An idea basket

My fourth graders are practicing creating full sentences using a simple formula... a noun, an adjective, a verb, then another noun. To help keep the creative juices flowing, I use an idea basket full of pictures of vocabulary words they know. I call up a student to pick a noun out of the basket, we put it on the board, and the fun begins!! I have found kids struggle to pull vocabulary items 'out of the air'- with the idea basket your class runs more efficiently and all kids participate. What's really great too is that you often get rather silly sentences, which increases the motivation factor. Sample a few of our recent sentences:

La lima sincera come una banana.
Un taco atlético agarra al gato.
Un gato amable ve una casa.

Qué divertido!

A clever mistake

Today in one of my first grade classes we were reviewing the names of some farm animals that we had learnt in kindergarten. We came to 'sheep' and in the picture I was showing was also a lamb. One of my students said, "Well, that must be lambo, which would be a boy, and if it was a girl it would be lamba." I asked him to explain his statement, whereupon he said 'O's are for boys and 'a's are for girls....my students have lots of experience with gender endings, starting with 'niño' and 'niña' in kindergarten. Though the o's and a's won't forever suffice (wait for mapa and mano and problema and so on!) the concept is well accepted with my students and as in this case, is well understood, even if the words he made up are incorrect. So smart!