Mystery Lemur

A little over a week ago a box appeared on the bench where we gather each day. On it was a velvet frog with a word balloon above it. The frog introduced himself as Fred and invited the children to submit yes/no questions about who was in the box. They excitedly wrote questions. The next day "Fred" had answered their questions, giving them clues. More questions, then answers followed. The students worked to think of good yes/no questions that would give them helpful information. After a week several of the students had solved the mystery of who was in the box. They wrote "Is it a lemur?" and they got the answer, "Yes!"

So we opened the box and met Lee the lemur. Now students will take turns taking Fred and Lee home for a night. Fred and Lee have a backpack that they "ride" in along with a journal for students to record their adventures with Fred and Lee.

Word Wall-Encouraging its active use

We have continued to add 5 frequently used words to our Word Wall each week. Every week each student gets 5 words from the Word Wall to practice in Word Study 5 Ways.

Recently I read a post at the Stenhouse Blog as part of their Quick Tip Tuesday that talked about ways to make the children more familiar with where words are on the Word Wall, so that they are more likely to use it as a resource as they write. It was thus interesting to me when not long after that one of my students, Leo, thought of a new way to practice his words. He said he could use the pointer and find each one on the Word Wall. His idea proved popular with the other students, so now I have added it to the list of Word Study 5 Ways list, calling it "Word Wall Find."