10-9-12 Activities and Reflection Student 3

Goals: Bare Bones

           Expand Bare Bones

           ARMS and CUPS revising/editing

*Has a paper to write for Spanish. In Spanish.

     *Finished with his dad

*Talked about a trip to Transy for sister’s swim team meet.

*Reviewed differences between a phrase and sentence

*Wrote 3 bare bones sentences.

*Took a break to write sight words

*Diagrammed basic sentences, then expanded with adjectives

*Talked through expanding his bare bones sentences, I wrote what he dictated.

*Introduced Traffic Light paragraphs

**Chose not to introduce ARMS and CUPS because we haven’t done much revising yet.

Reflection:

Student 3 really enjoyed the Bare Bones activity this week. I really don't know what the difference was between him and the other two, but he quickly and easily wrote three Bare Bones sentences without much guidance. The others needed me to write one as an example before the idea clicked for them. Maybe the quick review about a phrase versus sentence as well as the two components of a complete sentence (noun and verb)? Either way, he wrote three basic sentences: I ran. Bob burped. and I play.

He also seemed to enjoy expanding those sentences. I had been separating out those two activities, but I think it fits just as well same day. Yesterday provided a good break, since I forgot to review sight words first thing this session. Since this student is also to be "reviewing" things from Barton, I'm also reviewing sight words. His mother expressed concern over his difficulty correctly using homonyms (homophones?) while writing. Since he had finished Barton's lists of sight words, I created my own list of homonyms. I would use the word in a sentence and for me to mark it correct, he had to not only spell the word correctly, he had to spell the correct one. Not a perfect system, but it's the best way for me to see if he really doesn't know or if he may just be rushing. I think he just rushes through his work and decides that part isn't important. Anyway, now I've created several lists of old sight words he had missed the first time through to review and they are actually proving to be quite the challenge. Kind of makes me want to pull out ones he didn't miss just to see if he actually knew them or got lucky the first time (we've switched the way we do sight words...long story).

Since we had the sight word break, I thought going on to expanded sentences would work and he enjoyed that activity as well. I ran became Swiftly, I ran to the store while burping. Bob burped became Bob burped rapidly with his friend, Billy Bob Joe. (a quick lesson in the comma between friend and Billy was needed). Can you tell he's my fifth grader? I play became Quickly, I played basketball outside with Bob 1, Bob 2, Bob 3, Bob 4, and Bob 6, so we could play a lot of games.  He explained that he was Bob 5 and wanted to play a lot of games of basketball.  I'm pretty confident in saying this is why he enjoyed this activity so much--he got to be silly.