I always say my best ideas come to me in the shower; however, they also come randomly in the middle of lessons! :) So let me explain!
Well, one thing I have learned from teaching 5th is to never ASSUME they know something simply because they are 5th graders. Everyone needs a refresher
On to the lesson...
Today, half of my class was taking the IOWA test inside the school (we're in the portable) so I was left with about 16 kids. I wanted to do an INB with them, but with half the class gone, I decided to save that for another day!
As a way to assess which students understood what a compound sentence was and how to create one, I had the kids take one of their books they are reading. I did not care if it was one they were reading for pleasure, lit circles, or whatever. They took that book, and they had to reread to find a compound sentence. Once they found one, they wrote it on their desks with a wipe-off marker. They had to circle the comma and conjunction and underline the 2 sentences. Last, they wrote their numbers on their desks.
Not only was I able to see if my students could justify their answers, I could look on their own desks to see if they found a correct compound sentence. Many of them did write a compound sentence, but some wrote sentences that had "and" but was used to separate 3 things.
This activity just seemed to make it all way more RELEVANT to my students!!!!!!! Hope that you can use this in your classroom too!!!
Till next time! :)
