to
Words of the Week!
The purpose of this page is to supplement
word work for the Words of the Week that are frequently used in primary
classrooms. Teachers who use these words as part of their Word Wall have
requested these activities. Each packet may include activities for 5 new words
with a review packet after four weeks: configuration, cloze, sentence writing,
word search, antonyms, rhyme time, handwriting (words for lists one and two and
then sentences thereafter), story comprehension, and alphabetical order. There
are different genres for the story comprehension component. For
instance, it may be a personal narrative, a poem, a song, a how to, a letter, a poster
and maybe even a menu, etc. I also plan to write letters to children to explain
my motivation to write some of the stories or to let them know where I get my
ideas. This may generate more student interest in writing. I hope so!
I originally
developed and used these packets in an academy for at risk second graders.
Initially, I allowed the students to write their own sentences for the Sentence
Sense page. However, they were having so much difficulty with it that I decided
to dictate sentences that included words that we'd already worked with as well as the new ones. It was very successful and
I would suggest using that format, especially with your struggling writers. Why? I found that I was able to use language
that facilitates the development of good writing strategies. We talked about using capitals, correct
punctuation, spacing, etc. They counted the number of words in each sentence
before writing, reread as they wrote to see what came next, etc. With one
student I was able to work on reversals (p, d, and d) during the dictation
sessions. You may want to try using the dictation process and see how it works
for your children.
I love it! My group of second
graders grew in leaps and bounds. They took more ownership of their
work, neatness and accuracy improved and they revisited the stories to check
their work. I added some extras to my group work. For instance, I
brought in a book on skunks for the 4c comprehension story. The kids really
enjoyed learning and writing about skunks. If you think of any other
extensions to some of these packets, please let me know and I'll share them on
this page.
Parents and
teachers seemed to be happy with the progress in the academy and I was very proud of my little guys! Who
else gets up three mornings a week to spend an hour working on their reading and
writing skills before school?! My sister, a Resource Specialist, reports that
her academy kids especially like the reader's theater scripts, songs and poems.
I guess that means that I need to write more scripts!
One word of caution: The review components may
be too complicated or difficult for some of your students. For instance, in
Rhyme Time, some of the rhyming words sound the same, but don't have the same
spelling. Alphabetical order has some words that begin with the same letter and
sentence writing uses two words from the word bank in each sentence. Pick and
choose wisely.
Source for the Dolch Word List:
http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/Dolch/Dolch.html
I would highly recommend looking at this site
for other activities to go with this page. It has phrases, student practice
books, game boards and much, much more! It's worth the time to look at it.
Just a note: If some of you have other ideas for ways to use
these materials, or if you can think of other activities to include, please let
me know. I'm open for new ideas!
Debra Grice, who
teaches a K-1 in Pasco County, Florida, loved the activities on this page.
However, she took it one step further and has allowed me to share her fabulous
suggestion with you. She is focusing on fluency, so she numbered the lines in
one of the stories below (Story 3a) in order to quickly count correct words per
minute. She sends the stories home as nightly reading assignments. I'll be
adding fluency drills to each comprehension packet, so check back for new ones.
They begin with lesson 2b. Here's Debra's recording sheet. Thanks, Debra, for sharing!
Fluency Drill Recording Sheet
