Fairy tale update and a Writer's Workshop Freebie

Aloha blogger friends!

I wanted to stop by quickly to post my lesson plans for the week. I am going to Mexico on Friday and worked today to get prepared for my awesome sub "Mrs. Chrissie" next week as well. We are super busy with fairy tales, balance and motion and maps around here. There are a few pictures below...we had snow up on Mauna Kea! Have a wonderful week friends!!

This is the view from my classroom of Mauna Kea. Can you see it behind the trees? There is a little snow on the top. It is fun for our kiddos to see. Some of them were lucky enough to go visit it or to have some brought down to play with.

During the month of February we learn all about Europe. Each week we learn about a different country: England, France, Germany and Italy. This week is our last week, so we will be learning about Italy...mainly Venice!

Of course here is a freebie for you...an elipsis poster! Just right click and print it as a picture.

Opinion Writing and a Brainstorming Template for Firsties

Aloha,

In our kindergarten and first grade classrooms we have been doing some opinion writing. I thought that I had taken some pictures of the finished product, but I did not. The kindergarten writing is about something that all K's can identify with, food. The first grade writing is about forming an opinion based on protecting our oceans. I read some great non-fiction facts about the harms to our oceans from some of our books in our library. I did not share any of my opinions, just the facts. The Common Core Standards are listed small on the bottom and the restaurant writing could be a great intro to opinion writing for firsties as well.

Aside from writing, writing and more writing, the last two weeks have been super busy. We finished up our learning of the rain forest and started learning about our oceans. We did a great "sand lab" science experiment where students chose how they wanted to sort the sand and then went through the scientific process with their thinking.

 

 

Oh yes, and back to writing. Each week we have a thematic homework packet and this week they were asked to write an undersea adventure. To help them with organizing their thoughts we started our brainstorming in class. I made a generic brainstorming sheet for you below. In the middle is where students can put their main idea and they can surround it with their supporting ideas. This student was writing about sea turtles.

 

 



 



Writing Craft Posters are Here!!

Aloha Bloggers,

 

I am so excited to share that I have posted my Writing Crafts and Strategies posters on TpT! I absolutely love these posters and use them daily during Writer's Workshop and Reader's Workshop (more on that later).

 

I think that Writing Crafts are my favorite topic to teach students. They are fun and any level of writer that you have can incorporate them. Here is one example from my classroom this year of how I posted the poster beside some of our written work. Below the point of view poster is an "I can" statement card that says "I can write from the point of view of an ant." Our mentor text for this lesson was Hey Little Ant. Another great mentor text is Ant Bully.

 

 

I know how fun it is to read a post and sample a taste of what is offered at TpT, so here is your own Point of View poster to download and enjoy!