The only time I don't mind throw up...

Lovely, right? I know, it's gross, but what if I told you that the little guy above could help you out in a mini-lesson about the 3 sounds of -ed that your kids would never forget? We keep things classy in Mrs. Becton's class, but I go ahead and let my hair down for this lesson and it's worth it. The kids are crazy engaged!

It has been decided that all teachers on our campus will team teach in the upcoming year and I have been chosen to teach math and science. I'm super excited about teaching those subjects exclusively since I really feel that they are my area of expertise, but I will miss teaching ELAR! That's what prompted this post. This is one of those fun Language Arts lessons that I will miss terribly next year, but I know my partner will rock it out and with any luck, my kids will still get the barfing pumpkin lesson from her! :)

So how does this all work? Well, I'd love to post a picture of the anchor chart we create, but of course, it's locked up in my classroom until August so you'll just have to use your imagination. For preparation, all I do is glue the picture above - nice and big - onto the middle of some chart paper. Once I show the kids, they usually have a nice long laugh/gross out session! When that is out of their systems, I write 3 words on the chart paper:

barfed

vomited

hurled

Again, lots of laughing ensues because they can't believe that Mrs. Becton has dared to write such words! (I'll have to admit that "hurled" isn't one of my favorites...if you can think of a better throw up word with the "d" sound, please let me know!) Once that has died down, we really get into some great discussion about how even though all the words end in -ed, they each have different sounds (barfed (t), vomited (ed), hurled (d)). After that, we have lots of fun listing all the different -ed words we can think of and writing them on our barfing pumpkin anchor chart. It may not be your average lesson, but at the end of each year, I can always say with certainty that my kiddos know the 3 sounds of -ed very well!