Thursday, November 15, 2012

Context clues and a giveaway!

My third graders have been working on context clues, and I wanted to share a few books and resources that I've found and enjoyed. Both of the books have words in a foreign language, but they give enough clues for the students to decode the words.



I bought this book when I first started teaching. My first job was in a summer school, and one of my students  knew very little English. I searched for any book that looked interesting and had both Spanish and English for me to work with her. This is such a cute story! It's the Spanish version of The Little Red Hen, so the students can make a lot of connections. When I used this book, I stumbled across this little resource from Go Fourth! with Mrs. Owens. The book had an example of all these clues, so it was perfect!


Today, I went back into one of the classes to review, so I needed another good resource. I got on my trusty TpT and searched "context clues" for freebies, and I found this little store with only 6 items, but I really liked this resource. 

This chart is intended to be used with Jon Scieszka's Baloney (Henry P.) to practice using context clues

Sorry I couldn't get a better picture, but this is from my pinning since I don't think Erin has a blog to link a picture to. By the way, I'm her only follower, so be sure to give her some love when you download this resource!

Anyway, what you may not be able to see is that these are a list of words from the book Baloney (Henry P.) by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (love them). 



The book is about a little alien who is once again late for school, and he tells his teacher this outrageous lie to try to convince her not to put him in permanent detention! He uses all kinds of words from real foreign languages (and some made-up words as well) in his story. The worksheet I linked to above lists all of these words with a place for students to put the clue, what they believe the word means, and then to check if they were right or wrong at the end of the story. The kids LOVED it!

The best thing about both of these resources is that they are absolutely FREE! I don't know about you, but money is tight at my house, and I need all the freebies I can get.

I also wanted to share a giveaway that I found this morning. Gina has 3 opportunities to win, and there are some great prizes!


In other news, I'm ALMOST there myself! As of now, I'm sitting at 93 followers, so I want to start planning my own giveaway. If you would be interested in helping out, please let me know!

5 comments:

  1. My students always need help with context clues. Thank you! Congrats on making it almost to 100 followers!

    The REAL Teachers of Orange County


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  2. I just found your blog and am your new follower.

    I love all the books you highlight in your posts. I have never seen many of them and am anxious to check them out.

    Hope you will stop by sometime. :)

    Cindy
    Granny Goes to School

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  3. Hey Melissa! I'm at 94 followers too! How funny. I would totally love to be involved in a 100 follower give-a-way with you, just let me know. Also, I was wondering about behavior tracking with class dojo. Do you have your kids mark down how they did each day or just some children? I'd love to learn more about it. Let me know!

    Dixie
    Teachin Little Texans

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  4. I really liked Baloney! A coworker of mine brought it in one day, and I was really confused (and not into it) the first time. Then I got to the end, and everything made sense, and I ending up loving it. Super cute. :)

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