Sunday, November 27, 2011

Quick Catch Up!

The holidays have arrived!! I just wanted to catch up on a couple classroom happenings before the holiday blogging fun begins!

Is You Tube blocked in your district? I'm so thankful that we are not blocked from it, because it has some awesome little treasures! One little treasure is THIS VIDEO that uses pop music to teach similes and metaphors. A teacher named Mrs. Prego created this for her English class, and shared it with the world on You Tube! Mrs. Prego, whoever you are, THANK YOU!! We made T-charts and labeled the sides "simile" and "metaphor"..The video takes particular lyrics of songs and puts them on screen for kids to read, along with. She also includes the title and artist. I had my kids determine whether each lyric was a simile or metaphor and then write the lyric on their T-chart. They were SO engaged!!

After I played it one of my students blurted out "MRS. ORR, IS 'HIGHWAY TO HELL' A METAPHOR?!" Haha!

Needless to say, we have been finding all kinds of similes and metaphors in our music ever since! :)

We did this as a review of parts of speech...Easy but a great review!



I LOVE holidays, because you can take practically anything, even material that is dry, and if you make it festive then the kids are suddenly interested in the activity! Just looked at parts of speech that would describe our Thanksgiving Day with our family!

And, can I just say how grateful I am to be at a school where we can celebrate and discuss holidays!?! SO excited about the Christmas season!

3 comments:

  1. I like the idea of a T-chart, I am so going to do that!

    I am also so glad that I work in a district where we can talk about the holidays without being worried about what others might say!

    Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher

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  2. Thanks for sharing the video - I can't wait to use it when we study figurative language!!!

    Jen
    Runde's Room

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  3. Thanks for sharing the video....can't wait to use it! I have two students this year who do not celebrate holidays, and it's been much harder than I thought not using the holidays in my teaching. I am really missing some of my favorite lessons and activities. I'm trying to move to a winter theme, but it's just not the same. Looking forward to using all these wonderful ideas I've been finding next year!

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