Giveaway and 5th Grade Morphology Pack

Are you ready to enter another giveaway??  How about win another prize??

Well, I thought I would spread the word about Reading and Writing Redhead's 200 follower giveaway.

Help her celebrate this fantastic milestone by clicking on the picture above.  This adorable pic will take you to her blog where you can enter for a chance to win! Best of luck to you all. :)

In other news I am really excited about a product I just posted to TPT!!  As you all know this summer I am super into interactive notebooks.  Thus, I just finished making an interactive notebook resource for 5th grade that teaches morphology (prefixes, suffixes and root words) for the  ENTIRE YEAR!!

The pack includes a 5th grade morphology list of prefixes, suffixes and roots  based off of research by Timothy  Rasinski, Nancy Padak, Rick M. Newton and Evangeline Newton.  Hello---these people are reading GODS!   This list was taken (as a free resource) from Teacher Created Materials, which publishes and sponsors work from the researchers listed above.  Click the picture below, which will take you to the website.  They have a free section--where you can find all sorts of goodies for every grade level. :)

In addition to the 3 lists, the pack includes foldables for interactive notebooks, word work wheels, mobile word wall, directions for use, plan of instruction and suggested activities to practice prefixes, suffixes and root words.

Why should you teach students morphology?? Well...... teaching morphology (Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes) is  tremendously important for multiple reasons:

1. Most academic words (math and science) are derived from Latin and Greek .

2. The majority of Multi-Syllabic words contain Latin and Greek prefixes, suffixes and roots.

3. Understanding  Latin and Greek affixes will provide students with a deeper understanding of newly acquired vocabulary.

4. Over 60% of the words students encounter will have recognizable word parts.

Basically I am pretty jacked about it!!  This week, I plan to bust out grades 2-8!!  Whoop...whoop!  I can't wait to use these with my kiddos for next year!!!  

Have a great evening everyone!

Katie

Summer School (Text Structure Edition)

I (and the students) are still plugging away at summer school.  We have two weeks left, including this week, and then I get a small break before **actual** school starts up.  EEK....did I just type the words "actual school"......

Last week I began my blog series (I guess you can call it that) over interactive notebooks, where I showcased our word work section.  This week I am going to feature another component of our interactive notebooks---the text structure page!!

We all know how important informational text is with common core, so this year I planned my summer school instruction around non-fiction text.  To gain a deeper understanding of non-fiction text, the students studied  (and are currently studying) text structure.  The first week we read articles about description, this week we will read sequence and cause and effect; next week will bring compare and contrast and problem solution. 

As an introductory activity to text structure, my students used a foldable from Lovin Lit, which is pictured below.  This foldable is AMAZING...and is  currently on sale for $1.00 on TPT.  Great deal if you ask me!!  We used the text structure posters included in the TPT purchase to review the 5 types, and then cut, sorted and pasted our foldables into our notebooks.  Check out the pics below!

I love that these foldables name the 5 different text structure types, provide a kid-friendly definition AND a text map of each type.  The text map is perhaps my favorite part, because after we finish reading a story the students and I refer back to this foldable and discuss what text type was featured.  When we come to a consensus....we know which map we can use to better understand the text.  LOVE IT!

Again--I wish I could claim this foldable as my own---but Lovin' Lit made it...so click the pictures above to go to her TPT site.  Thanks Lovin' Lit!!

Katie

Summer School (Word Work Edition)

My summer has officially ended.  Sad story...huh?

On Monday of last week, we started summer school.  Although I hate that my summer ends abruptly..I can't beat the money I earn for teaching 15 half days.  Who could complain about teaching Monday through Thursday and working 8am to 12pm.  That is unbeatable!  This summer I will be teaching 5-8th grade reading. In the past I have taught art---which I loved, but I thought I would try something different this year. :)  So far, I am a week and a half in and I am loving it!

Besides getting to see the kiddos and getting a little extra summer cash (cha ching!).....summer school has another perk---you get to try out all of the neat ideas you have pinned on Pinterest, read about in blogs or have been told by fellow teachers. Summer school is like a mini-school year where you can let the creative juices really flow.  The teaching freedom is great--- especially because we (the teachers) are without the pressure of state assessments, progress monitoring, teacher evaluations, or any other stress experienced  during the school year.

One of my dear friends, Shari at Keeping It Fresh in 6th Grade, raved about the interactive notebooks she used in her class last year. She pretty much got me hooked, and I have been dying to try them out ever since she first told me about them!  

It may take a couple of blog posts...but for the next couple of weeks I would like to showcase what our interactive notebooks entail.

The first pages in our interactive notebooks is the "Word Work" section, where students work with the most common prefixes and suffixes.  Prefix and suffix work is heavily stressed with common core--which I am thrilled about!  If students can correctly identify prefixes and suffixes they can easily decode words and discover their meaning--win win!

Pictured below is the foldable we put in our interactive notebooks every Monday. We spend 10 minutes identifying, defining and writing examples of 3 prefixes and 2 suffixes.  Please disregard the misspellings and kid handwriting---this is authentic kid work after all!!

For the rest of the week we spend about 5-10 minutes a day doing various activities around our focus prefixes and suffixes.  We will do word hunts where they search for words containing the prefixes and suffixes in their reading books or magazines; we may complete a worksheet, or even play some some games.  

I love that the kids can constantly refer back to these pages to help them define a word or even decode it.  These interactive notebook pages are a hit!

Do you like the template I used???  I wish I could claim it as my own---but it isn't. Mad props goes to Belinda at I Love 2 Teach for creating this awesome foldable.  If you are interested go get it for FREE on her blog I Love 2 Teach.

Katie