I put this together as my 'back to school' lesson for my Gr 1's. It's nothing mind blowing, but it hits all the bases I try to get with my students: Reading, writing, speaking, listening, creative thought.
I always begin my lessons with a quick "how are you?" free discussion, and this is particularly useful in this lesson because I haven't seen the students in 6 weeks. I tell them alittle bit about my trip to Canada and then I hand out the worksheets. I start with the Summer Cloze activity.
First, we read the list of words (summer vocabularly) in the box at the top of the sheet together as a class. Then I ask the students if there are any words they don't understand. For this sheet, words that needed more explanation were: "berries", "ice cubes", "mosquitoes", "juicy" and sometimes (believe it or not) "fans". There is always other students in the class who do know these words so I will ask the students to help me define the word on the board and I define any word that is shouted out from the list; chances is are if one kid is brave enough to bring it up, there are 10 that don't understand it.
Next, I read the through the article and the listen and fill in the words in the appropriate blank spaces. We then take up the answers together as a class and I often pause to ask short comprehension questions or to explain some confusing phrases like "cool off" and "make tasty treats for".
Then, we turn the page over to see the Diamante Poety sheet. In detail, I repeat the instructions on the sheet and give them lots of examples. The students are to create their own poem about a favorite summer activity or topic. If they're stuck for ideas, I encourage them to use a word from the vocabularly list on the previous page. You may want to change the instructions alittle bit, they have been confusing to the first couple of classes I tried this with, so I'm going to revamp it abit.
The timing has worked out like this (roughly):
Intro: 5 minutes
Cloze Sheet: 25 minutes
Diamante Poem: 20 minutes
I give my students stickers for completed sheets and display the best work in my classroom so they hand their sheets in to me at the end of class.
I got the cloze activity from bogglesworldesl . com (address is at the bottom of the worksheet) and I created the Diamante Poetry sheet from a couple of websites and my own tweeks, so I haven't referenced them. You can adjust the Poem to a higher or lower level by changing the directions. For higher levels you can tell the students to begin and end with opposites and they have to switch their topic in line 4 using a noun associated with both words. For lower level students, use a 5 line diamante with less words.
