Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Wednesday Word Work: Keeping the Mini in Minilesson


How do you keep word work lessons mini?  What a great question.  In our district, we are required to do 10-15 min. word work daily.  This is not a problem for me however keeping the mini in mini lesson is more difficult.  I always start with the learning target typically in Social Studies or Science. 

We are studying Native Americans and how their environment impacts their living conditions.   I choose 3-5 words, which will support the target, and those words become focus also for word work. I chose the following words: adapt, migrant, migrating, migration, adaptations.  The students are familiar with these words through our lesson in Social Studies.

For word study, we focused on the difference between adapt (verb) and adaptation (noun), migrant (noun), migration (adjective or noun) and migrating (verb) The word observations and word sorts around these five words were powerful.  I started with an inquiry what do you notice about these five words?  Conversations were rich as I eavesdropped on them. 

G. said, “I didn’t know migration could be two different parts of speech.”  
B. asked, “Can you help me?” 
G replied, “Look in our book, see migration routes – that makes it an adjective.”
B. read out of the book,  "The migration from Asia to United States was treacherous."
G.  "Yea that is a noun." 

Mini will always be a challenge for me;however, I've learned and continue to practice on keeping it short and simple. The biggest shift in mini has been connecting the mini to prior learning.  #WWW. 

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