Ms. Moreau's Literacy Blog

     In this lesson, we taught students about government, citizenship, and how Hawai‘i became the 50th state. We started with an icebreaker and vocabulary charades to get students engaged and thinking about key terms.                                                            Next, students analyzed a Library of Congress image using “I See, I Think, I Wonder” on their whiteboards. This helped them observe details, think about what was happening, and ask questions about government in the past.                                                            We then reviewed the three branches of government using an anchor chart. Students used this knowledge in a picture sort activit...

         In this lesson, we taught students about Hawaiʻi’s history using a mix of reading, visuals, and interactive activities. We incorporated evidence-based strategies by explicitly teaching key vocabulary from the books, timeline, and activities. We made sure to go over important words before, during, and after reading to help students better understand the content. We also used visuals like photographs, timelines, and images of petroglyphs and artifacts to support their understanding. We used scaffolding throughout the lesson, including sentence starters, graphic organize  Hawaiʻi by Alakaʻi Swamp so students could connect to real perspectives and experiences. Students were able to engage with the content through reading, discussion, and hands-on activities. Collaboration was built in through partner and group work, communication through discussions and sharing, and we showed adaptability by adjusting the lesson based on time and student needs. ...

               During this lesson, we incorporated evidence-based strategies by explicitly teaching vocabulary from the books we read. Key words were highlighted before, during, and after reading in order to build understanding and support comprehension.                                                                      We used visuals, picture cues, and simple explanations to help students make meaning of new concepts along with a slideshow of the lesson. Students were also given opportunities to practice using the vocabulary through discussion and activities. Sentence starters were provided when needed to support students with speaking and writing. We also selected books that included pictures and visual keys so that all learners could follow along and make mean...

     Since this was our last lesson, we decided to spend extra time on our icebreaker to help our students feel relaxed and not stressed.       We started with a thankfulness worksheet where they had to write something they were thankful for from A–Z. After that, we went over our class norms and schedule like we normally do. I went through our anchor chart about paragraph shrinking and then my partner explained the vocabulary words.       One of our students went to the restroom, and since we didn’t want to start reading the paragraph without him, we began working on a crossword puzzle instead. By the time he got back, there were only about five minutes before they had to leave for their assembly, so we continued the crossword puzzle until they returned.      When they came back from assembly, we restarted our paragraph shrinking activity. We reviewed the anchor chart again and then used my computer to display the pa...

  We started the lesson with a butterfly-themed ice breaker, since our book mentioned butterflies, we had the students color a butterfly picture of themselves and write affirmations in the butterfly wings. i These were things she could say to help her “butter butterflies” go away when she feels nervous. We spent about ten minutes on this before moving into the main lesson. We reviewed the class agenda and classroom rules like we always do. I explained what sentence expansion was, and because we only had one student, the explanation went quickly. After reviewing our anchor chart, we had her read the vocabulary words about butterflies. She told us she had learned a lot about butterflies in second grade, so she already had strong background knowledge. Next, we read our story about a girl who wanted to build a butterfly garden and wrote to her town council to persuade them. After reading, we worked on a sentence expansion activity. Since her partner was not there, my partner and I al...

       During our lesson, we started with an icebreaker activity where the students made their own quilt. In the quilt, they drew pictures of themselves, their families, favorite things, favorite activities, and favorite foods. The students took longer than expected to finish their drawings, so we could not cut them out during the icebreaker. Instead, we cut them out later during our brain break and taped them together to create a quilt that represented our whole teaching group.      After the icebreaker, we went through our class agenda and explained the Frayer Model strategy. The students had used a similar template before, but they did not recognize the name.  My partner introduced the vocabulary words from the story and used the word wonder as an example in our Frayer Model. The students helped create a definition, characteristics, examples, and non-examples for the word.        Next, my partner read the story aloud. The...