A few lessons were learned after todays grammar lesson!

This week I taught spelling and grammar for the first time. In spelling we are working words with short i, like six, and in grammar we are learning about the naming parts of sentences. Yesterday we went "fishing" for sentences. The students actually got to go fishing, and each fish had picture of people doing different things. The students were supposed to say a sentence about that picture and share with the rest of the class what the naming part of their sentence is. They were having a blast with this and in no time they were spouting off the naming parts of sentences. So, I challenged them a little and had them say a sentence for me to write on the board and they had to underline the naming part of the sentence. This made them have to recognize what the word looked like instead of just saying it.--a little higher level thinking! I was happy with how this lesson went, but the grammar lesson I did today didn't go as smoothly. The lesson was an activity sheet where the students got to choose a naming part to complete the sentence. For example, ________ is my favorite color, ________ is my favorite day of the week, etc. They were to write their favorite color on the line because that is the naming part of the sentence. Most of the class got frustrated because they didn't know how to spell their favorite color or their favorite day of the week and they gave up. One little boy refused to sound out Sunday, when I wouldn't spell it for him and he almost started to cry. I don't think they got anything out of it, because they were too worried about writing the right word. They didn't finish the worksheet because it was lunchtime. I wish I would have planned something a little different because I feel like the fill in the blank grammar activity sheet was a waste of time.