Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 1 – Playing With Words (Rising 1st)
Climbing ladders can be a lot of fun, but climbing ladders with words is even better! We got to know each other well this morning by playing a word ladder. A word ladder is packed full of word play as we start with a word at the bottom of the ladder (ours was few), and we read clues to help us figure out how to add, subtract or rearrange letters to make new words. As we progress up the ladder, we are reading more clues and changing letters to make new words. The last word we figure out has a relationship with the first word. In our word ladder, the first word, few and the last word was many. I asked students what the connection was, and our students figures out that they mean opposite things.
Since our concept topic week is change, students did a concept map using this word to show the beginning knowledge they hold about change. This type of early assessment helps guide our instruction to meet the needs of our students by differentiating their learning experiences. As a post assessment, students will do the same concept map, change, on Friday, the last day of our SAVY course, to show how their knowledge of change has expanded and become more in depth.
To begin our study of change, we read two books to the class: It Looked Like Spilt Milk, and Cloud Dance. Not only were we laying the foundation of the concept of change, but we were also introducing the concept of a simile. Clouds are a wonderful way to discuss change and our students were able to find evidence of change in both books as well as to compare the differences in how change looked in the two books (one showing objects such as animals in the clouds and the other showing actual photographs of different scientific types of clouds. Outside we went to look at clouds to respond to the statement: A cloud is like ____________________because______________________ (beginnings of understanding the structure of writing with similes). Oh,my did our students see marvelous things in the clouds! We had blue construction with us and white chalk to draw the forms and objects we saw in our ever moving clouds. When we got back to the classroom, students wrote their statements to describe a few of the forms they saw in the clouds, such as “A cloud is like a cookie because it has two bites in it and chocolate chips.” And, “A cloud is like a monster because it has shark teeth and a pointy nose.”
From clouds to centers, we worked in 3 small groups of fun work play. One center was building words with letter tiles and writing them in our word journals, another was understanding the structure of how to write similes, and writing similes, and the third center was charades/emotions (showing emotion without using words), and identifying and writing alliteration by understanding the structure. We started our centers, and will continue with again first thing in the morning. We had a fabulous first day!
Ms. Tyson
Drawing What We Saw in the Clouds
