Reading Response Booklets

Does anyone ask their kids to respond to their reading? Does anyone think it's a PAIN keeping up with all those loose papers? ME!! My kids have such a hard time keeping up with their reading response pages this year. I could almost label it a disaster! They are losing pages, not doing what they should, not completing the assignment, etc.

If you look at my last post, I showed you these word work centers we have been using. I have LOVED having the word work booklets to go with the centers because it keeps all their work in one place. SOOOO I took that idea and made reading response booklets! I just debuted them in my classroom last week, and they have definitely been a hit so far!

I have been really happy with the change! My kids fill out one response each day after their independent reading. I made 20 different responses so it will take up around 4 weeks. (I say 'around' since we all know some days just never go as we plan!)

If you are interested in this for your classroom, you can click on the pictures which will take you directly to my store! Thanks! 

Arctic Study

Have you ever had just one of those days? Today was one for me. From beginning to end, it was just one of THOSE DAYS! However, I'm now sitting on my couch by myself with a fire in the fireplace (that my sweet husband built for me before he left for work), watching reruns of Duck Dynasty on the t.v. LOVE LOVE LOVE this show! I can't get enough.

Anyways, I wanted to give you an update on our arctic animals/nonfiction study. Everything is blending beautifully. We are getting a lot of discussion for life science while throwing in some nonfiction text features. Here is what it looks like:

I've been starting the lesson by doing a quick intro of the animal we are talking about. I will give them some facts, figure out what they think about the animal, etc. Today we talked about killer whales, so I showed a short 5 minute video from Discovery Education showing how the killer whale hunts for a seal. This led into a lot of discussion! Then we head over to National Geographic Kids and read about the animal. We have been filling out worksheets from my Arctic Animals packet. Here is what yesterday looked like when we talked about Walruses.

They take a short quiz over what we talked about (must get those grades!), and then we move into nonfiction text features. I made a booklet from the Snow Business packet I told you about by Amanda Nickerson (I have a link to this in a post below).  We talk about the feature, add it to an anchor chart, look at some examples, and then I have the students write the definition of the feature in their booklet.

Here is the poster from Amanda's unit (sorry for the glare from the laminate). 

This is the booklet they have. We discuss as a class what we want the definition to be after I show them several examples. 

I made a quick bulletin board for our study. It's not my best work, but it will do! 

NOW it's time to actually create the nonfiction feature. I'm a big fan of having students DO what I want them to learn. I have been using pages from Deanna Jump's arctic animals packet. I picked through the pages and made a walrus booklet that will cover a few of the features.

On the first day, we talked about table of contents, so my students made a table of contents for their booklet. It was pretty basic, and we left a few lines blank so we could add to it if we needed to.

Today we talked about captions, so they added pictures with captions to the book (all of these pages are included in Deanna's packet). I will have to take more pictures tomorrow to show you how awesome the booklets are turning out! I highly recommend this packet from Deanna (you can also find the link in a post below).

So that's pretty much it! They are really having fun with the unit, and I'm confident these concepts are sticking!  I hope this helps anyone who is struggling with nonfiction and how to get started:)

January Plans

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I rang in the new year with my husband...on the couch...watching a movie...with our kids in bed. BUT I loved it, and with all the craziness of Christmas, we were grateful for some down time at home. Today our plans consist of shopping for cleaning supplies and bins for storage...sounds super fun, right? 

However, teaching is never far away from my thoughts, and I have been steadily working on an arctic animals unit for my kiddos when we get back! We are going to dive into nonfiction using arctic animals (with a few fiction snowman items thrown in between). I'm SUPER EXCITED about it because I think my kids will really love it. I'm going to divide them into animal groups to study. So they will no longer be "group 1, group 2" when we return, but "walruses, killer whales, etc." They will study their animal in the computer lab, library, books I read, etc, and record what they find on the worksheets I made. I'll be using the National Geographic Kids website, and lots and lots of books! 

In the unit, I included quizzes for each animal after reading about them on National Geographic Kids website. We have to get those grades in!! There is a booklet to create, graphic organizers, sorting activities, and a worksheet to show the difference between the Arctic and Antarctica. You can click on the picture and it will take you to my store! 

I'm also going to be using Amanda Nickerson's Snow Business for nonfiction. She has some GREAT posters and activities in here.

 I'm also going to use Deanna Jump's Arctic Animals unit! This focuses more on walruses and polar bears. It's made for kindergarten, but I know I can adapt a lot the pages. I saw lots of great things in here that my kids are going to go crazy for! 

OH and to celebrate the New Year, everything in my store (including my new unit) is on sale 20% through midnight!

Christmas Packet

Just dropping in to let you know I finished my Christmas Math and Literacy packet! Most activities are geared to second grade, but you could use them for first or third! I included grammar activities, book activities, and math practice with place value and coins. This WILL be on sale for the Cyber Monday & Tuesday TpT sale! Click on the pictures below to link to my store.

I specifically used 4 books and created quizzes and activities for each one. The books I used are:

"If You Take a Mouse to the Movies"
"Snowmen at Christmas"
"When Santa Lost His Ho, Ho, Ho"
"Merry Un-Christmas"

Here are some of the pages printed off on my table:

We are getting into the Christmas spirit at my house today! The decorations are coming out, and the tree is going up! :) I LOVE LOVE LOVE this time of year, and I hope you all enjoy your day!

Folktales, Fairy Tales, Fables

After we finished with Author's Purpose a few weeks ago, I realized my kiddos needed practice with the differences between fiction and nonfiction. They kept getting the terms confused, and it was making our reading time pretty difficult. I spent an entire week working on fiction/nonfiction, and now we are working on specific forms of fiction. 

I decided to make a little book with my kids to help them keep these three genres together. I LOVED how it turned out, and it is nice to have everything in one place! So here is what the week looked like:

Monday I introduced fables, and we read The Tortoise and the Hare. I called them to the carpet, and we talked about all the features we would find in a fable. After I read the story, the kids took a short quiz over the book, and filled out this page:

Tuesday, we talked about features of a fairy tale (magic, royalty, "once upon a time," good/bad characters, etc.), and we read Jack and the Beanstalk. (I actually found a really great website that read the book online.) We had a lot of discussion, and then the kids filled out this page:

Wednesday we talked about folktales, and we read Little Red Riding Hood. We read a few different versions of the story and then the kids filled out this page to sequence the story:

Thursday I gave them a cover page for their book, and they began to put it together:

Front:

Inside...left side.

Inside...right side.

Back:

Friday, I passed out the pieces that you see on the bottom of each page shown above. They had to write down the features of a fairy tale, folktale, and fable and glue them under the correct book title. I used this part for a quiz grade. 

Their books turned out SO CUTE, and I was really pleased:) If you would like to use this book in your classroom, you can download it FREE HERE.

Author's Purpose

Sorry I have been a little M.I.A. lately! I miss my blogging world, and all my blogging friends! I guess you could say I have been a little bit of a rut lately in the creativity department.  Changing grade levels was more of a challenge than I ever dreamed, but I'm finally getting my groove back:) This week we have been working Author's Purpose! Since I've been swimming in my "rut," I've taken a lot of my ideas from Amy Lemons at Step into Second Grade. Seriously...could this girl be any more creative??!! I'm so grateful for her blog this year while I'm on this new journey into second grade. She just has so many great ideas and units that I'm soaking up as a new second grade teacher. So here is a little look into what's been going on:

We started the week with writing to entertain. I read Where the Wild Things Are, and the kids wrote on this CUTE paper why they thought the story was entertaining.

You can get this activity for free at Amy's blog HERE!

In the same file you find on her blog, Amy uses the book I Wanna Iguana to introduce writing to persuade. There is a great test and activity you can use with that book. I, however, do not have that book, but I do have I Wanna New Room. SO I just adapted.

This is a great book to use because the little boy is actually writing letters to his parents trying to persuade them to get him a new room. It's also pretty hilarious and my kids laughed all the way through. When we finished with this, I gave my students a quiz I created for comprehension:

Then they did Amy's activity where they try to persuade their parents to get/give them something. Here is a picture of her example. You can get this on the link above to her blog.

I kept telling them over and over again they had to tell their parents WHY they thought they deserved what they wanted. They came up with some really great and creative ideas! 

Finally, we wrote to inform. I began by reading them an informational book on spiders. It was a great thing to do because spiders are a high interest level for kiddos for some reason. I think you could have heard a pin drop while I was reading:) We talked about spiders for a bit, and all the information we learned from the book. I had them fill out a short paper to write down their thoughts, and then they made these spiders with their information:

This is the example I showed them to get them started. 

As they finished up their projects, I slowly added them to our door:

I just need to add their writing to inform spiders at the bottom, and we are all set! 

On Monday, I'm going to review what we learned this week by asking them to look at a character picture and write a story to entertain, persuade, or inform. Here is the example we will do together:

We will decide if we want to write an entertaining story about a firefighter, an informational piece, or persuade someone why firefighters are the best/persuade mom and dad to be a firefighter when they grow up. (I hope that makes sense!)

Everything I created this week for Author's Purpose, you can get HERE for FREE!

I hope everyone has had a fabulous fall so far! It's crazy how time is flying:) I hope everyone has a great weekend! 

Predictin' in the Kitchen

Hello friends! I have been swamped!! Anyone else feeling this way? School is kicking my tale-end, and I'm falling asleep on the couch by 9:00 each night! Yikes! So my normal time I dedicate to my blog and creating new files has been significantly cut down! However, I had a few minutes today to finish up my predictions packet and I wanted to show it to you.  When I taught predictions this week, it made perfect sense in my head to use a baking/kitchen theme since making a prediction is a lot like mixing a few "ingredients" together to get an end result. Here is what our week looked like:

We started off by reading a story in our basal reader. We made predictions throughout the story, and talked about WHY they made those predictions. 

We read "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" and made predictions together. I showed them how to use what they already know happened in the story along with what we were reading on the page to make a good prediction.

After we read the book, they went back to their seats to make predictions from a book in their book box. I showed them how to use sticky notes to record their predictions.

We did a group activity where I told them they would make a prediction about what I was having for lunch that day. I used these four pictures. I took them out one at a time, and we made predictions on what I could have eaten based on the clues they had. They had a really great time with it, and I had a great time getting them to really THINK. 

We also did several worksheets I created, a few small group centers, activities, etc. I have all these activities and more in a new file, Predictin' in the Kitchen:

 Thanks for sticking with me during this transition time into a new grade level for me! I'm hoping to be back on my feet very soon:) 

Fiction and Nonfiction Poster Freebie

Hey everyone! Sooooo my kiddos are REALLY struggling with fiction and nonfiction! For some reason this surprised me a little bit, so I whipped up these posters the other night to hang in my room. I'm thinking a fiction/nonfiction mini-unit will happen very soon:) You can get these posters for FREE if you just follow this link. Let me know if you download it, and how you plan to use it:)

I have been pretty overwhelmed this week with TRAININGS! I was out on Wednesday for a district training, and we are also in trainings all day tomorrow. I'm ready to have a long stretch of time in my classroom with my kiddos:) I hope you are all having a fantastic week, and I will be back to blog with you this weekend! 

Third Grade TEKS/Objectives

Just wanted to add a quick post to let you know that I have made and posted Third Grade Reading TEKS posters for my Texas teachers! You can find them HERE. I'm still working on Third Grade math, but I will have those up very soon!

The slides also come in a white background to use with any color scheme (and save on ink!) :)