Freebie Mental Images, Read the Room and More!

I've been a bad blogger. Sorry friends, you'll have to put these goodies away for next year. I have my 3rd cold so I am not going to beat myself up about it. I am feeling beat up enough already.  :-(

Here's what I have been up to:
 I used this center with my 2nd graders. It practices changing nouns ending in y to plurals. Read the room is always a hit!

Click on the picture to see it in my store.

I found this Halloween poem to use for a mental images lesson with my 1st graders.

 I read the poem twice and then asked them to draw a picture of their visualization. Afterward, each student had a chance to show their picture under the document camera. This led to a great discussion of missed details. For example, one girl made the hat purple instead of black. Check out some of these cute bald witches!

You can grab this freebie by clicking {HERE.}

I used the Skeleton Hiccups and the q-tip art project I usually do with my 1st graders with my 2nd graders instead but I had them write their response in cursive! 

Aren't they doing awesome for only 9 days of cursive instruction?!

The 1st graders read Spookley the Square Pumpkin and LOVED getting to make their own and write about it using descriptive words. This class was into making Spookley babies! LOL.

Okay, I've just finished a WHOLE box of Kleenex so I am calling it a day! I hope my body gets used to the germs at this new school soon!

The boy is back

My 8th grade son is back from his DC trip! It was hard having my baby fly across the country and be away for 6 days. Luckily the government was back to work in time for all his tours!

 We finished up our bat unit using my Bat Informative Reading and Writing packet. The students loved it! I focused more on nonfiction text features this year. After teaching the features, I let the class go through our nonfiction books armed with sticky notes looking for text features to label. You would think I was giving away candy, they were so excited for their chance to use the sticky notes

craft by Cupcake

We read Where's My Mummy and wrote about what our "mummy" does when we are scared.

We read Spookley the Square Pumpkin and then made our own original pumpkins.

My second graders made a jack-o-lantern and wrote a narrative about it.

I love having a bulletin board by the door. The kids often stop and read each other's work which I think is pretty adorable.  It is such a small school they know the kids in the other grade and seem to enjoy sharing a board.

I started teaching the 2nd graders cursive this week. I guess my school used to have first graders learn cursive. Can you believe that? The Spalding program we use has different cursive so I can't use any of the fonts I have. I miss the curls and tilt to be honest. Spalding looks so boring though I can see that it is probably easier for the kids.  I made my own font but it is tricky getting the letters to link nicely. Anyone ever make a cursive font and have any tips for this? I broke down and wrote lessons by hand. I feel like I am back in the dark ages. LOL.  Here is a screen shot of the font I made. My handwriting is usually better but I have to slow down and be so careful to make it the "Spalding" way.

I do really like the Spalding phonograms though. It is what I was doing but MUCH more in depth.  I'll post more about that another time. My bed is calling me.

Bats and a FREEBIE

This week we started studying nonfiction using my Bats Informative Reading and Writing packet.
You can read all about the packet in more detail in this previous post.

We have been reading many bat books and determining if they are fiction or nonfiction. As we learn new facts about bats we add them to our circle maps.

I have been teaching about nonfiction text features as we come across them. I added them to our frame of reference in pink. They picked up diagrams easily but glossary is a tough one for firsties!

I had the students circle three facts they thought were interesting on their personal circle map.  Then I modeled how to fill in the flow map planning sheet using a power number topic sentence.

We did one fact at a time, starting with a transition word. I had the students share out the fact they chose  from their map and start it orally with the transition word. They did really great!

A few smarties really wanted to write more so I told they they could if the sentences were related. One girl wrote:

Bats are helpful to humans. They eat insects that hurt crops and spread seeds so more plants grow.

WOW!

Next week we will write our final drafts and make our bat craft. I'll try to take more pics of those!

The first graders are also working on ABC order so I made a Halloween cut and paste. I posted it for FREE, all I ask is you leave me a comment here and/or feedback on TpT.

Clipart from KPM Doodles

I have to give a shout out to Kerri over at Teacher Bits and Bobs for the great Johnny Appleseed drawing tutorial! I wanted to do something different with my 2nd graders and this was perfect! Since I have such tiny bulletin boards I did cut the sizes down so it fit on 9x12 construction paper.

The 2nd graders get to go to a pumpkin patch this week so that should be fun!

Quotation Marks, Narratives, and FREEBIES!!

It appears I can only manage posting once a week these days. I guess one long post is better than nothing!

I taught my second graders how to use quotation marks this week. I saw an idea on Pinterest from My Mommy Reads to use the Mo Willems Pigeon books and knew it would be a big hit.

First, I read Pigeon Wants a Puppy and I explained that the author used speech bubbles but that in most books we wouldn't have room to have a speech bubble every time a character talked. Instead, quotation marks take the place of the speech bubble.

I wrote one of the quotes from the book showing how the speech bubble would look using quotation marks. I had labels printed that I added to the anchor chart to point out the features they needed to remember. You can download those labels by clicking on the picture.

Then, I let students pick a different quote from the book they wanted we to write up on the anchor chart. We brainstormed different dialogue tags we could use as well. I had students take turns coming up to the chart to add the quotation marks, comma, and ending mark.

Last, I showed them how to draw their own Pigeon using the directions from Mo Willems himself. Click on the picture to download.

Of course, one Mo Willems book is never enough so we also read The Pigeon Wants a Cookie. You'll notice some of my students drew the ducking with no directions! I wanted the pigeon pics to be cut out so I could neatly arrange them around the anchor chart but some of the kids really, really, really, wanted to do a background or thought it looked just perfect in the middle of the chart, etc. UGH!  I forced my OCD side into submission and decided this wasn't that important so I'd let them have it their way since often it has to be my way! ;-) I cringe whenever I look at it but they LOVE it and draw pigeon pics in any spare moment they get.

I made a quick review for the Smartboard that I will use next week. It is a reminder of the rules followed by more Pigeon quotation sentences to correct. Click on the picture to download.

Both my first and second graders have been working on narratives. I explained that there are two types of narratives: personal or fictional. I then broke fiction down for them into realistic or fantasy. I made tree maps for the Smartboard and we sorted sample plots. Totally nothing fancy (I am new to this technology) but it worked. My students have difficulty moving items with their fingers. Anyone have any Smartboard tips for me? Click on the picture to download.

It is pretty easy to find picture book examples of fiction but personal narrative it tougher. Luckily I am a huge Patricia Polacco fan and know that most of her stories are true from her childhood so we read Some Birthday!

During Writer's Workshop, I let the students choose if they wanted to write a personal or fictional narrative. After they shared their writing, we discussed whether we thought it was a personal or fictional narrative. I also always have the audience share one positive comment about the author's writing.

This last girl sweetly wrote about her mom being so sick her grandma had to come over to help. In just a few weeks she has gone from saying she can't read or write anything without help to working so hard and completing an entire story all by herself!

Alright friends, I'd better start on my Weekend To-Do List. Hope you found something you can use.

Narrative Elements FREEBIE

This week we worked on Narrative Elements. I explained that a narrative was just a fancy word for story and then we went through each element using these anchor pictures.

 I don't use problem/ solution anymore because I found that although many stories have one, not all do and the students were at a loss as to what to write. I did make sure to use those terms as we were identifying the beginning, middle, and end though.  I also like that this way of writing the plot supports the skill of summarizing more effectively.

Again, I used the back white board as my teaching area.We read a few stories and practiced identifying the narrative elements together.

 

We also identified the Author's Purpose referring to last week's board. I finally got a better picture.  

Then I asked the students to try using the same story map to plan their own narrative. I explained that a narrative can be fictional or personal and I let them decide which type they wanted to write.

You can download the anchor pieces and the story elements sheet {here} for FREE.

I also introduced the writing process this week using my posters.

   I had them brainstorm to decide if they felt like writing a personal or fictional narrative.

We discussed how we would be using a story map to plan this week.

As they were ready the students moved on to the draft stage.

Next week we will move on to read, edit, revise, etc. These posters are available {here} with a variety of different options.

We went on a fun field trip this week that I will have to post about later because I am off to a hair appointment. How often do you get your hair cut? My split ends have been driving me nuts so I am thinking I may need to visit a  little more often...