Burping in the Classroom.....What?

Last week we read those fun There Was an Old Lady books.  We were working on compare and contrast.  They blew me out of the water.  They were coming up with so many things, that they told me I didn't have enough lines for them on our diagram.  "Don't worry Mrs. Rucker, we can just smoosh the words in there!"

After all the "work" was finished, it was time for the fun!!  In the There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell book, she didn't die at the end......she burped and built a sandcastle!  Oh yes, here it comes.....we burped!

I sent them all back to their desks to draw their sandcastles.  Then we came back to the squares and burped.  Yeah!!

Oh........so much fun!

The Importance of an Illustrator

Most kids love being able to color a picture and illustrate their sentences, but this week we talked about how important that actually is.  An illustrator has a big job!!!  They must understand what the author wants the readers to see.

We talked about several examples.   If the story has the little girl wearing a pink dress, the illustrator can not say, "Nope, I like red."  ......   and color the dress red.  If the author has the boys in the story playing football, the illustrator can not say, "Nope, I like basketball better."  .....  and color them playing basketball.  Otherwise, he might loose his job.  "You mean like get fired Mrs. Rucker?"  Yep!  The author gets to tell the story, and the illustrator makes it visually come alive. 

One of the activities we do to practice this is play our "Be an Illustrator" game.  I have the kids put up their desk dividers (so they can't see each others papers), and then I tell them to put on their Illustrator hats.   They must listen to the sentence and illustrate what they hear.  When everyone is finished coloring, we show our pictures.  They love to see if their picture looks like the others at their table.  The sentence I used in these pictures was, "The fat yellow cat sat on a blue mat." :)

Fan & Pick

We have started working on our High Frequency words.  Today we learned a new Kagan strategy called Fan and Pick.  The kids loved it.  One person is the "Teacher" and he or she has a class.  They just love being in charge.

Just like it is called, the teacher fans out the words and then calls on a student.  The student picks a word and reads it.  

The High Frequency Word Lists will be sent home after Christmas.  We are just getting a head start!! Yeah! :)  

New Friday Red Words

Wow!!!!! We have 4 pages of words this week!! :)