Literacy Week and MLK

Last week we celebrated Literacy week!

On Monday we chose The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss as our class book.  We also happened to be checking out different types of communication such as signs, invitations, announcements, and reading maps.  During our work time students created announcements about our class book!

The announcement I modeled for the class.

NH's announcement, so colorful!

Our book of the month happens to be Martin's Big Words.  As we were reading and discussing The Sneetches I noticed my students making incredible connections between both stories.

"It don't matter what skin color you are." 

"At the end of both stories the sneetches and the people both learned that it doesn't matter how you look, what matters is you are nice."

I loved that they were pulling the main idea out of The Sneetches and connecting it to the non-fiction events in Martin's Big Words.  They dug really deep this week and I'm one proud teacher.

Click here to get the Sneetches and MLK responding sheet for free!

Finally, at the beginning of the month I used Peace and Dreams {A Martin Luther King Jr. Literacy Unit} created by Gladys over at Teaching in High Heels to introduce Martin's Big Words!  Her writing activities were really helpful in kicking off report writing!  I love it!

Where The Wild Things Are

Last week we retold Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak to focus on retelling and sequencing.  After reading the story one time students illustrated their favorite part and then we put them in the proper sequence.  Students noticed that some of the important events were missing so we left spaces on the paper to fill them in later.

The following day we filled in the missing illustrations and completed a shared writing to retell the story.  Once we completed our shared writing we read our retelling to check for missing information and hung it in the hallway.

Finally, students cut out strips sequenced and glued them down.  When they finished sequencing they illustrated their favorite part and we hung them all in the hallway for everyone to see!

We ended our Where The Wild Things Are week watching a reading on YouTube:

Book Logging and Responding

Next week I'm planning to talk about my Resource Folder and roll out some fun freebies!

I thought I'd kick it off by sharing a couple today.

Every year we have a huge reading goal that we strive to reach as a school.  Some of the fun things our Principal and VP have done when we reach it are, dance on the roof, water balloons (those were a blast to fill up : /), and students got to dump slime over their heads.  The students get really into it and we track how many books they read.

A while back I made my own Book Log to simplify tracking.  I keep track of my students books by 10's so that I don't have to purchase 38465203 million charts and twice as many stickers.  I also noticed that my students refused to record anything other than the book title.  I mean, let's be serious, 6 year olds have more important things to do, like pick their nose, give each other wet willies, and put paper towels in the toilet to clog it.  I think they secretly love watching me grovel and apologize to the custodian for the wild beasts I'm unsuccessfully taming.

My students record the titles of the books they read during the day and at home (I put one in their homework folder) and when I see a full book log they get 2 stickers/hearts/x's/or whatever else I'm in the mood to use as a mark on our book reading chart.

The next freebie you can grab is a Book Response.  I keep these in their homework folder and resource folder for them to respond to the stories they read at home and during literacy centers.

Students only do one a week at home for homework and about one every 2 weeks at school during literacy centers.  I made this one because the one my grade level uses only has 2 lines for students to write about their stories and I want them to "TRY" to think and write a little more in depth about the stories they read.  Students record the title, author, date, and they rate the book using the smily, straight, and sad face system.  They also have space to draw a picture and lots of space to write about what they like/dislike and explain why or retell/summarize the story.

For both the book response and book log freebies, you will notice that there are 2 copies of the exact same page.  This is so you can run 2 sided copies.  I'm all for paper conservation!  If you think these will work in your classroom please grab your free copies from my TpT store!

Responding to Literature

I'm always amazed at how deeply a first grader can dig into a text to search for meaning and make connections.  My favorite stories to use for responses to literature are Dr. Seuss books.  I'll be honest with you, my favorite books to use for anything......ever....are Dr. Seuss books.  This month our book of the month was The Curious Garden which followed a double month long study of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  In each story the physical environment changes for the better in one and the worse in another to teach children the importance of taking care of the world around them. My students completed a response to literature, or RTL as I lovingly (lazily) like to refer to them, illustrating the change in the environment when Liam begins taking care of the plants, and they wrote about connections they made to the story or made comparisons to The Lorax.

Before and after RTL's are a fun and different way to get your students thinking about the story they read and comparing the beginning and end to see how characters and environment have changed.  Grab a free copy of my before and after RTL below!

Click on the image to download

If you are interested in checking out The Curious Garden one of my closest personal and work buddies Cheryl Saoud over at Primary Graffiti has created an amazing Literature Unit and Freebie to go along with it!

Click on the image to go to Primary Graffiti

Click on the image to go to Primary Graffiti's TpT store!

Finally, I just wanted to share a little silliness.  One of my students made me a paper watch during "me time" last week.  When I asked him why he made me a watch he said it was because I never know what time it is :)