Word Study

In the beginning of the week, students would practice

writing their word study words and using them in
sentences. Towards the end of the week I would play a
game with them in which one student would have post-it
on their forehead with a word study word from that week
written on it. The student with the post-it could not see
the word but the rest of the class could. Everyone else was
tasked with doing a 3 second act out of the word. This
meant that students had to think about how they would
show the definition of that word. The person with the
post-it would then have to guess the word.
Reading
In a lesson on character motivation, pairs of students
would have act out a skit by responding to prompts given
to them by the narrator (the teacher). The rest of the class
would then have to identify the actions in the story and
the motivation behind the characters actions.
Accountable Talk
In order to think through what makes for successful
accountable talk conversations, students were tasked with
acting out what they think would be successful partner
talk versus unsuccessful partner talk. As a class, we then
discussed what contributed to the successful
conversations and made a list of promises we made to
ourselves and our partners to ensure that were having
successful partner conversations.