Said is Dead

Upon flipping through old posts, I found that almost exactly a year ago, I blogged about a "said is dead" lesson in my classroom.  I just delivered the lesson again in my classroom this year.  However, revising for better words for "said" is a lesson nearly 100% of the fifth graders need.

This year, I made some tweaks.  I paired this mini-lesson with another mini-lesson on dialogue and quotation marks.  This was a logical pairing that just took me a few years to figure out.

While I suggested this lesson idea at grade level planning, another teacher actually made the plans for it.  I was a little bummed when the plans turned out to be a piece of paper for them to glue into their notebooks.  

So I made my own plan and my kids did really well with it!

We glued the resource into our notebooks, but after we'd make lists together. I gave each team a different emotion or tone (happy, sad, angry, loud) to have them generate lists.  I then showed a few different images, like this one:

to have them create a dialogue between the characters (thus using the dialogue mini-lessons and quotation marks) and to replace said with more descriptive language.  

They did a free write for few minutes, then shared the words they used instead of said, which I recorded on the board.  They then shared their writing with a neighbor.

I like when they get so excited about what we're learning!  Although due to their excitement and chatter, we were a minute or so late getting out the door...oops!

New Product: Teacher Guide for The Slippery Slope

Several of my groups are working on The Series of Unfortunate Events, so I decided to revise some of my teacher guides to post on TpT.  When I revise, not only do I increase the difficulty of questions but also clarify ones that my students struggled with during our small group literature circles.

All of my products are "field tested" with my own fifth graders and they love our small groups.

This teacher guide comes in at 13 pages with vocabulary suggestions, comprehension questions, homework ideas and more!  Snag yours here!

More guides to follow, happy reading!

CUPS

One of the few strategies I picked up during my first year of teaching was CUPS.  This is a strategy for editing and revising in writing.  I have students go through the editing process with looking for capitals, usage/grammar, punctuation and spelling.

I have them re-read their drafts and use the anchor charts we co-create to look for these common errors.

I have them use colored pencils for the editing and revising, which makes the writing process much more exciting!

New product: editing and revising sort

Teacher Confession:

My first year in the classroom, I thought editing and revising were synonyms.

Since then, I've learned the errors of my thinking.  More importantly, I've taught my students the difference as well.

To help, I created this editing vs. revising sort.

Available on TpT now!

Happy writing :)

-Ms. Vice