I don’t always have time to plan my lessons, so I was happy to have the capacity to do so today.
My WALT (We Are Learning To) statement was Learn the in- and im- prefixes. This was a word attack strategy as understanding how to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words would enhance students’ ability to tackle comprehension passages.
I knew that I wanted to incorporate movement into my lesson so that restless teenagers could walk around the classroom and process the information with their classmates. So, I prepared the following stack of cards:
It was a simple game. Each student was given a card. Two students were appointed the in- captains, whereas another two students were appointed the im- captains. Their job was to find the classmates who had words that could be matched with their particular prefix.
I don’t know how well this game was received, but one student shared at the end of the lesson that he was happy that they got to do something new for English class together. So, I’m sure some of them enjoyed this novel way of learning.
| in- | im- |
|---|---|
| adequate, considerate, visible, expensive, sensitive, credible, active, accurate, experienced, secure | possible, partial, patient, mortal, polite, perfect, probable, mature |
After the game, I sat them down and guided them to spot the spelling pattern that distinguishes the use of in- from the use of im-. Through some persistent effort, they were able to articulate that the im- prefix is used for words that begin with either m or p.
I’m quite thrilled with my lesson today because it wasn’t the usual you-sit-down-and-listen-to-me kind of lesson.