This week
I'm so excited to link up with the Secondary Smorgasbord to discuss how I get
my students started at the beginning of each class. This is the most important element of having
a successful class, because it gets students in the right frame of mind-
focused and ready to work.
When
students enter my room, they know that the FIRST thing they should do is grab
their warm-up/grammar notebook and begin the warm-up for the day. This is either already posted on the smart
board, or it may be a series of different types of grammar and sentence editing
that we have already glued into students' notebooks. For example, on Monday, students glued 8 days’
worth or warm-ups into their notebooks (I typed up 8 days of different
sentences they needed to correct, analogies to complete, etc.). There are 4 days on one side of the paper,
and 4 on the back. This makes it SOOOO
easy for both my students and I, because they already have the work and can get
started right away, and I don't have to make copies daily.
Depending
on what part of speech or grammar skill we're working on, I will have my
students work on that specific strategy using my Grammar Skills Task Cards
following the warm-up. This set
addresses the following skills:
- capitalization
- commas
- quotation marks
- types of sentences
- dependent/independent clauses
- types of pronouns
- action, linking, and helping verbs
I also
wanted to make sure I hold my students accountable for completing the warm-up,
so I decided to choose a group leader (or row leader, depending on how your
class is set up) each week to check each group member's warm-up. Each student can get up to 20 points for
completing the warm-up, and then making the necessary corrections once we go
over it together. If they don't correct
the mistakes, they only receive partial credit.
Then, on Fridays, I collect the charts and give them each a classwork
grade. You can access the chart for
FREE here. 
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