"How to Make a Gingerbread House" Shared Writing

We made gingerbread houses today!

They turned out SO well and I'm convinced a lot of it had to do with a shared writing activity we did beforehand. 

 

We started by talking about the materials we needed to make the gingerbread house.  Several kiddos wrote the words and drew the pictures for this part.  I did help with spelling for this activity!

Then, we thought about the steps needed for making a gingerbread house.  We brainstormed these together and landed on these four steps.  I gave each child a job, and off they went!

 

  

I love these activities because they have to really work together to complete the pictures and writing.  I let them go anywhere in the room to do their work, and when they're finished with their piece, they have to go around and help others!

Here's what our final wall of writing looks like. :)

Merry Christmas!

Common and Proper Christmas Nouns!

Hi everyone!  Sorry about my lack of posts lately - if you are in year 3 of RESA I know you feel me when I say I have had NO time between that and actually teaching to do much of anything else!

I just wanted to do a quick blog post because I just finished and submitted my first RESA task (woo hoo!) and now I have some time to share a little something!

I've just introduced common and proper nouns to my firsties.  We started with this anchor chart...

 

I had the common nouns listed and we worked to turn them into proper nouns together.  After we did this together, I had the students go back to their seats and do this sort independently.  They did a great job!

 

Click below for this freebie!

Christmas Re-cap

Hellooooo friends!  I hope everyone had a jolly holiday! :)

Even though Christmas is over, I'm going to re-cap some of the things we did just in case you'd like to use it next year.

I found this Santa Claus directed drawing at Hello Kids and loved it.  I've talked about my love for directed drawing activities before.  They turned out adorable.

 

 I also love all of the super cute "How to make the Grinch grin" craftivity ideas with writing, but we unfortunately didn't have enough time to do a Grinch craft.  I whipped up this instead to save some time and still get that writing in! 

 

I *love* this one... "giving him makeup in case he gets a girlfriend." :D

 

 

We also made this Baby Jesus craft from Doodle Bugs! 

I was also working on a Christmas printable pack, but unfortunately, I didn't get it finished in time.  Here is one of our reading response logs from that pack that we used in my classroom.

 

These aren't Christmas related, but I though I'd share our listening center logs from the week before break too.  I always make up a listening log to go along with our weekly story that focuses on a certain reading strategy.  Last week, we focused on retelling the beginning, middle, and end.

 

They can choose to write or draw, which is great for differentiating the activity.

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful break!  I'm excited to go back and start the second half of our year. :)

 

Elf Fact Families

Hi friends!  This will be a quick post because I am currently in Columbus for the Ohio Literacy Conference!  I am learning so many new & exciting things that I can't wait to implement into my classroom. 

Here is a quick & easy math tub for practicing fact families that my mice are playing while the cat's away.  Sorry I don't have any pictures of it in use -- I'm not there to take any!  :)  Enjoy!

Problem/Solution freebie and Christmas mini-unit!

Hello everyone!  Has anyone ever had a blog post disappear?  I have one that doesn't show on my blog, but shows on bloglovin'!  Weird!  Anywho, I posted about this in that post but it seems to have vanished, so I will touch on it again.

We have been working really hard on our reading strategies.  I try to create a reading response sheet for each of the CAFE strategies we learn so that my students can practice the strategy during read to self.  Back in October, we were working on problem and solution.  To introduce this strategy, we read the book Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi.  Then, we talked about the problem and solution in the story.  We completed a large version of the response sheet together so they would better understand it when doing it independently.

Then, they completed their own version during read to self.  I walked around and talked to them about their pictures so I could assess what they knew.

I also have completed a little unit on the true meaning of Christmas!  I'm so blessed that I am able to teach about Jesus at my school.  If you can, too, make sure you check out this unit in my TpT shop.  Just click on the cover page to see it!