Making Words

Each morning, as part of our literacy program, we do word work.  Word work consists of many different activities and games that help the children develop reading, writing and spelling skills.  This morning, we investigated a new activity that we will be using during word work throughout the rest of the year - making words.

Given a set of letters, students move the letter tiles around to form and spell new words.  The students started by finding WOW words from the word wall.  They then started finding "chunks" or "word families" they recognized (e.x. -ig, -ed, -an) and added other letters to make new words.  When making words, students also practice reading, writing and decoding new words.  They stretch the words apart and then blend the letters back together.

This morning, the word presented to the class was gingerbread.  Using only the letters in that word, the class worked together and built 53 other words (and there are even some we missed)!  The students really enjoyed making words, and we will try with a new set of letters next week.  Take a peek at the students in action...

Why not try this at home?  Find some scrap paper, and print the word snowman.  Cut out each letter.  Work together with your child to see how many new words you can make.  Have your child record each word you make on another scrap of paper.  Please send in your list - the students would love to see them!

Exploring the Rain Forest

Over the past couple weeks, the students have been very interested in exploring books and information about the rain forest.  Our shared reading story hooked the students interest, and we've learned so much along the way.

One of the big books we have been exploring is Step Inside the Rain Forest by Meish Goldish. After we had read the story several times together, we started looking closely at the illustrations by Susan T. Hall.  The students were very interested in all the different animals found in the rain forest.  

Take a look at what happened when I left the big book, some pencils and sticky notes on the back table...

It was amazing to sit back and watch the collaboration, cooperation and teamwork that was displayed.  The students worked together identifying and labeling not only the animals from the story, but also the plants and trees.  In the above picture, you can see that one of the students labelled the "canopy" of the rain forest as well.

The students worked long and hard on this activity - at some points, there were 11 students working on the book together at the same time.  Take a look at all the things they found and labeled...

The next day, the students returned to the big book and realized there were some animals in the book that they couldn't identify.  In true problem solving form, they decided to look in the other books we had collected from the library to see if they could find the names of the animals...and they did!!

It was truly magical to see all the students working together in this student-driven, authentic, meaningful activity!

Hat Day and Thank You...

Friday was Miss White's last day in our classroom.  Although we will miss her, the students had a great time trying many fun activities with her while she was teaching.  On her last day with us, we had Crazy Hat Day.  All week, students had been reading a story about favourite hats.  Not only did we read about hats, but we made our own in Visual Arts.  Some students chose to bring in a fun hat, while most of us wore the ones we made.


A big thank you to Miss White for all the fun and interesting activities she prepared and taught to the students.  We were glad to hear that she would come back and visit.


Enjoy some of the sights of Crazy Hat Day and our farewell celebration.

Thank you Miss White!  We wish you all the best in your future endeavors!

Gingerbread Retell

The students were so enthusiastic about reading The Gingerbread Man last week, we continued investigating various versions this week.  Another activity the students enjoyed was retelling the story.  Once again, we used a story telling kit, but this time the students decided to work in groups.  Each group met together and planned their retell.  Once all the planning and practicing was done, each group presented their retell to the class.


It was great to see the collaboration and team work displayed.  We enjoyed hearing all the different retells of the The Gingerbread Man.  Some of the students are really beginning to task risks during our drama and oral language activities.  They are beginning to use much more expression, and many even changed the sound of their voice to speak in role as their chosen character.  It was exciting to watch!