March Mania & Spring Fever: English/Language Arts Common Core Style
My school district is already in the final stretch for the school year as we are in the midst of the final nine weeks of instruction and have ONE more week before SPRING BREAK!! This is the time of year when speech-language pathologists and teachers focus on the remaining skills we desire for our students to learn. In the speech-language classroom, the typical vocabulary echoes throughout the room: story elements, main idea, supporting details, fiction, non-fiction, antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, word associations, BREATHE, basic concepts, following directions, idioms, similes, compare, contrast, cause, effect, fact, opinion, BREATHE, parts of speech, irregular plural nouns, irregular past tense verbs, types of sentences, summarize, and REPEAT!! Last month, my school had a "March Madness" theme and many students received extra instructional time during SPECIALS (e.g. music, art, P.E., etc.) to improve either English/Language Arts or Math skills that needed remediation.
For the past 3 weeks, I focused on reviewing English/Language Arts common core standards questions with my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade speech-language students in their usual therapy sessions. I created a set of 36 English/Language Arts questions based on common core standards relevant to skills that I address in my speech-language therapy sessions with my students.
During each session, I put a red token next to each learning question card. Each page had 6 questions and 6 tokens. Students got to pick up a token when they answered a question correctly. They were very competitive and eager to see who would earn the most tokens. I told them that their goal is always to try and beat their highest individual score. I have to admit that it has been quite exciting and interesting in the speech room lately. Most of my students are happy and cheer when they earn the most tokens or "learning points" while I've had one to cry because he didn't win. The latter moment is when I switch into my unofficial title of counselor, mentor, listening ear and shoulder to cry on! YIKES! The joys of elementary education...I digress...
Anyhow, here are links to the awesome and time saving materials I created:
After a few sessions reviewing questions using my classroom original, I photocopied individual learning packets of these questions for my students. We completed the packets in class by circling the correct responses from a field of 4 choices and writing the correct vocabulary word in the cloze sentences. My students took the packet home after each session for independent practice.
This is a great way to incorporate the English/Language Arts Common Core Standards into speech-language therapy sessions and also help prepare students for end of year state tests.
The 4th grade and 5th grade learning sets are coming soon!!! The 4th grade set has 42 learning questions including questions related to idioms and similes!
These learning activities may be used with an accompanying basketball game. The custom made illustrations and game pieces will be available soon. Check back again soon!!
Thanks for visiting today!! :)
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