Wow.

Another good day!

My lesson today was word study/play. The 'beginning' group did work with root words and prefixes (easy ones like "un-" and "dis-"), the middle groups unscrambled homophones and used them in sentences, then added prefixes and/or suffixes to a list of root words, and the advanced group made word trees using Latin roots like "aud" and "vid".

Good lord--all the groups (with a few individuals excepting), in all the classes, were engaged and on task most of the time! It was noisy, and I was sure that they were just chatting and goofing around, but sure enough, it was work related!

A MIRACLE, I tell you!

Today I got an unprecedented second coverage for the week. This time it was for Class C, third period. So at least I knew what I was going into, and I used the extra time to my advantage. My 'writing' time today was for rewriting their MLK letters for the bulletin board, so I had Class C do that third period, and told them that if we finished, then eighth period we could do something fun. Well, who doesn't want to do something fun on Friday afternoon?

So after we did the word study, which they seemed to enjoy, we did some MadLibs. It took awhile, because they were quite chatty and I would not let anything continue during the noise. But what a great tool to teach parts of speech, and these kids really need it. We must have had over ten prompts for plural nouns, and every single time, they needed a reminder what that meant. I was patient, though, and prompted them and reminded them, and we eventually got through it. So hurrah for MadLibs, I hope to keep using it as a fun way to help them learn about language.