Mr. Carlson's Awesome Website

Mr. Carlson's Awesome Language Arts Program

The subject of Language Arts consists of grammar, writing, oral language, vocabulary, mechanics, reading, and the like. If you notice your student not maintaining a 2 or a 3 in Standard's based grading, please encourage them to pay greater attention, put in the required effort, and turn in their work at their best efforts.

We prove It!

One of the reasons behind the students getting Camarillo Public Library cards this year is so students can use those cards to access the Library's many Online resources. Click here and use your library card to access.

Benchmark Universe is our Language Arts Provider.

Lucy Calkins is our writing provider.

Trimester 1: Our first narrative writing endeavor is in the realistic fiction genre. We are developing our small moments and writing daily 1-pagers. These will be drafted, typed, saved on each student's Google Apps for Education accounts.

Non-fiction writing is next in line.

Then, ...

Vocabulary Exercises Supported by Educational and Memory Research

1. Introduce a word and determine a definition or description with your students. Using their own language to describe what a word means will help students remember the appropriate definition.
2. Have students draw a picture of the word or what the word represents. Analyze, for example, means to break something into its component parts. I have seen students' drawings that depict a figure breaking a stick over its knees, block towers tumbling down, and unpacked Russian nesting dolls.
3. Ask students to find synonyms and antonyms for each word on a list. Synonyms are often used as definitions, so the process of finding and discussing these terms is crucial. Give each student a nametag that includes either the critical word or its synonym. Let students figure out which words are related and form synonym circles. The circles can line up together or work in groups that day.
4. To store words more easily in automatic memory, let students compose jingles or songs for words and definitions.
5. Have students create semantic maps or mind maps for some words.
6. Vocabulary gloves: have students write the vocabulary word on the back of cheap canvas gloves. On the front, have them write a sentence on the palm, synonyms on the thumb, pointer, and middle finger, an antonym on the ring finger, and the definition on the pinky. Gloves can be used for independent or paired practice.
7. Have students act out word meanings to activate their procedural memory.
8. You and your students can create review games to reinforce the words. For example, here are some guidelines for Vocabulary Bingo:
  1. - Hand out Bingo cards with definitions in the squares.
    - Students ask each other if they know what word fits one of the definitions and to sign the square if they know.
    - Once all squares have signatures, draw student names from a container; all students with that signature cover the square.
    - Students yell "Bingo!" when they have five in a row. The five students whose names are covered on the card must know the correct word.
9. Create vocabulary word pages in a notebook. When the word appears in different contexts or content areas, students can return to that page and add new information. This will help them use the words more easily in writing and speaking.
10. Model the use of the words in your classroom. The more often that students hear them, the more automatic their use of those words will become.
11. Be aware of eye accessing cues.1 When a student is struggling with a test question, he or she will often be looking down, which accesses emotions -- perhaps the emotion of feeling "dumb." To access information, such as definitions or visual memories of words, eyes must be looking up. When you observe this, stand over the student and ask a question that forces him or her to look up, possibly triggering the information.

During the school year, have students practice critical words in several different ways that will help store them in different parts of the brain. Later, this will help learners retrieve the words and definitions when the right context emerges. Research2 has clearly established that students will achieve higher scores on standardized tests if they know the vocabulary of the standards.

How do you identify and teach vocabulary? Please share your experiences and suggestions in the comments section below.

Notes

1Payne, R. (2009). A framework for understanding poverty. Highlands, TX: Aha Process.

2Tileston, D. Closing the RTI gap. Indianapolis: Solution Tree.

Vocabulary:

The Critical Words Your 4th Grade Students Must Know for the Common Core State Standards!

Critical Verbs

*Any student may redo any assignment marked below 70% (C-) at any time. This policy may change at any time and becomes less flexible around the end of the reporting periods. Redo-marked work can take up to ten school days to show up as revised on my electronic grade book.

WHY ROOM B-2 IS DIFFERENT:

There are many opportunities for success in this 4th grade class. First, I give up my recess and lunch recess to offer a makeup period for students. I allow them to redo, makeup, or finish any assignment that they need-with assistance. I also allow students to redo any assignment that they did not pass-as many times as they need to be successful-also with assistance. Lastly, I also offer a daily review period of concepts. Yes, that's right; I actually spend between 30-minutes and 1-hour reviewing materials from the previous day's lessons. If this is not enough for your student to be successful, in this class, then please e-mail me so that we can discuss this further (dcarlson@pvsdcamarillo.org).

GRADING KEY + CATEGORY PERCENTAGES

A = Assignment/Participation/Discussion 40%

TST = Test 50%

HWK = Homework 10%

*Remember, it is YOUR STUDENT'S responsibility to DO THEIR BEST IN SCHOOL AND TURN IN THEIR WORK.

Regards,

Mr. C-

Here is a collection of humorous grammar rules that will make you giggle.

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.

2. Never use a preposition to end a sentence with. Winston Churchill, corrected on this error once, responded to the young man who corrected him by saying "Young man, that is the kind of impudence up with which I will not put!

3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

5. Avoid cliches like the plague.

6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.

7. Be more or less specific.

8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.

9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies endlessly over and over again.

10. No sentence fragments.

11. Contractions aren't always necessary and shouldn't be used to excess so don't.

12. Foreign words and phrases are not always apropos.

13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous and can be excessive.

14. All generalizations are bad.

15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

16. Don't use no double negatives.

17. Avoid excessive use of ampersands & abbrevs., etc.

18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake (Unless they are as good as gold).

20. The passive voice is to be ignored.

21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words, however, should be enclosed in commas.

22. Never use a big word when substituting a diminutive one would suffice.

23. Don't overuse exclamation points!!!

24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.

26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed and use it correctly with words' that show possession.

27. Don't use too many quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations.. Tell me what you know."

28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a billion times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly. Besides, hyperbole is always overdone, anyway.

29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.

30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

32. Who needs rhetorical questions? However, what if there were no rhetorical questions?

33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

34. Avoid "buzz-words"; such integrated transitional scenarios complicate simplistic matters.

35. People don't spell "a lot" correctly alot of the time.

36. Each person should use their possessive pronouns correctly.

37. All grammar and spelling rules have exceptions (with a few exceptions)....Morgan's Law.

38. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

39. The dash - a sometimes useful punctuation mark - can often be overused - even though it's a helpful tool some of the time.

40. Proofread carefully to make sure you don't repeat repeat any words.

50. In writing, it's important to remember that dangling sentences.

How to write a speech

Sample Speech

Analyze

Articulate

Cite

Compare

Comprehend

Contrast

Delineate

Demonstrate

Describe

Determine

Develop

Distinguish

Draw

Evaluate

Explain

Identify

Infer

Integrate

Interpret

Locate

Organize

Paraphrase

Refer

Retell

Suggest

Support

Summarize

Synthesize

Trace

Critical Nouns

Alliteration

Analogy

Argument

Central Idea

Conclusions

Connections

Connotative Language

Details

Evidence

Figurative Language Illustrations

Interaction

Metaphor

Mood

Point of view

Rhetoric

Simile

Stanza

Structures

Theme

Tone

Questions/Comments, or to report broken links: dcarlson@pleasantvalleysd.org