Monday, January 28th, 2019

Today's lesson in literacy was, of course, a continuation of our study of context clues.  This one involved finding the definition of an unknown word by looking within the body of the text.  Authors of nonfiction will often stick the definition of a challenging word right in the same sentence that the word appears.  If you come across a challenging word in a text, first try to see if the word is defined.  Hint:  look for the words also, or, and this is called.  Sometimes punctuation such as dashes or commas will give you a clue.  

I started out by gathering the students on the carpet and I wrote this sentence on the Smart Board:  "So each year penguins molt – their feathers fall out."  The class was then asked to determine the meaning of the word molt as was used in the text.  This was pretty easy.  Molt means to lose feathers or have them fall out.  I then had them define the word krill in the sentence"  "Krill are like tiny shrimps."  

The exit ticket was to define the word guano as used in this sentence:  "These penguins used to make nests out of their own waste called guano."

Students then were given the task of defining the underlined words in each sentence using context clues.  The reading level was higher than what they are used to but it doesn't mean that they can't at least try. 

​In JA Biztown, students met together in their groups (businesses).  The CEO of each business went through the checklist of what needed to be accomplished and began to delegate tasks to each employee.  Then, they began working on their radio advertisement.