Saturday, October 22, 2011

The Week Ending October 21st: Parts of Speech Pick Up


I've heard it said:  If you want something done, ask a busy person.  And a busy week it was!  Between running Student Council elections, chairing Red Ribbon Week, and serving as PTA Membership chair, it was non-stop chaos fun!  Oh, and there was teaching too!!

Yes, if you want something done, ask a busy person.  Just don't expect her to get everything done perfectly or exactly on time!  (Ahhh, the [expensive] miracle of RUSH shipping!  Who knew the shipping would be more expensive than the red ribbons!)  

So, now that everything is almost ready and/or finished, I have had a chance to reflect on the week that flew by...

We had a particularly good time with an activity called "Parts of Speech Pick Up." It's a lot like "Mad Libs," but there is movement involved....

My tables are arranged in groups that seat six.  At five of the six chairs, I put a page of words/phrases.  At the sixth chair, I set out two sets because I needed seven parts of speech for this activity (Think ahead, next time, perhaps!)

Students were given a collection sheet.  I told them that I would ring a bell to signal a move to the next chair--and that we would move clockwise (an all-but-forgotten word in the age of digital time telling, I quickly learned!) from chair to chair.


For the past two weeks, we  have been generating and charting lists of words for each part of speech, so the lists we used for this activity were comprised of kid-generated words.

At each stop, the students would look over the collection of words and phrases on the page and then choose the one that they liked best.  This word/phrase was written on the line on their "collection form" that matched the part of speech displayed.

prepositional phrases (time)
Saturday afternoon
just after midnight
last summer
one day in July
in the morning
at 2 am
when I was five
as the sun set
when the school bell rang
in 2009

prepositional phrases (place)
in the park
on the playground
at Target
on stage
on the corner
at Disneyland
in New York City
in Australia
in the forest
in the middle of the ocean

adjectives
hairy
furry
old
orange
nervous
joyful
melancholy
wrinkled
slippery
surprised

adverbs
bravely
quickly
slowly
suddenly
quietly
awkwardly
kindly
gently
loudly
rudely

common nouns
whale
spider
backpack
principal
spaghetti
kindergartner
soccer coach
basketball player
announcer
wrestler

Proper Nouns
Lady Gaga
President Obama
Peyton Manning
Sponge Bob
Justin Timberlake
Kobe Bryant
Xbox
Kit Kat bar
Ferrari
IPhone

verbs
wrestled
tackled
captured
kissed
shouted
ate
ran/ran away
tossed
jumped
teased


Every time I rang the bell, the students moved around the table to a new seat and added a word to their collection.  Once they had moved six times, their page was full.  This meant it was time to craft a sentence...

We decided in advance that verb tenses could be changed to meet the needs of the sentence, that nouns could be made plural, and that articles could be added as necessary.

It was blissfully quiet, punctuated by giggles.  (I was so sorry I didn't video this lesson!) 

We use class cards to select who will share, and kids' eyes were riveted on the deck to see who would be chosen next.  (I love this strategy, by the way.  It eliminates all that hand-waving...).

We could have gone on for an hour.  Most of the sentences were mildly silly, but that was just what we needed on a Friday afternoon.  And almost every sentence shared was detailed and grammatically correct!  Further, I was genuinely surprised (and delighted) by the variety of ways in which they arranged words and phrases.  Each sentence was unique and varied in vocabulary and word/part of speech order.

It was fun to laugh together, and this lesson ended our hectic week with a warm,"together" feeling. 

Two of my personal favorites were:

On the playground, Payton Manning awkwardly tackled the melancholy principal when the school bell rang.

Just past midnight, Lady GaGa suddenly kissed a joyful whale in the middle of the ocean.

Our pages had 20 choices, but I used a truncated version to shorten the post. I included a google.docs link, but it would probably be easier (and better) to create your own, using words that your students generate.. Nonetheless, here's the link.

I am sure that every BlogFriend that reads this post is a BUSY person with an endless To Do list. Enjoy the weekend. You've deserved it!

Click the "Peek in My Planbook" picture up above to link back to the party!

8 comments :

  1. What a week - and the best is yet to come with RR week ahead!!! I can't wait to hear how your week goes under your leadership. If I were a gambling girl, I'd put my money on F.U.N!! Do let us know! And thank you for your kind words for a counselor who had a down day this week!

    Barbara
    The Corner On Character

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  2. Just stopping by to peek into your planbook. Love this! Yep, always busy! lol Come by and peek into my planbook.

    Happy Weekend!
    Rebecca at
    The Teacher's Chatterbox

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  3. LOVE this activity!!! I'll have to remember it when we're done reviewing all the parts of speech ... at the rate we're going, maybe April??? ;)
    Thanks for another great idea!

    Jen
    Runde's Room

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  4. Hello BlogFriends, Barbara, Rebecca and Jen:

    Thanks for visiting and THANKS for the comments!

    Have a happy week filled with cats, bats and candy corn!

    Kim

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  5. Absolutely love this activity! Can't wait to try it with my little darlings!!

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  6. Glad to hear it, Kathy!

    Have a great week,

    Kim

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  7. I love this! Thank you for posting! I will have to remember this for later in the year when we know all our parts of speech a bit better :) Still caught up on adverbs...

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  8. Hi Casey!

    How GREAT that you were here! I think my kiddos will be reviewing all of this from now until June!

    I think the kids had fun because they got to move around the tables... and this time I WANTED them to be out of their seats!

    Happy "Short Week of School"!

    Kim

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