'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving-Mentor Text and Flash Freebie

It is a nice chilly fall day here in Pennsylvania. The cooler weather makes me begin to think about the upcoming holidays...I just loved this time of year and the mentor texts I use in class during the next few months tend to reflect my love of the upcoming holidays.

I'm linking up with the lovely ladies at Collaboration Cuties to share one of my favorite Thanksgiving/language arts mentor texts:  'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey.

During this month I like to spend a week working on the reading skill Making Connections. My students are great at making text to self connections...but they struggle with making text to world and text to text connections. I love using 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving to introduce the idea of text to text connections. Most, if not all of my students have heard or read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" so the night before Thanksgiving is a perfect way to make text to text connections. I love the ending of this story...it's a cute book to have your kiddos practice predicting as well.

During the week that we are working on making connections I have my kiddos practice using a bookmark and graphic organizer that I created. You can pick it up for free tonight here. When I wake up in the morning, this will become a paid item-so grab it while you can. If you do grab it and plan to use it with your class please leave feedback.

What are your favorite books to teach making connections? What are your favorite Thanksgiving books?

Currently November with a yummy pin!

Happy November everyone! I'm linking up with Farley at Oh' Boy 4th Grade for November Currently!

Most of my currently is self explanatory, but I've become hooked on Revenge. I just finished watching season one on Netflix and started season two this morning. Anyone else watch this show?

My yummy pin is something I've made a few times...and it is easy, healthy, and yummy: Skinny Chicken Cordon Bleu! 

Enjoy your Saturday everyone!

Can't Celebrate Halloween? That's okay it's National Candy Corn Day!

I've been officially boo'ed by Diane at Fifth in the Middle. Gary over at Scrappy Guy Designs has a fun linky party where you get a chance to share what you do or don't do with your students for Halloween.

Since I teach at a private Christian school I am not allowed to celebrate Halloween with my students. Most of the students do go out trick-or-treating, but there are enough families that have an issue with it that we avoid the issue by not having celebrations in school. As hard as we try to make the day "business as usual" it doesn't really work.

So what is a teacher to do when all your kiddos can think of is candy and costumes? Celebrate National Candy Corn Day of course!

 

Today, Wednesday October 30th is National Candy Corn Day. I actually hate candy corn, but the kids love it so we embrace it!

My sweet friend Laura created Candy Corn Sentences for Word Work. They are free on TPT. I hung the task cards around the room and had my kiddos find the verbs and helping verbs in the sentences. They also had to decide if the sentences were past, present, or future tense. Guess what grammar topic we are currently working on?

In math my kiddos and I are working on function tables. I grabbed this freebie from Emily at I Love My Classroom.

Of course we ended our day by eating candy corn...well my kiddos did. You couldn't pay me to eat them. What do you do to celebrate, or not celebrate Halloween? 

Tried it Tuesday-Pumpkin Style

Happy Tuesday! I'm excited to link up with Holly today for Tried it Tuesday!

This week isn't exactly a teaching post. What I tried this week was pumpkin carving. Growing up we would carve pumpkins for Halloween, but those pumpkins were the classic Jack-o-Lantern face.

My husband on the other hand creates pumpkins like this:

His pumpkin from the 1st year we were married.

So this year, he and I worked to create pumpkins based off the movie Nightmare Before Christmas.

What do you think of our handiwork? Mine is on the left, Glen's is on the right. What have you tried this week?

Spark Student Motivation-Fall Walk and Writing

How does the week get away from me? I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted! I'm thankful it is still Saturday so I can link up with Joanne for her linky party!

A few weeks ago I read this blog post from Polka Dot Lesson Plans. As soon as I read it I knew I wanted to take my kids on a fall walk. This past Friday was the day. My kiddos had computer class first thing in the morning so when they came back I read them the story In November by Cynthia Rylant. It is a beautiful book that is full of wonderful imagery. My students and I have been learning similes and metaphors so they were very quick to pick them out as I read them the story.

 

It was a cold morning-only 38 degrees, but we bundled up and went on our walk. The students used this foldable to record what they saw, felt, smelled, and heard. (We brainstormed what we thought the tastes of fall were.)

As you can see it was a cold, hazy morning, but the kids were great. We walked around outside for about 15 min. The kids wrote down a lot of great things about fall.

When they finished they came back inside and wrote fall poems. The students wrote off two different poem starters:

Fall is a time for...
or
In fall...

I wish I took pictures of their finished pieces. They were so motivated to write, some of them wrote two and three poems about fall in the time I gave them.

What do you do to motivate your students? Have any of you taken your students on a fall walk?

Timeless Thomas-Science Mentor Text

Happy Sunday! I am excited to link up with Collaboration Cuties for their Mentor Text linky.

This week's topic is Science. In my school we teach social studies and science by quarter. That means that I have been teaching social studies to my kiddos this quarter and in two weeks when we start second quarter I will be teaching science. The book I want to share with you is one that I use during my first science unit on electricity, Timeless Thomas by Gene Barretta.

I love this book. Most of my students know that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but they do not know about all of the other things that he invented. They also don't realize how long it took him to create a working light bulb. Many of them think he got it right on the first or second try!

I also like to show this video to my students. The video is about 30 min long, but it does a nice job showing how hard Edison and his team had to work to get a working light bulb. So many of my kids give up after the first or second try...I love showing them how famous people had to work at things too. Things in life aren't always easy!

What are your favorite science mentor texts?

Spark Student Motivation-Landform Project

Happy Saturday! It is a nice chilly day here in Pennsylvania...I have a cup of Pumpkin Spice coffee and am catching up on blogging-what a great start to the weekend! I'm linking up with my dear friend Joanne at Head over Heels for Teaching for her linky party.

Today I want to share a project with you that I did with my students a few weeks ago...I just didn't have a chance to blog about it when we did it! My kiddos and I have been studying our home state of Pennsylvania. When we first started our unit, I wanted them to have a solid grasp of our state's geography. What better way to have them really learn about it than by having them make a model of our state?

I don't know about you, but my kids love working with clay. I partnered them up, gave them the directions to the project, a paper map of our state, clay, and a few resource books and they went to town. A few of them needed to be reminded that our mountains are not rocky like the Rocky Mountains...they had to tone down their "peaks." Here's a picture of many of the finished clay products.

If you are interested in doing this project with your students you can download it here for free.

 

What do you do to motivate your students?