Teacher Stuff

Some photos of recent teacher projects and such.

This was a unit I put together for a Reading Club for struggling readers. I shaped the whole unit as a mystery novel reading, from one of about a million kids' mystery series. Each child, theoretically, would get their own "case file"--complete with notebook and pen for clues, and a detective's badge. Each section of their file is meant to encourage them to focus and use critical thinking as they read: to make notes about suspects and witnesses, crime scenes and plot notes. Mystery books are great for this, because gumshoe detectives naturally have to do all the things that critical readers do--so as a child is looking to solve a mystery, they're also practicing good reading comprehension skills.

For one of my courses this semester, we have weekly tutoring sessions (8, I believe, in all), where we have to spend thirty minutes working with a first grade student on their reading skills. As part of that half-hour, we have to include a re-reading, a new reading, a writing activity, and a word study. This is the activity I put together for our first word study on 'oa'-as-long-'o' words:

The second week, I invented a basketball game for my student where he had to pick up an onset (beginning sound) and put it with the 'all' rime (ending). This was our "basketball hoop", constructed from a mini solo cup and a pasta box:

This week, for session three, I have put together an easter egg scavenger hunt for my tutee where he will have to take previous words from our past word study families and separate the onsets to put them with our new word family rime (ay). These are the eggs I made (and filled with a starburst each :)