BACK TO THE FUTURE: A Grammar Lesson

I had been sharing Thursday with the kiddos how 2014 had sounded so futuristic to many of us and here it was! Many of them had seen the Back to the Future movies props to their parents! and I stated that the "future" in the movies was NEXT YEAR 2015! It is always funny how we all picture the "future" in our heads. My mom shared that her teacher in elementary school had had them write about what they thought the millennium 2000 would be like and she remembers including flying cars and jet packs. '99 did bring us the internet, however, many of us are still waiting on the flying cars!

I was ready to dive into verb tenses after break, but Thursday's discussion gave me a lesson idea for teaching verbs - at least future tense verbs. And thus was born "Back to the Future Verbs!" A grammar lesson.

For morning work, I had them draw a picture of what they thought life would be like in the year 2050. 

During writing class, we discussed three simple future verb forms. We also glued our lesson insert into our Thoughtful Logs and did some power teaching to help us remember them which included running around the room in a line shouting "I WILL run, I am GOING TO run, I am RUNNING TONIGHT"

As we went into independent reading and small group time, I encouraged them to identify at least one sentence using a future verb form from their books. Many of them did and we looked at them during our share time. After that, I explained that they would need to USE the different future verb forms during a creative writing where they answered future questions about themselves in the year 2050. I plan on putting this sheet, along with their future picture in their All About Me books that I bind at the end of the year and give them at graduation. It will be a fun thing to look back at 20 years or so from now :0)

For our lesson reflection, I had them write one sentence for each future verb form.

My professional learning goal this year is to encourage more student reflection both for their own learning and for me to utilize in pulling for small groups and to help adapt/re-teach lessons. I have been trying to find a way that I could document these in a tangible way so I could keep track of student reflections and see the whole class's data without hanging onto every little scrap of paper. I decided to create a google spreadsheet document and am using a "Blooms type" rubric to assess reflections.