Hi friends, welcome to my weekly series ~ ~ ~
This week we are diving deeper into context clues. How do you teach it, what does it look like in your classroom? How can you assess on it? We will be touching on each of these in regards to context clues. I taught this skill last week and felt like my students had a pretty good grasp of it…however after a ELA quiz last week I saw that they could’ve done better and that told me I needed to re teach. I knew I could get my students attention and have them buy into this way of teaching it if I turned them into mini detectives.
So, I made an anchor chart and we reviewed all of the strategies that help us figure out a word when we are unsure of it’s meaning. I went to my favorite go to – Flocabulary for an awesome rap/video and then we got right to work…
I knew since I was reteaching it I had to make a big impact on their learning and make it memorable. So I created some fun activities and ways to do just that. The magnifying glass craft is actually a mini book on the glass part. It has staples if you look closely. They have 4 pieces of glass ( stapled ) that they wrote a strategy to help them with unknown words on each of those. This is something they can keep all year and refer back to because I’ve included a page for their interactive notebook that is similar.
First off let me say my kids LOVED this lesson! It took most of our morning and they didn’t mind one bit. IN FACT, we were due for the chrome book cart and they BEGGED me to let them finish presenting their passages first. That has to tell you something. They were so engaged throughout my morning which made me so happy!
We made our magnifying glass mini book/craftivity and that reinforced all the strategies that are used when trying to figure out the word. Then we took a little power point quiz and they recorded their answers on their detective notebooks. Of course they felt like little detectives all morning with this activity which they loved.
Then I modeled how I wanted their passage to look – they had to write a short passage in which they changed important words to silly ( nonsense ) words and had to use clues to help their audience figure out what they were talking about. They were so CREATIVE!!! After they wrote 4 nonsense words in their passage with the correct use of synonyms or examples to guide their audience they were allowed to wear their hats and read them in front of the class on stage. When they finished their passage they called on their classmates to ‘guess’ what their nonsense words were – this was their favorite part for sure!
Kahoot is always a great go to when trying to reinforce a skill you’ve been working on OR if you need to reteach something.
My teacher heart was so full because they were so engaged and excited while learning today!
We had an amazing day of learning – one that I think will stick with them, especially knowing I had to reteach this to make it stick more. I’m pretty sure it ‘stuck’ this time. If you want to try it out in you classroom you can grab it ( here )
Thanks, and let me know if you test it out…as always ~ ~
Happy teaching!
xox,
