Tricks and Treats (with The Friendly Teacher)

 This time of year students begin to lose some of their engagement. It is the time right around the holidays were you need to up your engagement strategies. This lesson was a HIT in my classroom! Students were working so hard on text evidence, text features, main idea and detail and more! The best part of this bat lesson is that you can do it on anything you want to! This is a way to get your students to review any standard that you need too!

Here is what you do!
*Create a bat cave on your door. All I did was crunch up black paper and made it look like a cave.
*Tell your students to wear all black and bring a flash light. The key here is to not tell them why. It will add suspense and your students will be talking about it at home all night long.
*You can create a cave inside your classroom or you can just  turn the lights off and put a cave picture on your smart board. This is the area where you can go far out and create something awesome or you can just keep it simple!
*Create wings for yourself. All you do is take a black piece of paper, fold it in half, then cut triangles out of one side! You have two wings! (I was going to take pictures of this, but it was so easy I felt like you all would think I was silly ;))
*Rip your bat wing in several places.
*Run into the classroom telling your students that you were flying and your wing got caught on a tree. It is ripped and you cannot fly any longer. The only way to fix it is if all of your bat family works hard to help you. Their job is to finish the assignment at hand correctly. If they do, they receive a piece of tape to help fix your wing. To fix the entire wing each person/group will have to complete the activity.
*Students complete whatever you give them. (For me, I had lots of passages with questions to answer) Then, when they get them all correct you hand them a piece of tape and they tape a spot on your wing. Once everyone is done your wing is fixed.

Extras:
**When they got done they got to read Halloween books and eat Bat Poop. (Chocolate Raisins)
**When everyone got done we watched a small Halloween show!
**We had every student make bat wings and tape them on their backs and they LOVED it!

My favorite fall activity is to have my students color a pumpkin. Once they color their pumpkin they write a how-to writing on how they colored their pumpkin. Then, they give the writing to one of their friends in the classroom. That friend tries to color the exact same pumpkin. This is a great lesson to teach students the importance of adding detail in their how-to writing pieces. My newsletter followers received this for free last month and now you can also grab it for FREE here! 

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Turkey Time Traditions {Amna from Teach Two Reach}

Thanksgiving has already come and gone! And what? It’s going to be December tomorrow? Well, I’ll be closing out the Turkey Time posts for this month's Elementary Entourage theme. And although the time has past, maybe this post will help with some ideas for next year!

Reading Turkey Trouble can never go wrong. Students always love this silly book  about a turkey trying different disguises to escape being dinner. It’s the perfect time to do a Disguise the Turkey activity if you like doing that in your classroom. The book is a great one to start off the unit. Students also get to really dissect the book and work on comprehension skills with this Turkey Trouble tab booklet.

Around this time, we get to do our Thanksgiving HandwritingScoot. Handwriting Scoot is something I created when I realized, sheesh, students really need to work on their writing! Handwriting gets focused on less and less as the years go by. So I try to do these themed Scoots where students learn relavent vocabulary and play a handwriting game. They love it!

Speaking of games, why not incorporate Thanksgiving related sentences and practice sentence structure as well. So we do our noun and verbroam the room games.

Of course my favorite time is Thanksgiving lunch/dinner with the family. And here is a little freebie for you to practice fact families. It's a cute little project using a "place setting," to write out four fact family sentences. 

See you all next month!!

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Turkey Time Traditions {with Core Inspiration by Laura Santos}

Thanksgiving is the perfect time of year to get a little sentimental in the classroom. By November, community is strong and students are feeling more comfortable sharing their feelings and personal stories.

My favorite November classroom tradition was born from the simple idea that we should thank the people we love for the little things they do everyday to help us live happy lives. Each year this project evolves a little and becomes more meaningful to my students. Your heart will be genuinely warmed when you read the thoughtful ideas shared with classmates and loved ones as a result of a little tradition I call Letters of Thanks.

This writing project begins with a discussion about the difference between being thankful for physical object versus being thankful for feelings and experiences.

Once students have a clear understanding of this difference, you can introduce different categories to guide a brainstorm about giving thanks for feelings and experiences. This brainstorm session will boost the flow of the letter writing process in the next step.

After your class brainstorm session, hang the brainstorm posters in a central location and encourage students to visit the posters as needed when they write their letters of thanks.

Taking the time to introduce the meaning behind the project and building a strong collection of ideas through brainstorming makes the letter writing itself a breeze. A peaceful focus blankets the room as students write voraciously about the moments and feelings they are grateful for. It is always a teacher’s gift when their young writers are busy jotting away and we can peek over each and every shoulder to read the thoughts that are near and dear to our students’ hearts.

After each letter is signed with love, it’s time to add a touch of cuteness to this Thanksgiving gift. An adorable turkey card is the perfect packaging for your students to deliver their letter in.

This project is sure to be a parent favorite and a keepsake for the scrapbook. It is also the perfect way to take a break from assessments, report cards, and conferences that consume so much of the daily schedule this time of year.

You can download the stationary template for Letters ofThanks as a freebie here. If you are interested in my full activity lesson plan along with instructions for the adorable turkey card craftivity, download Lettersof Thanks – A Thanksgiving Writing Project and Craftivity here.

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Turkey Time Traditions {with Lauren from Mrs. Thompson's Treaures}

Happy Thanksgiving!! This year our family is celebrating across the world, away from family. While it is a hard time to be away, we are striving to continue to count our blessings and remember the things we are thankful for.

Anything that involves technology is sure to be a win with the kids! This year, I sent the 2 older kids on a photo scavenger hunt with my phone. I made a list of 10 different categories, and they had to find something they were thankful for in that category and take a picture. They had a lot of fun and it helped them see all the little things they have in daily life that are easy to take for granted.

 



 

This would be a great activity to try today with any kids you have at your Thanksgiving gathering. Just make up some categories and let them be creative! You can always have them draw pictures instead of using a phone or camera if they are too young.

 

Click on the pictures below to find more fun and FREE Thanksgiving activities!

 

 

 

Have a fun-filled and yummy day!!

 

 

 

 



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Turkey Time Traditions {with Amber from The Sunny Side of Second Grade}

Hey y'all!! Welcome back for another selection of our Turkey Time Traditions. Here you are hearing all of our favorite Thanksgiving ideas, lessons, crafts, and more! I hope you are enjoying yourself just as much as we are enjoying sharing with you.

We have been spending our time talking about everything Thanksgiving the last several days, and we will continue into next week. One of the second grade social studies standards we like to focus on for this theme is comparing various interpretations of the same time period. Perspective can be very difficult for our little sweeties to grasp. This year, my team and I took a different approach to help with this.

We found these books to help us:

We started out by introducing the theme with the book The First Thanksgiving and exploring the Scholastic's The First Thanksgiving. After a needed brain break on Go Noodle, we delved into day one of the lesson plan: The Pilgrim perspective. We read through the book, Giving Thanks, but we only read the perspective of the Pilgrim, Resolved White. (Day two consists of re-reading the story but this time from the Indian, Dancing Moccasin, perspective)  We held partnered discussions on what it was like to be an English Colonist in 1621, mapping out our thoughts on chart paper.

We then used the anchor chart as our graphic organizer for our writing activity:

The kiddos really loved writing a story about what it would be like to live as a pilgrim in 1621. The story can then be attached to construction paper. They can color pilgrim shoes to glue to the bottom of their story when they are finished.

If you are like me, you like crafts around the holidays. These are just a few of the crafts we completed this week. It was so much fun having a Pilgrim day and an Indian day. Monday we plan to take what we have learned and bring it all together using a Venn Diagram and some compare and contrast fun!

The Indian fact headband was created by me, but you can find these sweet Pilgrims and Indians here.

If you are looking to add some free writing fun to your Thanksgiving plans this week, look no further. Download my free Walk Like a Pilgrim activity! I know your sweeties will love it as much as mine did.

{Click on the image above to get your copy}

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Turkey Time Traditions {with Stephany from Primary Possibilities}

At school for the past two years we have had a Thanksgiving Feast for the students on Tuesday.  We make placemats and laminate them.  Once we are done with our feast at school, they can take them home and use them at their own Thanksgiving dinner.

During some of our school breaks I like to send home these work packets.  They keep students from getting too much of a "break" brain!  I always make them optional because some families are so busy over breaks with traveling or family events that they may not be able to fit the packets into their busy schedule.  (I also have packets for winter break and spring break.)

The skills in this packet review a lot of the skills taught up to this point in the first grade.  There are lots of easy ways to adjust the packet to be used during fall AND Thanksgiving Break.  Just pick the pages you want, copy and staple.   I usually reward completed booklets with a fun pencil once we return from break!

Finally, this year we decided to spread the thankfulness all around school.  I printed these simple cards on card stock (4 to a sheet) and had the kids write personal messages to each of the teachers and staff in the school.  We slipped the cards with a piece of candy into the mailboxes to brighten everyone's day and remind them that they are appreciated!  Click here to download the freebie!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

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Turkey Time Traditions with Enchanted Kinder Garden

Can you believe it's almost Thanksgiving break? I absolutely LOVE teaching during Thanksgiving.

This week we're talking ALL things Thanksgiving. This includes past and present, Native Americans, Pilgrims, Mayflower... all of that. We'll be focusing on past and present. My practicum student has been teaching and we didn't really talk about this already.

One of my all time favorite things to do during Thanksgiving week is to talk about traveling on the ship. After we talk about what they couldn't take and that they could only take one suitcase, we always make our own suitcase. This is always REALLY interesting to see what they would take. One year, I let them just write in what they would take. However, this year I'm going to print out some pictures and let them only glue in what will fit.

I added things like brush, comb, pet, doll, truck, shoes, pants, socks, and so on. I also added a few things that I don't think are as important such as iPad, mirror, food, and other little things that will take up space.

You can grab this for free here! Just click on the picture.

We'll be making these really cute turkey hats inspired by Miss Kindergarten for our "Charlie Brown Feast" again this year. I won't use LONG brown paper this year to make them.

We'll also be using these during Math Workshops again this week.

They LOVED using these! It helps all of my kiddos get an easier sense of numbers. We've been doing a really great job with number fluency and recognition as well.

Ten Frames for Thanksgiving! I just call them the Gobble Gobble workshop. My kids pretend like the turkeys are gobbling up numbers. I have different groups use it a different way. For my kids that still need help with writing numbers, we use the ten frame frame version and write the number to match. For my kids that need help producing a ten frame, they choose a number card and make the ten frame. They EAT this one up.

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