Living History Dat

When I was teaching first grade, I mentioned to the students that I enjoyed listening to the stories my grandparents told about growing up.  The students looked at me like I was crazy.   I asked, "Don't your grandparents tell you about when they were growing up?"  They all shook their heads.  I was appalled.  These children were growing up believing their grandparents' childhood was the same as their own.  That was unacceptable to me.  Our history is important and every child should know what happened.  NOT memorize dates.  They should be able to tell you what life was like during a specific time period.

I decided that I had to rectify this situation.  Now how do you teach first grade students about history?  I decided to bring in 'grandparents' and let them tell their own stories.  This took a lot of preparation, but it was worth it.  Every first grade teacher asked four senior citizens to visit their class on 'Living History Day'.  We sat each 'grandparent' in a corner with four or five first graders around them.  Some of the 'grandparents' brought pictures of themselves as a child and their report card.  We rotated the children about every 15 minutes or so.  This allowed them to hear from four 'grandparents'.  The teachers of other grade levels--many of them with children in first grade--brought lunch for our guests.  After lunch we returned to the classroom for a few more minutes of questions.  By 1:00 the 'grandparents' went home and we continued our day.  The next day we asked the students to write a thank you note to the 'grandparents'.  Now first graders don't write very well, but I had each student read their note to me and I translated it at the bottom of the page.  Notes went out similar to this:

       Thank you for coming to my skool.  I'm sory you din't have lectrisity.

      Thank you for coming to my school.  I'm sorry you didn't have electricity. 

I'm not sure who enjoyed the day more, the students or the 'grandparents'.  Either way it was extremely successful.  

Next week I'll tell you how I taught it in fifth grade.

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.