Language

Title: Welcome to My House (Kaitlyn, Ben, Liz)

Objective/Goal: Students will be able to describe their house orally.

Materials: In advance, let parents know each student should bring a photograph of their house.

Copy of the book This is My House by Arthur Durros

Procedures:Read the book This is My House with the students and point out different details of the homes in the book. Show a photograph of your home and describe it in a few sentences. Then ask students what they notice about the picture of your house. Have students talk to each other about similarities between your house, their house, and each others house.

Extension: In partners, students will describe their house to each other and draw pictures of each others’ houses.

Adaption/Simplify: Point out specific details for the students to notice, “How many doors do you see?” “What color is the brick?” “Where is the mailbox?”

Title: Writing Nursery Rhymes (Kaitlyn, Ben, Liz)

Objective/Goal: Students will write the details of a nursery rhyme periodically throughout the year.

Materials: Nursery rhymes, paper, writing materials

Procedures: This is an ongoing assessment of students’ writing skills. Each week, you will recite, read, and play with a different Nursery Rhyme. At the end of the week, students will use illustrations and writing to describe the Nursery Rhyme. Standardize the assessment by limiting their time to 15 minutes to complete the task. (Do not point out students’ errors at this time.) Compare the writing from the beginning of the year to that of the middle and end of the year.

Extension: Children can take past writing samples of the Nursery Rhyme and edit spelling or other errors. As an additional extension activity, certain students may modify existing Nursery Rhymes to create their own.

Adaption/Simplify: Illustration may be used to describe the rhyme with younger grades. As they illustrate they may describe what they are drawing. Later they may use spelling to reproduce some of the words from the Nursery Rhyme.

Title: Weekend News (for older, more experienced students) (Kaitlyn, Ben, Liz)

Objective/Goal: Students will keep a journal of their weekend.

Materials: A prepared report about the teacher’s weekend. A blank weekend journal for each student. This could be a composition book, or several writing pages stapled together. There should be a place on each page for illustrations.

Procedures: Teach the students how to report about their weekends. At the beginning of the year, present the journals to the students. Say “These are our weekend journals. Every Monday, our bellwork is to write specific details about our weekend. It is important to include such details as who was there, where you were, and what you did. Some of you may even include why you were there! Here is a report about my weekend.” (Teacher can create a permanent reminder about how to write about the weekend by writing the words “who, what, where, why, and when” in a prominent location.) At the beginning of the year, students will need more support as they learn to write about their weekend. As the year progresses, they will become more independent. Periodically, review their journals and give feedback in the form of sticky notes. This will turn into a keepsake that students will enjoy for years.

Extension: Students can report to the class on their weekends and provide artifacts from their activities (movie stub, rock collected, etc.)

Adaptation/Simplify: Students whose writing skills are still progressing can draw a picture of their weekend and describe it to the teacher.

Title: “The Voice” (Kaitlyn, Ben, Liz)

Objective/Goal: To identify each others’ voices.

Materials: A recording of different familiar voices without any visual cues

Procedures: Start by listening to different recordings of popular voices (Mickey Mouse, Scooby Doo, Darth Vader, Kermit the Frog, school principal, the librarian, etc.) See if students can name these different people. Then explain that peoples’ voices sound different. Then gather students in a circle facing outwards. The teacher can stand in the middle and gently tap individual students on the shoulder with a yardstick when it is their turn to speak. The yardstick is used to maintain distance between the student and the teacher in order to keep the voice as anonymous as possible. Decide what the students will be saying before the activity such as a nursery rhyme, the pledge, a greeting, etc. Students will guess who is speaking based on what they hear.

Extension: Have students experiment changing their voice in terms of pitch, accent, tempo, timbre, etc., and still try and identify the individual.

Extension: Make a class recording and bring it another day. See if they can identify each others’ voices and even their own!

Adaptation/Simplify: Reduce the number of voices that must be discriminated by having only 4 or 5 speakers in the group be the voice.

Title: Copycat! (Lexus)

Objective/Goal: To demonstrate auditory memory.

Materials: none

Procedures: Students will first listen to a sound pattern that the teacher is performing. Next they will need to clap, snap, or pat the same sound pattern that is given to them.

Extension: Have the students take turns creating their own patterns to have the others perform back.

Extension: Have the students use drums or other instruments to create the sound patterns.

Adaptation/Simplify: Start with simple ABAB sound patterns and progressively make them more challenging.