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.
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.