Most of the time when I actually execute one of my ideas I end up thinking, "This was a much better idea in my head." This time things actually went as planned and the kids and I had a great time. I was trying to come up with a new way to practice basic pronoun usage, as well as something that would double as a student-work display for our door decorating project. I was thinking about how pronouns come in sets of three: subject, object and possessive (OK, I know that they are technically adjectives in their possessive form, but seriously---his? hers? They really should be called pronouns.); and as the snow was coming down it dawned on me that snowmen have three parts. My next thought was: "Why can't we make snow people to represent the various pronoun groups?" Since this didn't come anywhere near being the craziest thought that's ever crossed my teaching brain I decided to try it. The kids and I worked on pronouns for about a week--talking about them, identifying them, replacing nouns with them, replacing them with nouns, and even identifying their antecedents. Then I told them they were going to do a pronoun project and, when they whined, used my best anti-whining teacher line: "Oh, ok, if you don't want to do the art project that's fine, we can take a paper and pencil test instead."--gets them every time! I explained that they would be assigned a specific pronoun group (he-him-his, they-them-their, etc) and their task was to create a snow person that represented their pronoun groups. We talked about how the pronoun I represents themselves, so the snow person should look like the student; about how they is more than one person, so there would need to be more than one snow person, none of which looked like the student; even about how it is not a person, so it would need to be a snow dog or some other thing. The kids went to work and I was quite pleased with their final projects (scroll down for a look at a few of them). Some of them got very creative, and our door is now the talk of the school. If you're interested in giving this project a try, there are couple of links to the right to help you (just click on the pictures), and they are both free downloads! Let me know how your projects turn out! |
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AuthorI've been teaching since 2000 and love what I do! Archives
May 2018
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