are some illustrations my 6th graders made to show the correct and incorrect placement of modifiers. I took the pictures with one of our new classroom iPads...very exciting...more on the iPads later...

I found a ball walking home.

A woman was walking a dog in a blue dress.

Removing each other's fleas, the zookeepers watched the monkeys.

I found a dollar walking home.

Punctuating Dialogue

Punctuating dialogue is hard...even for adults. Most sixth graders still string together quotes, one right after another, in a dialogue choo choo train.

This hands-on activity from Miss Nannini on Teachers Pay Teachers helped my students a TON when we studied quotation marks in our punctuation unit.

I copied and laminated six sets of the sentence strips on different colored paper...one set per group.

Then the students (2-3 per group) arrange the quotes, the dialogue tags, and the punctuation marks on the floor.

After awhile, they figured out they could leave the punctuation in place and just plug in different quotes and dialogue tags.

Once they created ten sentences, they copied the sentences into their S.T.A.R. notebooks. I've seen drastic improvement in the dialogue punctuation since we did this lesson. Definitely worth the time!

Using Interactive Notebooks for Research Reports

 Our school has a BIG research paper project for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders every year. The 6th grade topic is wild animals. We usually use research folders with pockets folders for note cards and source cards, but I decided to try using the interactive notebooks to organize our information. Overall, it was a huge success but  I learned a few things the hard way that I won't repeat next year. Here's what DID work:

1. Gluing in the research requirements page and outline at the beginning of the Unit 5 Research section. The research requirements page lists all of the due dates and expectations, and parents sign it before we begin the project.
2. Gluing in 3-4 source cards. The kids had to use one encyclopedia, one nonfiction book, and one website from a list of approved websites.
3. Using Post-it notes as note cards. The 3x3 lined notes gave the kids room to write the topic, source number, one fact, and the page number. They could fit 6 notes on one page. We only used the fronts of the pages so they wouldn't get heavy and tear out of the notebook. I had the kids leave 3 pages for each topic (characteristics, behavior, and environment), but 2 would've been plenty.
4. Writing the rough draft after the notes pages. The final draft had to be typed and turned in separately, but everything else was kept in the notebook.

Outline and notes on plagiarism

Source cards. Each student had one encyclopedia, nonfiction book, and website source.

Note cards. The lined Post It notes worked great!

This kid chose more colors.

These note cards were very artistic. I love it when kids put their own spin on an assignment!

Word Wall

I finally have my word wall up and running. It's not as fancy as the ones I've looked at online, but it works. I have the words divided into categories by unit on the bulletin board. The kids have an alphabetical "portable word wall" in their S.T.A.R. notebooks with the same words. They put the page numbers beside each entry so they can find the notes or definition of that word in their notebooks - kind of like an index.

Words are from Marzano's Building Academic Vocabulary

Portable word wall in the back of the S.T.A.R. notebook (from Cheryl Sigmon's website)

More STAR Notebook Pages

 

The writing process foldable and quiz the kids took when we finished the unit

The foldable showing the definition and picture/example of the word

Title Page for Unit 2: Parts of Speech

"Noun Town" to show understanding of the different types of nouns

The Table of Contents (in front of the "Lessons" section)