Using your free time wisely

Andrew Edwards

It’s not often that first-graders are given free reign in class to

choose their own activity, but that is just what teacher Jill

Capozzoli’s did.

The Hope View Elementary School students chose from a variety of

activities aimed at improving early writing and vocabulary skills.

First, students branched off into different reading centers. Some

fired up their imaginations to write in journals, while others played

noisy games of word bingo, sprawled on the floor to read, or

practiced vocabulary.

“They get to make their own choice,” Capozzoli said.

Six-year-olds Jack Shearer and Daniel Stephens spent their time

working on their journals. Students are free to write fictional or

true stories about their lives, and draw pictures to accompany the

words.

Other kids were playing word bingo, which substitutes vocabulary

words for the bingo numbers. Students have cards with eight words

arranged on a grid. To win, they have to match every word on their

game piece with the vocabulary words that are drawn at random.

“Whoever gets all of their dots on every card wins,” 7-year-old

Taylor Hickman said. “It’s fun, we like winning.”

Away from the noisy game, 6-year-old Riley Ramey sat on the floor,

silently reading “Charles Tiger,” a story book with poster-sized

pages with pictures showing the tiger’s activities.

“It’s fun because it has a lot of cute things in it,” Riley said.

A more high-tech alternative was chosen by 7-year-old Fernando

Almazan. Sitting at one of the classroom’s computers, Fernando was

playing a vocabulary-building game. When Fernando selected a letter

of the alphabet, a sentence would appear featuring words beginning

with that letter.

“You click on a letter,” he said demonstrating the program.

Selecting the letter “B,” Fernando summoned the sentence “Bees

board buses.”

Others in the class, like 6-year-old Danielle Anderson, spent

their time practicing writing vocabulary words that were posted

around the classroom. Danielle’s list of words included many

calendar-related words, like the names of months and days of the

week.

“We’re just learning to read and learning to write,” she said.