Silent Reviews

During the intervention portion of our day, we've been working on math and test review.  I decided to spend ten minutes reviewing idioms and figurative language, since many of my ELL (English Language Learners) students still struggle with these.

I display the question card on the smart board:

I give them think time (very necessary for mental processing of right and wrong answers), then ask for their responses.  Instead of shouting out, they hold up their responder cups!

All of them can respond at once without a word.  Plus it's a great formative assessment because they don't really have time to change their answers.  I then have them defend their answers to a neighbor, thus working in the justification piece where they must provide evidence.

It's a great, fun way to review concepts where they all participate without shouting.

New TpT products: figurative language and multiplication

In school, we've been working on figurative language during the intervention portion of the day.

To help my students, I created the following centers:

This one is a sort for similes and metaphors.  Students work together to separate phrases into similes or metaphors.  There are 26 examples and students can check their work with the included answer key!

This one is idioms concentration where students have to match the common idiom with its figurative meaning.  AT 33 pages, it's quite a steal!

This final one is a 33 page math center where students must match the multiplication problem with the strategy they'd use to solve that problem.  The focus is not on the product but rather the strategies to get the answer.  Some problems can be solved mentally, some with landmark or friendly numbers, some with estimation and some with traditional algorithm, lattice or box methods. The problems lend themselves to some great discourse and discussions with students.

I hope your students enjoy as much as mine do!

-Ms. Vice

Don't Take Me Literally

During our intervention portion of the day, our grade level has been working on figurative language and idioms (CCSS RL 5.4 and L 5.5).  

We made a foldable, went over the different types, found examples within text, analyzed examples and finally came to the fun part: showing off our work!

As a formative assessment, we had students work in pairs to analyze a common idiom.  They wrote the literal meaning of the phrase, the figurative meaning and drew pictures for each.

I modeled with "it's raining cats and dogs" and then they had an hour to create a rough draft, edit and make a final draft with their partner.

Here is our bulletin board:

Don't take me literally!