Student Teacher: Christina Sollazzo

Synonym Fries!

Student Teacher: Christina Sollazzo Cooperating Teacher: Anna Forte

Subject: Language Arts Level: Cycle 2, Grade 3 Date: Feb 23, 2015

ELA COMPETENCIES Competency 1: To read and listen to literary, popular, and information-based texts. Students will listen to a simple version of the “Little Red Riding” story and a more complete version after they have added synonyms to the story.

Competency 4: To use language to communicate and learn. Students will read the word they get assigned together, and search for synonyms for that word. They will discuss and decide on (with a partner) different synonyms for a particular word.

CROSS-CURRICULAR COMPETENCIES Communicates effectively

PROFESSIONAL COMPTENCY To plan, organize and supervise a class in such a way as to promote students’ learning and social development

Teaching Sequence

PLANNING OBJECTIVES The overall objective of this lesson is for students to learn about synonyms and how important it is to use them when writing. For example, students will realize that a story that uses plain and everyday words will not be as fun to read as opposed to a story that uses more fun and descriptive words.

Materials: - Little Red Riding Hood story - Smart-Board and a laptop - McDonald's fries boxes - Yellow construction paper cut out into strips (fries) - Black markers - Pencils - Index cards - Thesauruses

DEVELOPMENT - Sit altogether in the reading corner with all ten students and read the Little Red Riding Hood story to them. - Engage students in a discussion afterwards about what they thought about the story. For example, did they think the story was interesting or boring? - Guide students to the conclusion that the story could have used better synonyms for certain words in the story to make it more fun to read. - Instruct students that they will be doing an activity today that will require them to use the dictionary or word bank to look for synonyms for some of the words in the story. - The teacher will pair up the students and give each pair a word from the story that they will need to find 3 synonyms for. - Students will look up synonyms in the dictionaries or word bank and write down their 3 words on an index card that the teacher will give each pair. - Students will check their words with the teachers after writing them down. - Teachers will then give each pair of students a McDonald's fries box labelled with their words on it, and fries to write their synonyms on in black marker. - If some students finish earlier, give them a new word and have them use an online dictionary for more synonyms or have them choose a word that they know has multiple synonyms. Extra words: Mad, sad, excited, amusing, expensive, tall, short, see, quiet, smart, nice

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES - Wait until all students are ready, and quiet before beginning lesson - Set class expectations (raise your hand if you want to speak) - Be clear and concise and follow through expectations (I will stop the lesson and wait if anyone interrupts and calls out) - Repeat instructions several times - Positive reinforcement (I like the way ….. is quiet and listening) - Assign students together (Christina, Mary-ann) (Bea, Helen) (Erika, Stanley) (Eishaan, Destiny) (Nate, Jerimiah)

EVALUATION Teacher observation: Students will be assessed on their behaviour and participation during the read-aloud portion of the lesson, as well as the post-discussion. They will then be assessed on how effective they worked in their pairs.

EXTENSIONS/CONCLUSION Note: because of time constraints this lesson can be divided into three classes. The conclusion to the lesson will be done during a 30-minute period. I will go over the story with the students and have them fill in the blanks with the new synonyms they found. We will read the story all together as a class. I also included animations in the final story for students to follow along. An extension is for students to write a creative story or paragraph using synonyms.

Synonym word bank

small immense petite terrible freely horrible appalling gigantic scoff exclaimed wonderfully merrily

mean gladly awful cute evil devour

horrific dreadful converse attractive chat sweet (Make a conversation) big young chit chat replied beautiful blissfully

enormous shocked believed blissfully frightened great

petrified joyfully terrified large cheerfully munch

speak nibble discuss responded chomp huge

Extension activities

If I had a million dollars, I would……. ______

The best thing about a pet is….

______The worst thing about a pet is______