2nd Annual Pirate Week

Last year I started my theme weeks with Pirate Week for National Speak Like a Pirate Day.  Well, that day is today and my kids had so much fun with this week last year that I had to bring it back.  I added a few extra games and activities to change things up and also a few more books.  Please refer to my previous post for the majority of my plans.

Eye Patch!!:
My kids LOVE Headbands and I do too because there are so many things you can work on with that one game: categories, descriptive features, inferencing, articulation, voice, fluency, etc. My current intern had the idea to attach artic cards to an eye patch and make it more pirate related. (Can I also just take a minute and say how thankful I am for my graduate school alma mater, University of Texas at Dallas, for supplying me with the BEST interns!!! I mean, they are really spectacular.  I have been SO BLESSED with the wonderful ladies whom I have had the pleasure to work with these past few years!!! Sorry, that just needed to be said.)  For my artic kids, I used SuperDuper artic cards for the sounds they are working on.  I used the same cards for all of my other kids, it just didn't matter what sounds I used.  After three days of this game being used at all different levels I can tell you it is a success!!!  Good thinking Morgan!!!

Pirate Pictures:
A bunch of my kids with AU are working on determining a person's/character's feelings/motives/intent through nonverbals so I thought I would print off some pirate pictures for them to look at and discuss.  We focused on three main things for each picture:
1. What the characters are looking at
2. What the characters might be thinking
3. How the characters are feeling
When I was looking for good pirate pictures to use online, I discovered that most of the pictures are not quite appropriate for my kids.  I was feeling kind of low about this fact, and then the clouds parted, and the sun shined down on The Pirates! Band of Misfits.  I have never seen this movie, however what I do know about it is that it is a stop motion film where the characters have great facial expressions and big eyes so you can follow their eye gaze.  I found 20 different pictures online, pasted them into a pirate boarder, and voila! my pirate pictures were born.  I do not know the copy write info on taking pictures from movies so I'm not going to post them to my TPT store, but I will post them here.  So, for anyone who asks, these pictures all came from The Pirates! Band of Misfits which is a movie by Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation, and Aardman Animation.  Hopefully that is enough credit ;)

Get your Pirate Pictures here!!!

Pirate Talk:
My artic kids have been working SO hard over the past year on learning how to say all of their sounds so a bunch of them are now at the conversational level. Last year we played a game created by Jenna Rayburn from Speech Room News called Capture the Jolly Roger to work on conversation. I wanted to add another level to the game by creating some questions/conversation starters to elicit even more connected speech from them. You can use the cards alone or in conjunction with the game Jenna created (see previous post). They are also my first product on my TPT store!!! Don't worry, they are still free, I'm just moving everything over there instead of Google docs from now on.

Get your Pirate Talk cards here!!!

Books:
The last additions to my Pirate Week activities are some new books: Pirate Soup by Erica Farber and J.R. Sansevere and Edward and the Pirates by David McPhail.  Both books are relatively short so you can do other activities with them.  I make picture cues for Pirate Soup to work with my younger kids on sequencing and retell and am using the Story Grammar Marker to retell Edward and the Pirates. 

I hope you can use any or all of these activites.  Don't forget to look back at my previous post for more!!!



Mad Hatter Week

In honor of October 6th, National Mad Hatter Day, we did a Mad Hatter Week in my speech classroom.  I sent an email out to all of the teachers at my school asking for hats, and the outpouring of hats has been amazing.  I was super excited to see all of my kids in their fun and funky hats (and my sweet intern decided to participate as well)!!!

Here are all of the activities that we did throughout the week:

Articulation/Voice/Fluency:

I created a Alice in Wonderland War game (like Speech Room New's Angry Birds War) to play with any sort of questions I choose. You can use it when drilling articulation words, working on using voice/fluency strategies when speaking in connected speech, and with random language goals like synonyms/antonyms or categories. 

Get your Alice in Wonderland War here!!

For all of my iPad users, I found an Alice in Wonderland Memory app (Minivelle's Alice in Wonderland Match Game by John Jumper) that looks super cute as a reinforcer for my drill kids.  It is FREE, which I love and there are multiple levels for the memory masters.

Get Minivelle's Alice in Wonderland Match Game here!!

Language/Social Skills:

Prepositions:
Use the Cheshire Cat Preposition cards to play Go Fish (all go fish rules apply) by asking for where the cat or his smile is in relation to the things around it.  If the other person does not have the card, they can say, "The cat disappeared" and the person asking for the card can draw a card.  This works well because they have to know the correct preposition to ask for a card as well as to provide a card.

Get your Cheshire Cat Prepositions here!!

Following Directions:
Have each kid grab a hat from your amazing hat box that the teachers have contributed to and use the hats to follow directions.  There are one step, two step, and three step directions (most using the hats and some sort of preposition) the kids need to follow.  If they draw a Mad Hatter stole your hats card, you take all of their cards away.  The person with the most cards at the end of the game wins!

Get your Following Directions cards here!!

Tea Party Video and Book:
YouTube has the entire Tea Party scene from the 1951 Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.  I used it in two ways:
1) To focus to social skills including expected behaviors, reading facial expressions to determine characters feelings and intentions, and social rules.  I watched the movie in advance so that I knew where to stop and ask questions. 

My school's internet servers are a little weird with YouTube (sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't).  There are several sites on line that tell you how to download videos from YouTube so you can keep the video in a file instead of praying that YouTube will work for that session.  This is the website I went to to learn: Downloading YouTube Videos

Get your Video Questions here!!

2) To introduce the "A Mad Tea-Party" chapter from the book because the story does not have a lot of pictures.  It would be a good way to front load the story so the kids have a way to visualize what is going on while I am reading it.

I bought the book from Amazon for $2.99 and we used my iPad to read it on my Kindle app.  We just read the Mad Hatter Tea Party chapter (after watching the video clip) and used that chapter to work on figurative language, making inferences and using context clues to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words.  Of course, you can always story map the chapter and retell it to end the activity.

Get your Book Questions here!!

Speech Tea Party:
For my children who are working on social skills, we had an actual speech tea party after we watched the Alice in Wonderland Tea Party video.  We worked on conversational skills in a party scenario including how to initiate, maintain, and switch topic; volume control; when you can eat the food (after everyone has been served); asking for seconds; talking about how you ask for something different if you don't like what was served; etc.  I sent home permission slips before having the tea party to make sure the parents gave permission for the kids to eat and to double check if any of the kids have allergies to any food.

 

Alice in Wonderland iPad Story:
For my younger language kids, I used a FREE app on my iPad called, Alice in Wonderland - An Interactive Children's Story Book.  It told the entire story of Alice in Wonderland as a video.  We then sequenced the video using Boardmaker symbols and retold the story.  I also used the Boardmaker symbols to ask comprehension questions about the story.

Get your Boardmaker symbols here!!

Types of Sentences:

A few of my fourth graders have types of sentences goals, so I thought using the iPad story of Alice in Wonderland to work on types of sentences would be an easy and fun way to target that skill.  The kids watched the story using the "auto play" feature of the app, then I started it again using the "read it myself" feature so they could see the sentences.  We discussed the 4 types of sentences and what punctuation they use, then went through the story and labeled the types of sentences used based on type of punctuation or what they were asking/declaring. 

Categorizing and Comparing/Contrasting Hats:
Have your kids put the hats into different categories.  They need to tell you why the hats fit into each categories based on  the parameters they have set themselves.  Then give them a different amount of categories they need to create have ask them to redefine their parameters.  My kids love doing activities like this because it asks them to think outside the box for connections.  The categories of the hats in the pictures above were: straw hats, hard hats, soft hats, character hats, silly/fancy hats.  After the kids created their own categories, I gave them types of categories (occupations, everyday wear, dress up, etc.) and they had to put hats into those categories.

Another activity you can do with the hats when they are in categories is comparing and contrasting.  Have your students pick two hats from the same category to compare and contrast.  Tell them that the category the hats fit into can be how they are alike, and then they need to discuss what makes them different.  

I had so many Mad Hatter activities, it ended up taking two weeks to get through them all.  My kids loved picking new hats to wear each day and using them in different ways.  I hope you have as much fun as we did.

The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base

I have saved my favorite Graeme Base book for last!!  The Eleventh Hour is the book that started it all.  I read it with my mom when I was younger and spent days trying to find all of the clues to determine who stole the feast.  When I started working in the schools, one of the first books I created a unit for was The Eleventh Hour.  Some of the activities I use for this book came from The Magic of Stories: Literature-Based Language Intervention by Carol J. Strong and Kelly Hoggan North.  You can buy it on Amazon here.

Some activities to do with this book:

1) SMART Board Lesson: I created a SMART Board lesson for The Eleventh Hour complete with pages to use to discover who the feast's thief is.  I tried to make it as easy as possible for the kids, so some of the pages have "hint", which is normally the cypher for the code they will find somewhere on the page that will give them a clue as to who is or is not the thief.  If you have SMART capabilities, this is the easiest way to do the lesson.  If not, I broke up what is in the SMART lesson below.

Get your SMART lesson here!!

2) Story Map and Retell: This is a great book to story map and retell.  It has several distinct events: Getting ready for the party, revealing the feast, the party and it's games, the feast's disappearance, and Horace's solution.  This would also be a great time to review transition words. (If you need copies of the story map or transition words I use, please see my posts on Uno's Garden and The Worst Band in the Universe.)

3) Vocabulary: As I have said before, Graeme Base uses tons of tier 2 vocabulary words in his stories so vocabulary is always something you can work on when reading his books.  Here is a short activity using context clues.

Get your Vocabulary activity here!!

4) Figurative Language: Graeme Base uses figurative language throughout his books to paint the picture in an interesting way.  Take a walk through the book with your kids to find it.  Here are a few examples:

"No sooner had they entered then a rumor filled the air."
"And one by one the guests were drawn within to feast their eyes."
"The elephant was shaky: it appeared he'd lost his nerve."
"But every mind was on the feast."

5) Inference: There are some great questions  provided in The Magic of Stories I use to work on inference:
    1) Why did Horace pick the eleventh hour for the time of the feast?
    2) Why wasn't there a winner in the game of Musical Chairs? 
    3) How did the pig cheat while playing cards?
    4) Why did Horace miss his chance to make his speech?
    5) How did Horace save the day?
    6) Why was the birthday cake safe?

Another great way to work on inference is to try to figure out who the thief actually is.  There are clues in each picture (sometimes around the boarder, some in the letters on Horace's refrigerator or in the banners in the dinning room, or they may be using a cypher like hieroglyphics, cards, or Morse Code).  Use these clues to prove the party guest's innocence or guilt.  (FYI, this takes a long time to complete so I normally let them spend one day trying to get as far as they can and then I periodically let them complete one page over then following speech sessions until they figure it out so that we are not spending an exorbitant amount of time on this.) I made a chart of the characters and a detective's log for my kids to keep their information in for my SMART Board lesson.  Here is a paper version if you don't have SMART technology.

Get your Detective's Log here!!

6) Recipe: While perusing Pinterest I found a recipe for Cake Batter Puppy Chow.  It looks AMAZING and so easy to make.  I am "borrowing" that recipe to use with this lesson because The Eleventh Hour is about a birthday party and what better to serve at a birthday party than cake!!!  Thank you Becky at So Very Blessed for this recipe.

Get your Recipe and Permission Slip here!!

Animalia by Graeme Base

Animalia is Graeme Base's response to an ABC book (except it is definitely not written for a preschooler).  I don't remember if I have already said this or not, but Graeme Base is an amazing wordsmith.  He uses the English language like no one I have ever seen.  Just take a look at the "V" page.  His vocabulary is vast and voluptuous. ;)

 Some activities to do with this book:

1) Word Wall: Have your students pick out words they do not understand and create a word wall with them.  Give each kid a letter and have them create definitions (either by using context clues or looking them up in the dictionary) for the words they found by filling out a definition sheet.  Add them to your word wall. 

Get your Definition Sheet here!

2) Alliteration: Every page is full of alliteration based on what letter it is talking about.  Teach what alliteration is (the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words or phrases).  Use the alphabet to play an alliteration game using the phrase, "I took my friend to (place) with a (noun) and (verb)."  For example, "I took my friend to Seattle with a snail and sweated."

3) App: Graeme Base created an Animalia app with several fun activities you can play with your iPhone or iPad.  It is $3.99 and has four different activities to choose from.  I took screen shots from the app store you you could see them. 

Get your App here!

4) Recipe: As I said before, I believe the "V" page has the best string of vocabulary words in the book.  In honor of that page, I thought a play on a bird's nest would be a fun cooking activity for the kids.  I call them vulture's nests.  If you are doing this book around Easter, you can find some great candy shaped like eggs to put in the nests.  

Get your Recipe and Permission Slip here!

The Water Hole by Graeme Base

The Water Hole is probably the shortest of all of Graeme Base's books (or at least the shortest of all of the books that I own), but there are a TON of things to do with it.  It is similar to Uno's Garden in terms of counting up from 1 to 10 animals and talking about over use of resources, so you can pair them if you want or spread them out and put several books in-between them. 

Some activities to do with this book:

1) Questions: Because the book is short, there are not a ton of questions but here is what I have:
                    1.  What happened to the water? Why do you think that?
                    2.  Why do we all need water?
                    3.  When the water hold is getting smaller, how do you think the animals are feeling?
                    4.  Of all the animals in the book, which one is your favorite and why?

2) Alphabet Animals: Write the alphabet and find an animal that is depicted in the book that matches each letter.  Once you have done that, you can either draw the animals with your lower/younger kids and make them into a book or chart, or define the animals with cloze sentences.  Here is the sentence I usually use:

3) Animal Classification: Sort and classify animals into categories such as reptiles, birds, cats, insects, etc.  I have a bunch of magazine pictures on file that I will pull out to do random sorts with to work or classification and categorizing.  Old National Geographics are great to get nature and animal pictures from.  I just throw them on the floor and have the kids create the guidelines for the sort.  They have to work together to come up with the categories based on what pictures they have.  They could sort by type of animal, location of animal, carnivore/herbivore/omnivore, let their imaginations run.  To make it harder, you can reduce the number of categories they are aloud to sort into and have them start over using new parameters. 

4) Animal Conversations: On each page Graeme Base has the animals talking to each other.  This could be an activity for introducing speech balloons.  Ask each child to draw and write their own interpretation of what the animals are saying to one another.

5) Onamonapias: Speaking of animal conversations, you could talk about how the words look like the sounds they are making.  Have your kids come up with other onamonapias we use in everyday life.

6) Animals of the World: There are several things you can do with just animals in general.  One might be to find the countries or regions depicted in the book on a map, and match a least three animals to each region.  Another could be to pretend some of these animals are your pets and imagine what they might need to be a happy pet.  You could choose animals from each region that are not the main animals in the pictures and come up with adjectives to describe them.  (It might be fun to use alliteration here.)

7) Vocabulary: Although the words in this book are not difficult, you could bring in science vocabulary words to work in some curriculum.  Some words could be: habitat, environment, resource, precious, cycle, seasons, jungle, woodlands, deserts, mountains, and forests.  You could even look up where those types of habitats are located in the world or just in the US.

8) Frog Floats: There is a frog jumping through the "o" in the title, so I thought frog floats might be applicable to this book.  They are really easy:

Put one scoop of lime sherbert into a cup
Pour some Sprite into the cup
Add some mini marshmallows with mini M&Ms for eyes
ENJOY!!!

Get your Permission Slip here!

The Worst Band in the Universe by Graeme Base

While doing this author unit I was introduced to several new Graeme Base books.  This one is a favorite!  How could aliens, music, and gak go wrong? 

Some activities to do with this book:

**SMART Technology:  Our district provides air slates with SMART technology and it is periodically fun to do the lessons on that.  The kids love using the air slate to maneuver the words and write.  This is one such time so if you have those capabilities, here is the entire lesson for you ready to go!

Get your SMART Technology lesson here!

For those of you who don't have SMART technology, here is a list of activities for you...

1) Predicting and Drawing Inferences:  This book has some incredible language (both real and completely made up) so you will have to constantly go back and check for understanding while reading it.  It normally takes about three thirty minute sessions to get through the book, but that is OK because you are doing so much while you read.  Every couple of stanzas you should go back and ask what is happening.  Your kids will have to use their skills of drawing inferences to understand what is going on.  There are also some great parts of the books that are good for making predictions.

**If you have older kids this book has some great historical tie ins.  The underground music venue in Sector 9 could be compared to a Speak Easy from Prohibition and the Musical Inquisitor with his "wanting to create a pure musical world" and his ProdMen could be compared to Hitler and his Nazis.

2) Story Mapping:  With Uno's Garden, we sequenced the story by page and retold it using transition words.  Now we are using a story map.  Before completing the map, it is important to teach what each part of the map is.  There are tons of maps out there but here is one I created when I was first starting out if you want another one for your arsenal.  You can then use your completed map with the transition words from Uno's Garden to retell the story.

Get your Story Map here!

3)  Vocabulary:  Like I said before, great language in this book.  I picked out a ton of words to go over and wrote them in the sentence they came from so you can teach understanding vocabulary words based on context clues.  This activity could be done while you are reading because they are separated by page, but I just waited and went through all of the words at once using the air slate.  When I got to each new page, we talked about what was happening in the story so we were doing more retelling as we went.

Get your Vocabulary Matching activity here!

4)  Comparing and Contrasting:  You can compare and contrast Blipp and Squaag as well as Sprocc and Skat or Sprocc and the Musical Inquisitor.  Use the "during words" to create sentences like with Uno's garden but this time try it without the visuals.

5)  Gak:  Like I said earlier, I love to do cooking activities at the end of each book to work on following directions.  This time we made gak!!  It is made with glue and Borax so, of course, it is not to be eaten, but the kids loved it.  They especially loved mixing the solution with their hands.  An added bonus was getting to take it home.  My 6th graders even went back to class and explained how to make it to their science teacher.

Get your Recipe here!