Spanish Phonics

In our bilingual classroom we don't "do" spelling tests.  There has been a lot of studies done that say that Spanish phonics skills are best learned through authentic writing activities, so even though we do a lot of isolated phonics practice throughout the week, we end the week with a final dictado for assessment.

This week the kids are learning about suffixes in Spanish (sufijos).  We have learned about different suffixes before this week, so I consider my kiddos experts (proud teacher mama, anyone?).  After the introduction to -able and -ible the kids did an entry in their interactive word work notebooks.  We always start off with a "title" to explain what the topic is about.  This time I left blanks for the students to show their learning.  

They know p-p-prefijos are at the p-p-principio so that means sufijos must be at the end.  Then we talked about how these suffixes can go at the end of a noun or verb to make a new word (an adjective).

They then put their page together.  They really are so good at following directions with their interactive notebooks.  They cut in the right places and glue in the right places...and believe me, it wasn't always like that, but I love that I can hand out the pieces to their notebooks and they are off and learning!

This time I provided the kids with a list of words to sort on their own.  Sometimes we do it whole group and I orally give them the words and sometimes they work on their own.  When they were done, they had to go back and highlight the sufijos in every word.

At this point of the year I still have kids who are at all different speeds of cutting...Some kids are wham and done and others, I look at the clock, and really?  15 minutes of just cutting?  So I had to come up with an activity for my early finishers.  I pulled out my sufijos center for next week.

A quick note on that.  As a school we had been seeing that these kids rock the phonics skill the week it is being taught, but then the benchmark test five weeks later, they are forgetting the skill.  So I decided to extend the lessons and the phonics center the following week reviews the skill.  That way we have all had a week practicing the skill and an extra week reinforces the skill.  So even though this is a literacy center the students will be doing next week in their small groups, they loved playing it early.

Tuesday is when I reveal the week's dictado.  I want to get more into what our dictados consist of in another post, but all of the markings on our SmartBoard are the students' observations.  So we definitely reinforce our phonics skill by finding the words in our dictado and we practice writing it in different ways throughout the week.

So that is Spanish fonética in a nutshell in our second grade bilingual classroom.  What do you do in your classroom?  I would love to hear some new ideas to use with my kiddos!

Classroom Organization Linky Party

Hey everyone!  I have worked and worked this post and finally on Friday, I have gotten it done...two days late.  My mama just went through some major surgery and I thought I would have some time to work on it at the hospital, but I got a lot more family time instead (which is a good thing).  So my mama is out of the hospital today (and doing amazingly well!) and I am about to press "publish" on this bad boy!  Hope you enjoy!

Today I am doing a double-link up party with Miss Kindergarten and Kristen from Ladybug's Teaching Files...we are talking about classroom organization (one of my favorite subjects!).

Miss Kindergarten's Classroom Organization Tips

Ladybug's Teacher Files Optimum Organization

In my district we use Pearson's Calle de la lectura in our bilingual classrooms (Reading Street, in the monolingual classrooms).  We no longer do spelling tests (we do dictados because research says that dications are the best way bilingual students learn grammar and spelling skills), but we do have a phonics focus each week...that's where my phonics centers come in.

I felt that my students were forgetting the phonics skill the week after we learned it and by the time it was test taking time, they had forgotten all about it.  Or even worse, we would learn all about la h muda and I would continue to see "ay" in their writing...ugh!  So I decided to create these phonics centers.  Some teachers might have the students work on the current phonics skill being taught, but I feel I have gotten the most success by having the center out the following week: kind of like a review, but more of an extension of learning.

Second grade Reading Street has 6 units, 5 phonics skills each unit.  That got overwhelming:  I tried envelopes, I tried plastic bags, nothing was working:  In comes Target with their wonderful dollar spot accordion folders.

This is how I can take all of this:

And organize it to this:

 

So, I'll break it down a little.  Each center has these items (this is where the majority of my die-cut obsession goes...):

Each accordion file holds five of centers:

Then I have them stored in one of my cabinets (and yes, I am missing a couple of files in this picture...must have been before I finished unpacking them all).

There you have it!  The way I organize all of my phonics centers (the smaller envelopes hold my literacy centers). I pretty much do the same for my math, writing, and ELA centers.  I spent much of last year making and organizing all these centers (I had a lot, but a lot of holes I needed to fill), so it is going to be nice having them all organized for use this year.

What organization project do you need to tackle or maybe already tackled this summer?