Word Work Wednesday

Word Work Wednesday is relatively new in my classroom. Previously we'd strictly been doing vocabulary work associated with our reading text. Much of the instruction with those exercises involved blends, VV, or CVVC types of combinations. While that is moderately helpful for kids, ensuring that are recognizing letter combinations so that they can pronounce them appropriately, it isn't enough.

I had also realized that I wasn't doing enough to help my kids in vocabulary instruction. Part of EALR 1 (Vocabulary) is GLE 1.2, building wide vocabulary. Getting more specific, part of that is understanding Greek and Latin roots. While I'm not perfect with my instruction involving those, I certainly am doing more. Word Work Wednesday is a big part of that.

For homework Tuesday night kids get a list of 4-8 different roots. They compile a list of words having those roots. After that they define 2 from each list, and lastly predict what they think the root means. We then share our words, a few definitions, and predicted roots (and actual roots) when we come in on Wednesday. An example would look like this: "-gress" (movement) would have progress, egress, aggressive, regress, congress. They look up progress which means to move forward, and regress which means to move backwards. Ah! Movement!

It doesn't always work cleanly. If you looked up congress (coming together as a group) then you might be a little fuzzy. The kids have been really excited about it, particularly sharing words and making predictions. I have kids selecting other kids to share words, and the overall engagement is really high. I can't say that it is the best way to teach vocabulary, but having kids excited about word work is fantastic.

100 Days and Counting...

This week has been busy. I was observed on Monday, which also happened to be 100's Day. During the literacy time on Monday, I provided small group instruction that I had to follow-up with more instruction on Tuesday. I gave a math lesson and a science lesson on Tuesday too.

100's Day was great. I was surprised with how well it went. Students worked in cooperative groups in order to come up with 100 words. Sounds easy right? Well it went long, as kids got really interested in finding interesting and cool words. How awesome is that? I called an audible and had them share out when they were half done with their group sheets, and called them up to the butcher paper to write down their words. The result is seen below... I was excited about it!