Contractions-and a give-a-way!!!

So, I had read at some point about having contraction "surgery" with the kids, but I've never really had the time or the "right group" to get me started.  This year I knew I had some parents and relatives that worked in the "surgery" field so I thought I would give it a shot this year.  And I am SO glad that I jumped in!  The kids had a blast and were just incredibly adorable!

First, we reviewed what we had known about contractions.  It had come up in our series a few months ago, but I knew that they did not "master" that skill.  They did know that it was two words that were broken apart to make a new one.  The students were paired up-and there was 2 rounds.  The first round one student was the doctor and the other was the assistant.  The assistant needed to assist the doctor as well as record information about the patient on a worksheet that I created for the event.  Students were give a patient (the word pair) and had to use it in a sentence.  Then the doctor performed the surgery and bandaged the word together with a bandaid.  The the assistant had to record more information about the patient--on how it looked now and had to rewrite the original sentence using the new contraction.

After round one, the kids switched roles so that the other person had a chance to perform the surgery or write.

Here are some pics! 

Of course, this whole lesson inspired me to go back and create some hands-on games for the kids to do.  Ideally it would be done before the surgery, but I will now have my kids to it after the fact, to follow up and make sure they truly understand contractions.  I have 4 games/activities that would be good for 4 days, or for stations or daily 5 work that could span a longer time than that.  One game is a matching game--I am going to use it in my word game basket and have the kids play that when they finish work early.  Another game/activity that I had created was sorting correctly spelled contractions and incorrectly spelled ones.  The recording sheet for this only has kids writing the correct way.  I don't want them practicing writing them the wrong way!  Another activity I have is just putting contractions in ABC order.  We've been practicing ABC order each week with different things.  This will have them work with the words, write the words which will help them remember them more.  The last activity/game I have is a word search.  I have 2 versions-one pre-filled and the other blank for kids to choose words.  They will search books and tally the number of times they find a certain contraction.  After tallying, they will write a sentence with the word they found the most.  A second worksheet can be used where the students create a graph to match their tallies and they will write a sentence using the contraction they found the least!  And of course, I included the template for my contraction surgery where I have the word pairs typed up as well as the worksheet I created to go along with it!

Click here to see the contraction unit

This is my third week of being out there in the world with my classroom and on Teachers Pay Teachers!  In honor of it, be my first followers to the blog, follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers and leave me a note to this post, I will give one lucky person my contraction unit!  Because I am new, I am going to end the contest next Sunday---Superbowl Sunday!