"El dictado" Freebie and a Giveaway!

Happy Saturday morning- gosh was I ready for the weekend! 3 days off = much needed (for me and my kids I think!).

Wanted to start off with a quick freebie-

As part of our spelling/word work each week my kids are exposed to a dictation sentence. I introduce the dictation sentence to them at the beginning of the week and we use it in a variety of ways. First, it is a great way (since my kids are all language learners especially) for them to see words that contain the pattern we are studying in context. It provides them with a way of making sense of them, rather than just seeing them in a list format. Second, I can use it to teach sight words, language structure, punctuation, you name it! Each day, I start my word work lesson with a mini-lesson corresponding to an aspect of the dictation sentence, and then we go on to do an activity related to the focus letter pattern of the week. Then on Friday, instead of being tested over a list of spelling words, I dictate our "dictation sentence" to the students as a quick assessment of what was covered throughout the week. (Note: I alternate the language of word work each week - thus I will do English one week, Spanish the next, and so on.)

We were doing word work in Spanish this week and our focus spelling pattern were the suffixes "-ón/ona, oso/a". For those of you who are unfamiliar with these suffixes in Spanish, when one adds "ón/ona" to the end of a word it changes its meaning to mean "bigger" or "having much of". When one adds "oso/a" it changes a words meaning to mean "full of". Our dictation sentence this week was "El gigante barrigón que vive el la casa espantosa, se toma un tazón de sopa deliciosa." Which translates to- The big bellied giant who lives in a haunted house, has a bowl of delicious soup (eh...doesn't sound quite a nice in English, it actually rhymes in Spanish!). Anyways, one of the activities I have my students do it write their dictation, underline the words that contain our spelling patterns or study, and then illustrate the sentence to demonstrate their understanding. Here are the pictures from some of my students (I think they are hilarious.):

With this dictation throughout the week, I was also able to review the difference between "hard G"/"soft G", with the word "gigante" as well as do a little focus on grammar and conjugating verbs using the word "vive" as our example. There are so many things that you can touch on with just a simple sentence! I love it!

Click here for the freebie in Spanish and English if you are interested.

Ps. This adorable border is compliments of Graphics by the Pond! 

GIVEAWAY!!

Also, just wanted to put in a word about a giveaway that is going on over at Smiling in Second Grade for an adorable 31 tote! It looks like a perfect one to cart back and forth to school, so head on over and check it out (and her adorable blog as well!)! (But be quick, because the giveaway closes tonight at midnight!)

You want it, right?

Happy (relaxing, I hope) Saturday!