Sunday, November 30, 2014

December continue...

We only have three weeks until Christmas break. There is so much I like to do with my kiddos but I always seem to run out of time. Our grade level is doing the Christmas play this year. It's the story about the Gingerbread Man. That takes so much time between practices and the day of performance. We do two shows during the day and one in the evening. Luckily we are doing the play earlier than normal so we have time to relax and do our Christmas unit.
Yesterday I posted my nonfiction close books and said that I would post my writing today. So here we go.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Gingerbread-Man-Cookies-Writing-Informative-Opinion-Narrative-CCSS-1587286
 Here are some examples from the opinion writing for Gingerbread Man. I always do lots of prewriting so the kids understand their writing. I see my own children who are given a writing prompt and told to write 2 paragraphs with absolutely no prewriting and it's awful. But if I sit them down, create a makeshift graphic organizer, their writing is more exciting!
To go along with opinion writing there is also informative writing which includes facts about the Gingerbread Man and narrative writing to create a story about how to catch the crazy cookie.

Next....Christmas!



 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Christmas-Writing-Informative-Opinion-Narrative-CCSS-1587313
 These are samples of the narrative prewriting, final writing and rubric. I have maybe four kiddos who are getting good at using their imagination to give me ideas on our stories, but the rest are mostly following along. So we do all the prewriting together. Then they write the final writing independently. We are working on drawing pictures to match our stories because I am still getting pictures of a house, tree, sun and bird even though the story is about Thanksgiving dinner. It's like they were trained to draw those exact things in kinder and don't know how to move away. The last 2 weeks, I've given them extra time just to draw their pictures so we can draw details. It's a process.  Here's to the Winter break countdown!!





Saturday, November 29, 2014

December begins....

This is going to be a super quick entry. My niece is with me and wants me to read the Berenstain Bears Save Christmas. Priorities people! So here are a few nonfiction books for this month. The first one is a Christmas Around the World book and the other is about how to make gingerbread man cookies.

 











 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Christmas-Around-the-World-Nonfiction-Book-Close-Activity-1564847
 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/How-to-Make-A-Gingerbread-Cookie-Nonfiction-Close-Book-1584928
 Check out these books! Tomorrow I'll add Gingerbread Writing. Don't forget Teachers Pay Teachers sale Dec 1 and 2! Now to go read a story!!

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Thanksgiving

Can you believe Thanksgiving is less than three weeks away?? I haven't even begun to think about what our plans are going to be! I have been focusing on my nonfiction readers to read during our Thanksgiving unit. I want to spend more than the 2 days before Thanksgiving working on it. So I need at least 7 days worth of Thanksgiving work. So check out some of my books


My Now and Then book helps kiddos understand there were some big differences between the children from Pilgrim days compared to them today. They sometimes have a hard time understanding the time differences and I'm hoping this helps.
 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mayflower-Nonfiction-Close-Reading-Book-1537699

This book give the kiddos facts about the ship. Most of the books I read have quick glimpses of the Mayflower but not a lot of details. So now I've created a book to give the details!



 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thanksgiving-Writing-Informative-Opinion-Narrative-CCSS-1537899

And of course we have writing! We cannot forget to work on our opinions, informative and narrative writings. Bring on Thanksgiving!




 


Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Veterans Day

Veterans Day is next week and it is a holiday is dear to my heart. I have my own personal veteran that I think is awesome! He's the best! So it is my mission to share appreciation to veterans to all. One of my goals is to teach those who listen not all veterans are soldiers! This is very important and shows the upmost respect for veterans if you know what kind of veteran they are. So here we go:
U.S. Marine Corps = Marines
U.S. Navy = Seamen
U.S. Army = Soldiers
U.S. Airforce = Airmen
U.S. Coast Guard = Coast Guardsmen
Army National Guard = Soldiers
To honor our veterans I have made a nonfiction book with close activities for my kiddos to read.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Veterans-Day-Nonfiction-CLOSE-Reading-Book-1537105
Check  out my book and remember to thank a veteran for the sacrifice they made to keep our country safe and free!