Teaching Sentence Structure and Tongue Twisters!

As mentioned in my last post, I have been spending some time updated my classroom webpage.  While fiddling around I began reading through our class blog (not this one but the one I do with my students).  I began a class blog about 3 or 4 years ago with my first graders. We started using it as a way to review our day, it was sorta like a "ticket out the door" kinda thing.  There have been some years where we have been very diligent about keeping up with our class blog and other years...not so much.  This past year was not a good class blogging year.  We had so much going on with the adjustment to our new science and social studies essential standards that we barely had time to have a read-aloud during the day, much less blog!  Anyway, while reading back through the blog I found myself smiling in fond memory and actually laughing out loud on a few occasions.  What a great way to record all the awesome things that happen in a classroom.  If you don't already have a student-interactive class blog, I highly recommend it! Along with the fond memories and laughter came a moment of surprise.  There was one particular post that has had over 600 viewings! It was a post with a video of my kids reading the tongue twisters they had written when learning about complete sentences.

Well, now that I know the tongue twister post was apparently helpful to MANY others I thought it would only make sense to share it here. The tongue twister assignment followed a week long focus on complete sentences.  I use this powerpoint to first introduce the five rules to a simple sentences:

We do some other shared writing activities together for a few days and then to end the study the students are taught how to write a tongue twister.  I read this book outloud before the kids begin creating their own tongue twisters:

 

The rule is (of course) that it has to be a complete sentence!  Each student wrote his/her own sentence and then got to type it out during computer lab.  They even got to choose their own font.  When the tongue twisters were printed I then used them to make a cute little display in the hallway, along with a sign challenging all teachers and students throughout the school to read each one three times fast.  I can't tell you how many times I would come out of my room to find someone standing there trying to say a tongue twister...it's hilarious!  So here's the video.  Hope you enjoy and that perhaps you can use it to inspire your kiddos to write their own tongue twisters!