CBUS+Living+and+Non-living

This is the word wall we made for our Living and Non-living unit. Each student talked about their vocabulary word in small group and then illustrated it. For bridging to English I hope to use the same pictures and cards they are familiar with, but just organize them so Spanish words are on the left, picture in the middle and English word is on the right. It seems like there just is never enough wall space in Kindergarten!
 * CBUS: Living and Non-living**
 * In Large Group**

Here are some snapshots of the examples we used and any explanations if warranted coming soon, once we can get the kids to hold still to take a picture :) : Ideas for using TPR: Week 1 - we had the students **do the gestures** and say the words at the same time. We also used these same vocabulary words in our small groups (see photo below). Week 2 - have volunteers or pick students to say the word and **make up a sentence** using this word while the rest of the class does the gesture. A varaition on this would be to have one student say a sentence using a word, and the rest of the class listens carefully and does the action for the word as soon as they hear it. Week 3 - I was really surprised to find my students could readily **define their vocabulary** words with support. Defining something is a pretty high-order skill for a Kindergartner. On the first day I told the students I was a martian and I did not know anything about living things or non-living things on the planet earth (robot voice required). They had to explain to me what one of the vocabulary words meant.
 * TPR** = Total Physical Response. Students show actions for academic vocabulary as they say them

Below you will find some of the sentence frames or key phrases we used to help students use the vocabulary. (Frases claves) Here is a picture sort we used and students talked about using the vocabulary. Above you see the vocabulary we learned about what defines a living thing. The word "no" is written in front of the phrase that we fold back and pull out if the object we are talking about is non-living. Here you see the sort items being used in the key phrases (sentence frames) with the vocabulary we learned. Students place the pictures and word cards in the sentence frames using magnets on an easel and they are able to read it after talking about the vocabulary at different levels. Big words for little Kindergartners!
 * In Small Groups**

In the first week of our unit we really wanted to understand our vocabulary words. During centers time the students made a book where they would draw what the vocabulary word meant to them and had the opportunity to practice writing each vocabulary word in //cuadros.// The last page includes a cover.
 * Independent Learning**

Towards the end of our unit we incorporated some genre study in this unit since students would be using non-fiction texts to write about an animal as a living thing. Below you will find the file of a worksheet students can use while exploring non-fiction books from the classroom library. We filled our "feature" shelf with non-fictions books the students could choose from. After we reviewed the features of non-fiction texts in large group (and also saw examples of how we can use the features to find important information for our animal reports) students were very ready and able to find and check off the text features they found. On the back page there is space for them to write and draw about something in the non-fiction text they chose. I included the vocabulary from our word wall to give them ideas of things they could write, especially if the text in the book was too advanced for them. They could use the photos from the books and the sentence frames they had already learned, or wrote their own sentence. This worksheet could be easily adapted for any unit of study where non-fiction books are being used. The vocabulary portion on the back page would only need to be changed.