'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?