A Small Tool For Teachers

There are lots of resources and products for teachers and parents who are home-schooling.  Some are cheap and deliver few rewards.  Some are very expensive and deliver few to many rewards.  Meaning some are worth what you pay for it and others not so much.

Most of the time I believe you get what you pay for, but there is one small, cheap tool or resource that very versatile and worth far more than you pay for it.  It is small enough to put in your pocket, doesn't require batteries or special training, and can be applied for behavioral or academic learning.  What is it?

A deck of cards from the dollar store.  What?  I said, a deck of cards from the dollar store.  Well how do you use it?  Here are some ways I have used the cards:

• For behaviorally challenged students--allow the children to draw a card from the deck every time they are on task, polite, quiet, or whatever the desired behavior.  When the cards in their hand total 200, they will receive a reward such as free time, permission to refuse one assignment, or whatever works for that child.  Now this is not 200 cards.  It is 200 points.  How does he know it is 200?  He has to add the points himself.  (OMG, that means he will be practicing his math skills.)  Yes, and how many times do you think he will add his points?  Most of the students will add every time he draws a card.
• Stop bickering about who is first by allowing students to draw cards.  The highest card is first working down to the lowest.
• Teach math facts by allowing student to draw two cards and then using an application to discover the answer.  What is the difference in this and using a paper with the math facts on it?  Nothing, but don't tell the students.  They think they are playing a game and having fun. 
• Teach writing by allowing students to draw cards then creating a story from the cards.  Say the student draws a queen, a two, a seven, and a three.  You might give the prompt:  The queen was riding along in her carriage pulled by two magnificent horses.  Suddenly three ________ jumped out from behind a tree.  Then seven....

Please add to the list for other educators or parents pulling their hair out attempting to teach.

Parts of Speech Nightmare

I can hear you screaming, "I hate learning the parts of speech."  "Why is this important?"  "I hated diagraming sentences when I was in school."

 

I am one of those weird people who loved diagraming sentences.  I saw it as a puzzle and approached it that way.  When I taught first grade, I drilled on two parts of speech:  Noun and Verb.  Why?  Because to be a complete sentence, it must contain both a noun and a verb.  When teaching small children to recognize complete sentences, it is important that they be able to recognize both parts of speech.

 

A few years later, I moved to teaching fifth grade reading and language arts.  The students who were in my first grade class, were now in my fifth grade class.  I remember the day I asked 'what is a noun?'  I received the most blank stares I've ever seen.  No hints seemed to trigger their memory.  I was frustrated.

 

Out of my frustration, I designed an activity to help them remember the parts of speech.  Every day when they entered the classroom, there were two sentences on the board.  They were required to copy the sentences and perform the task assigned.  When the bell rang, I closed the door and we went over the sentences together.  They were allowed to correct any mistake they had made.  On Friday, I checked notebooks.  They received a grade for simply having all the sentences written down.

 

When we started, they were asked to underline the nouns in each sentence.  After about two weeks, we added verbs to the sentences.  We labeled each noun with a small 'n' over the word and verbs were labeled with a 'v'.  Throughout the year, we continued adding parts of speech, never leaving the previously studied parts.

 

One day as a class was filing out, one girl looked up at me and said, "Thank you for making us find the parts of speech every day.  That's the only way I can remember it."

Not only did this activity teach parts of speech, it also cut down on inappropriate behavior before class started.  The students knew to come in the room, take out their notebook, and copy the two sentences on the board.

For home-schools, it might be a good idea to begin every class with this activity.  Remember to begin with ONLY one part of speech.  I chose nouns because they can be seen.  I made it a point to repeat the definition of the targeted part of speech each day.  Keep it simple- A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing.  *dad, home, dog* A verb is an action word. *run, walk, jump, go* (In the beginning focus on verbs the child can DO.)  An adjective describes a noun. *small book, red dress,  two hotdogs*  An adverb describes a verb. *walk slowly, jump high, think quickly*

Adjectives and adverbs can be confusing.  Remember to look at what the word is describing before deciding.

Pretty girls wear red dresses.  In this case, pretty is describing girls  and red is describing dresses.
 The first boy jumped higher than the second.  In this case, higher is describing jumped.

The child is able to comprehend the concept if it is broken down like this.  The best way to teach parts of speech is:

• don't give too much information at once.
• don't leave the previously learned part when you go to the next one.