Anne and I have so much to post that we could not fit it all in on our last entry. So, I'm up early on Sunday morning just itching to share some of our scarecrow ideas.
Before Thanksgiving break my literacy group read the poem Scarecrow by an unknown author. The first read was to get the gist of the meaning of the poem and ask some questions. (Questioning has been our reading strategy focus.) The second read was focused on finding strong verbs in the poem and their synonyms. (Strong verbs has been our grammar focus). I wanted to introduce connotative and denotative word meanings.
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| Poem link! |
saw/observed/watched
surprised/astonished
flow/wave/dangle/shove/shake
I wanted to focus on the last set of verbs, and I did accept wave even though it is used as a noun in this poem. We discussed how it could be used as a verb.
After identifying the synonyms, I showed a PowToons video explaining connotative and denotative word meanings. The kids were super excited to be learning something new about words. All of our students love noticing amazing words and using them. Now, they know they can be more specific with their word choices.
I wanted the students to practice thinking about the connotative meanings of words and arrange them in order from most positive to most negative or from the strongest meaning to a more subtle meaning of the word.
We began by arranging pictures. These pictures were created by TheBookWrangler.
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| I chose a few groups of pic, glued them to construction paper, and the kids arranged them! So fun. |
Next week, the students will look up the meanings of the last 5 verbs listed above and try to put them in order from the strongest (negative) meaning to the most subtle (positive) meaning. Then, they will work with a partner to organize a different set of words. Eventually, the groups will combine their word lists with the words going from strongest to weakest and synonyms to antonyms on "Word Thermometers."
The second poem, titled The Scarecrow Goat was Nuzzled in His Tattered Coat by an unknown author will be used to identify amazing words. After looking up some of the meanings, the kids will make vocabulary scarecrows to display. We also have discussion questions the students will use to gain a deeper understanding of the poem. Anne's literacy group is going to use a different poem titled Scarecrow by Kristin Riley.
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| Here is a link for this poem. |
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| Here are more discussion questions. |
If you have not checked out the website Ideas by Jivey you must! She has a wealth of literacy knowledge and her website and TpT store is a treasure trove of resources. We are going to use her mentor text unit The Scarecrow by Beth Ferry to focus on compound sentences and combining sentences to make our writing stronger.
This is a beautiful story of an unlikely friendship between a baby crow and the scarecrow. The plot moves along through all four seasons as we get to know the scarecrow and his feelings about the crow. The ending is heartwarming and a few tears may flow as you read it to your students.
I have not planned this yet, but I'm thinking this poem might be good to use to do a compare/contrast activity with the book. If not, then some other poem we are reading could be used for a comparison activity.
We will wrap up with the Christmas Scarecrow poem. This is the poem we will dive deep into inferring the author's meaning and figurative language (personification).
This site might be cute for making scarecrows, but I love Red Tag Art! Look there for incredible crafts to accompany your literacy lessons.
Next up...spiders. In December? Yep!
Kim and Anne
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