3rd Week Slacking and Grammar!

Hello everyone!

I knew this would happen, I only posted ONCE last week, and I was on such a roll! Tomorrow I will still do my ISN series, but I wanted to write today about.....GRAMMAR!

In our Language Arts 2 classes we are focusing on Phrases and Clauses at the 7th grade level, and I have been very frustrated with how to approach grammar so students aren't bored out of their minds this year, and I can ensure they are learning.

To do this, I am not using the textbook for awhile, mostly because it is VERY dry and VERY difficult. I found some awesome handouts in our Literature series of all places that introduce the standard, 7.L.1, in a very simple and non-threatening way for students. I gave our pre-test to students last week, and I really think chunking it into the (a) (b) and (c) sub-standards will make it much easier on our students (Thanks, CCSS!).

Here's my plan of action (I can't post the worksheets I made any better because I adapted them from Keith Polette's Teaching Grammar through Writing, and I don't want to violate any copyrights!

Day 1:
Introduce terms and do the sample exercises with students. Move on to something else (word study or creative writing) for the rest of the period so they don't get burned out immediately.

Day 2:
Dig deeper. Focus on Prepositional Phrases. At this point, page 1 and 2 in my packet should be review for students.

Day 3: What I love about Keith Polette is that he has students USE their new knowledge of grammar and apply it in writing. For prepositional phrases, they will be writing a poem, following a formula.

After their first draft and a quick writer's workshop, they will add adjectives to make it more interesting, and then this will be a small assessment for their knowledge of prepositional phrases.

This I created on my own, just so students have a list in their writer's notebook of all sorts of prepositions! You can download it here :)

Day 4: Review of Infinitive Phrases

Day 5: There is a short writing sentences activity, and then another poem. I love that we can incorporate some creative writing into grammar this time around!

What are your thoughts? Does this seem boring, new, different? We will move into sentence types after this, and we will also do some diagramming with my ET students, competition style!

And now to my random updates for the day!

A few updates- Here's what my CCSS posters look like in action. It's really great to have a student read it aloud to the class, and then we put it into "student friendly" language together as a class. Also, it is saving me SO MUCH TIME! CCSS posters for 6th-8th grade are available here.

The Word of the Day is a HIT! I have had to make so many copies of the Word of the Day form I am stunned. I love that students are taking on the challenge, even when it isn't required. It also saves me from constantly answering, "I'm done, what do I do?"

Here are some student decorated ISN's :)

And what their notes look like. It just warms my heart to see all that organization, lol!

This bothers me. Intensely.

And my outfit of the day! I left the house thinking, "ahhh...fall." I came out of work to 95+ degree temps and thought, "how am I this oblivious to the weather?"  Outfit from NY&Company, Shoes: black Tieks (yes, I caved and got another pair!)

I have an exciting giveaway coming up-- more info to come soon :)