Character Feelings and Writing Prompts!

One of the hardest things for kids to get a good grasp on is vocabulary! I don't mean knowing the exact definition of things; but simply knowing what words mean so they can use them appropriately. We (my team of 3rd grade teachers) reeeeallly realized this last year when we had a question on an assessment that asked, "What does the word alarmed mean in paragraph 4?" What answer did most children put?--"The loud sound that is used to wake a person up." Well...as you can well imagine, that was not the correct answer. The sentence said something about a boy being alarmed when he saw the animals. Yikes. But as kids, they simply go to their prior knowledge on something...the word "alarm" was familiar to them, so they ran with what the knew.

What is my point? We have to EXPAND their knowledge and immerse the children in all types of vocabulary--feeling words are a MUST! Children simply know sad, mad, glad, happy, grumpy...etc. (Words they have heard before--Seven Dwarf words come up a lot in my kids vocabulary--wonder why? :) Anyway, I jumped on this band wagon WAY too late last year...so this year, Day 1 (or at least Week 1) My students will receive this Character Word Feeling Chart. (Download it for Free from my TpT store!)

We will go over these words ALL the time. The students will keep them in their Reader's Notebooks. I think I will have the students read them, look them up, use them when speaking, write them in sentences, illustrate them, spell them, ETC! (Excessive? Maybe. :) But my kids will know these feeling words! AND, when we find new feeling words...they can add them on the back!

I discovered another great find on Pinterest last night! Writing Prompts!

These are so cute! I plan on using them in my stations and maybe as morning work on occasion! I put them all in a notebook and used the "Writing Prompts" page as my coversheet! So handy! Also, if the team likes, then I can just pull a two each week to have run off for the entire grade level! Love, love love! I think my kids will love too--these are fun prompts!