Story Structure Match-Up

I need to keep assessing his story structure knowledge and since he consistently forget the problem and result of a story, I figured I would give him some scaffolding as I assessed. We're going to read "Just A Mess" by Mercer Meyer.

He will make predictions about the book and then read it out loud. Instead of doing follow-up comprehension questions, I'll have him match up pieces of the story with the different story structure parts.

Don't mind the fact that the problem is in different font, technical error 

For the specific story cards, I used one real name and a few fake, along with one real setting and a few fake. I also pulled sentences through the story for him to identify as the problem and result.

Just an example of the character cards

I'll cut the cards out so that he can lay them across the table and work on solving which card goes under each story part. He is really good at identifying character and setting so those should be an easy way to start this activity.

Things I'll Assess:

• Making predictions about a book
• Reading fluency
• Story structure knowledge when presented with examples 

Spinning Top

While I was hurriedly trying to put together a lesson plan yesterday, I was trying to think of other ways to probe past tense -ed. Are you sick of past tense -ed activities yet? Because I sure am. And I'm really sick of probing. It has gotten to the point that I know exactly what I want to work on this semester but I'm required to finish out this week of evaluating/assessing.

Anyway, I decided to use a spinning top game that I saw on pinterest. After class I raced to the White Elephant since they have the best toy selection in town. Of course they had cute old-fashioned spinners. For some reason, I got home and promptly forgot that I was going to do this activity. I think I just got too caught up in failed bouncy balls. Fortunately, I was compiling all my stuff this morning and realized I never planned this activity out.

I just threw together a really quick container for the top to spin in. I found a shoebox lid and taped construction paper to the bottom. Then, using various straight-edged materials, I tried to draw straight lines. Of course I'm impatient and messy so my lines weren't straight and my words turned out crooked. Oh well.

Don't mind the ink smear :)

Here is the plan:

• Child will spin the top
• He has to add past tense -ed onto the word the spinner lands on
• He has to write the new form of the word onto his worksheet
• Spin again

The lazy worksheet: I'm just so tired, I don't want to design a worksheet!

Beanbag Toss: "Planting Apples"

So just like Johnny Appleseed tossed seeds to grow apples, I thought that I could have my child toss beanbags to grow words... aka, add the past tense -ed onto words. The idea is simple: just like the bowling game, there will be base words and the child will have to write the past tense form of the word on a worksheet. 

I thought of a beanbag toss earlier today but gave up on the idea because 1. I don't have a bean bag toss game and 2. I was feeling too lazy to even think about it. Then my guilty conscience came into play: "Jill, if you don't include fun games he isn't going to listen. And if he doesn't listen then you'll fail." So I decided to make my own bean bag toss game.

Not as easy as one might think. Especially for me. I tend to get impatient and sloppy when making crafts. Funny how I forgot that about myself until I had already started the project. This is what I started with:

3 boxes and some construction paper

I ran to the Dollar Tree to grab some construction basics: duct tape, more construction paper, and a utility knife. Without having a plan, I grabbed the knife and just started cutting holes. Like I said, I'm impatient. And the result was-- uneven circles. "Oh well," I said to myself, "It gives it character."

Next, I used double-sided tape to attach the construction paper to the boxes. After I started, I realized that maybe I should have applied the construction paper before cutting the holes. It was very difficult to try to get the construction paper completely lined up with the edges and I finally gave up and just taped on bits and pieces. After looking at it, I said to myself, "Oh well, maybe no one will notice."

Then, I had to find some way to tilt the boxes up so that bean bags could be tossed through the circles. I decided to use another box. Big mistake. Since the Dollar Tree only had cheapo duct tape (in leopard print, I might add) it did not hold up. I went on a treasure hunt around my house: eating utensils, nope. Bunny stick treats, nope. Paper towel rolls, nope. Long skewers... yes! I taped 5 skewers together on each side of the box and, voila, it worked perfectly. 

Let me explain the concept behind the game:

• Each hole has a base word attached to it
• When the child tosses the bag into the hole, he has to add past tense -ed onto the word and then write it on his apple worksheet
• Retoss

My next problem was: how will I attach a base word beneath each hole? After looking around my craft box I found these:

Dry erase message boards

I cut the message boards in half and then into thirds. After attaching them with double-sided tape, I wrote a base word onto each. This way, I can reuse this bag toss for many other themes/ideas.

Here is the finished result (it's bigger than it looks)

Close-up of the dry erase board on the box

I also created this worksheet for him to write the full past tense word on:

Just like the bowling pins, I need to write the line in once I print it

Bowling for Words

Nothing makes me feel better than to check another thing off my to-do list, so instead of being a Negative Nancy all night (just for that lovely post) I decided to get some work done. 

I have a therapy session again tomorrow. Since I'm still trying to see what my child knows, I have to run some more assessments. However, probing spelling patterns & morphemes is so boring. And if it is boring to me, I can't imagine how the poor kid feels. 

So once again, I started my brainstorming ways. I knew after yesterday that I would need to figure out my client's knowledge in regards to past tense -ed. There were a few misspelled words on his science experiment worksheet. But, how do you probe past tense -ed without just asking a kid to spell words. Well...

I was sitting in class this morning and came up with idea of using my handy-dandy bowling pins. Then I realized that I would need velcro to glue base words onto the pins. So I called my poor boyfriend and, instead of even saying good morning, I hurriedly said, "Need velcro, don't have time, in class, gotta go." Poor Mark. 

Anyway, my plan is to have my client bowl and he has to change each word he knocks down into its past tense form. For example, he knocks down walk, so he has to write walked onto his bowling pin worksheet. 

Since I want to use these pins over and over again, I couldn't just velcro each card directly onto the pin. Instead, I cut up a page protector sheet and made little clear envelopes for each pin. I put the sticky velcro part on the pin and attached the fluffy velcro piece onto the clear envelope. Then I stuck the cards into each slot. To make the base word cards, I just cut index cards into thirds. 

Here's how the pins turned out

Here is the bowling worksheet I made. I had a bit of trouble putting a line in each pin for him to write the word so I plan to just draw it in when I print it out. 

Spelling Slap Jack

Materials:

• Spelling word index cards 

Last night I was trying to figure out my materials and lesson plan instructions. I did the lava experiment to make sure it works, gathered up all the ingredients, and started making a rough "script" for the lesson. Then I started to get stressed out. Even though I have 6 main activities (with activities within activities) I realized that if one thing goes wrong, we would have plenty of extra time at the end of the session. Finally, I just gave up and went to bed. I thought that maybe I'd ask my supervisor for another idea on Monday.

Thankfully, plop, an idea came to me as I was waking up this morning--Slap Jack Spelling! Specifically, long vowel pattern (with silent -e) slap jack. I can't take full credit for it because I remember watching another clinician with a similar idea last year.

Okay so here is the idea of the game:

• I will make 10 index cards with random grade appropriate spelling words
• I'll also make 10 index cards with long vowel pattern spelling words
• Mix them together
• After shuffling the cards, the student gets ten and I get ten
• We will both lay down one card each 
• If someone lays down a long vowel pattern card, we race to slap it first
• The person who slaps it first gets the whole pile of cards (the person also needs to read the word out loud as they slap it) 
• Whoever has all the cards at the end wins

Since I will still be trying to probe for what the child already knows, I will use this game to assess the child's identification of a specific type of long vowel pattern. For instance, I can choose 10 words that have a long u and a silent -e (cute, use, huge, etc.). That way, if the child identifies 8/10 long u words, I know that he/she has a pretty good understanding of the spelling pattern and so I don't need to reteach the concept later. I'm just excited that I figured out a way to test spelling without having to give a written spelling test, so much more fun!

This game can also be used for:

• Recognizing sight words
• A quick way to assess understanding at the end of a brand new spelling instruction (did the lesson actually work?)
• It would also be easy to use this in a large classroom setting: children can pair up and play the game to practice specific word work 
• A way to go over reading comprehension after reading a book 
• If the book was about pirates, mix pirate-themed cards in throughout the deck
• The student needs to recognize the pirate card, slap it, then tell a detail he/she remembers from the book 

Story Structure Mad Lib

For the first session I need to see what my client is capable of and decide what goals we need to set. To do this, I need to probe (I hate that word) various skills. Probing can make for a very boring therapy session. It usually consists of giving informal tests on various things. Meaning that the child would need to be sitting and responding for 50 minutes. As soon as my supervisor told me that I need to probe my student's story structure knowledge I started to brainstorm ideas to make it a bit more fun.

I must admit, I really am not creative. I've never been a great artist, storyteller, or anything. However, I'm lucky because ideas tend to just fall from the sky and land in my head. That's what happened the other night, I was about to fall asleep and suddenly sat up and exclaimed "Mad Libs!"

In other words, a simple but fun story structure probe was born. You all know what Mad Libs are, right? It is a game where parts of a speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.) are cut out of a story. One person has the story and asks for parts of speech and the other player comes up with random words (Player 1: "Give me a noun" Player 2: "Octopus"). I used to play them with my friends in elementary school and got such a kick out of them. Combining silliness and the parts of speech was alway a useful learning experience.

So anyway, I decided to use a homemade Mad Lib see if my kid could identify parts of the story structure. The parts of a story are: character, setting, problem, action to solve problem, and result.

Here is the Mad Lib that I created:

You can click on the image to make it bigger

It's not as exciting as I would like but it works. Since all of the story structures are left out, it might not be as funny as normal Mad Libs. With regular Mad Libs the story structure is there so when you add goofy nouns, adjectives, and verbs the story can become quite ridiculous. I just hope that this is more entertaining that just giving a test and saying "Write down what a character is..."

I'll let you know how it goes next week!