Summarizing History with a Different Viewpoint

History has a way of repeating itself, but many times in different ways. In light of what our world has seen in the past few months, the book Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson allows us to see how history handled situations that shaped our world today.

I have partnered with my Reading Crew friends to showcase diverse texts and how we can use them in the classroom to enhance instruction. Keep reading to see how I used Let the Children March to enhance history and writing lessons.

**Affiliate links are scattered in this post. That means when you click and make a purchase, I make a small percentage back at no cost to you.**

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Easy Ways to Teach Perspective with Mentor Texts

Mentor texts are great for helping our students better understand reading and writing. I use mentor texts quite a bit to teach my students new comprehension skills, and teaching perspective has several great texts to help children see how this important skill works in every day life. Virginia Readers' Choice picture book Alfie: (The Turtle That Disappeared) is the perfect book for helping students see that there are two sides to every story.

{Affiliate links are present in this post. This means when you click and purchase on a link, I make a small amount of money at no cost to you.}

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Building Letter Writers with Mentor Texts

The other day my daughter wanted to write a letter to her favorite You Tuber. I jumped on the chance to engage her in what was one of my favorite things to do as a child. We worked together to write a perfect letter, at least for a second grader.

Flashback to my past. I wrote my cousin a letter every single month. She lived 6 hours away, and I only saw her 3 times a year, if I was lucky. We kept in touch via letters and loved it. Writing letters for different reasons helps children better understand what the world around them has to offer. Using books to help students better understand letter writing is a great way to get them motivated to write the perfect letter.

My friends from The Reading Crew and I have a link up full writing mentor lessons, freebies and prizes you don't want to miss!

Affiliate links may be present in this post. This means when you click and purchase, I get a small amount of money at no cost to you.

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All Children are Writers with From Striving to Thriving: Writers

Writing isn't always easy for everyone. As a matter of fact, many people struggle with getting their ideas down on paper. And many teachers have a hard time teaching it to their students. How can we make better writers? This new book from Scholastic will help jump start all students to become writers.

Affiliate links are present throughout this post to fund future book purchases. I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my own opinions.

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5 Reasons Your Older Students Need Picture Books!

You wonder, you think ~ how can older students need picture books? We want them to be reading chapter books and really thinking about what is going on. Picture books are for the younger crowd. Bur really, are they? Research has shown that students, even in high school, can benefit from high quality picture books that teach lessons and help children learn. Here are five good reasons for using picture books in the upper grades.

Disclaimer about affiliate links:  I have used affiliate links throughout this post. That means when you click on the link and purchase from the website, I receive a small portion of your purchase. It adds nothing to your total, but it helps fund future book purchases for this blog.

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One Day, The End: Adding Details on Book Talk Thursday

Writing can be tough for many students. As a teacher, it is one of the hardest things to teach. Students are all at different places with writing, and the different styles make it harder for students and teachers. When students are finally able to get their ideas on paper, they really struggle with the details. The book One Day, The End is a perfect mentor text for helping students realize that adding details is so important! (Affiliate links provided to fund book purchases.)

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Tackling the Research Paper!

I love working with students in our school on various different activities, and I have had the joy of helping some struggling second graders become real writers. One of the projects they had to work on was a research paper. I helped them do this with a simple model by using The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown. (Affiliate link inserted to help fund this blog.)

If you haven't seen this book, you really need to check it out! It has a simple way of telling about something that makes it easy for students to learn more about something and provides a great mentor text for helping students write in an easy way.

After reading the book aloud to them, I started out by modeling what I wanted them to research. I used a Tree Map to show them the information I found about horses. This also served as the information I wanted them to search for their research. I put a star next to the "important" fact and circled the other information I wanted to include.

After I created my Tree Map, they chose their animals to research and researched to create their Tree Maps.

Then I wrote my paragraph using the information and creating a model for them to use.

They used my model to write a rough draft to edit and revise. Their final copy was complete with a picture at the top.

Overall, these second graders learned a lot about some simple research to get them ready for third grade. They really enjoyed working on this and took great pride in it ~ something they all need!

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Book Talk Thursday ~ Take Away the A

I am so excited to pass along some more information about another fun Virginia Readers' Choice book for Book Talk Thursday this week!

Each year we have to be observed for a peer as part of our evaluation process.  I am lucky enough to spend a good half hour in my friend's 4th grade classroom. I took the opportunity to read them a fun picture book and use it as a writing model.  I read the book Take Away the A by Micheal Escoffier to them.  While reading it, they had fun figuring out the words and looking for a pattern.

After reading the book, they worked to create their own ideas for a book. They used the chart to think of words that could lose a letter to make a new word.

Then they took one word and created their own picture and sentence for the book.

What I love about the lesson is how the students at all levels were able to create their own pages with little to no help.  Here you can see how even the lower level students came up with their own ideas, and how the higher level students used their thinking to create their own.

I loved the excitement in the fourth graders' eyes as they started creating in their minds.

You can grab the freebie to this book by clicking here or on the picture below.

And it's time for a new link up!  Link up with a fun book and share with the world!

Tune in next week as I share another fun Virginia Readers' Choice book with you!


 

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

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Learning Reading Skills With Valentines

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about my daughter's Valentine's Day cards she received at school.  The teacher asked each child to simply write something on the cards.  As a three-year-old who had just learned to hold a pencil correctly, this took us days! We bought cheap cards and handed those out.  Instead her friends' parents did the Valentines for the children.  I was aggravated, to say the least!

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Book Talk Thursday ~ Would I Trade my Parents?

As I was browsing the library looking for books for Halloween, I came across a book perfect for Book Talk Thursday.

I love finding hidden gems by some of my favorite authors.  I love all of the If You Give a Mouse books by Laura Numeroff, so I was super excited to find another book by her: Would I Trade My Parents?

Have you ever heard your kids say, "But so-and-so's parents do this?" or "Why can't I do that like so-and-so?"  As a child, I did the same thing, even wanting to trade my parents for others, so I could do fun things like my friends did.  In the end, I realized my parents gave me a great childhood with great memories that I still have today.

The young boy in the book tells the reader all about his friends and why they wouldn't trade their parents.  For example, Jason's dad builds houses, even the one they live in, and his mom stays home with his twin sisters and makes blueberry pancakes for breakfast.  He tells about many of his other friends' parents who do things like collect stamps and teach square dancing. 

In the end, he tells about his own parents and realizes that he wouldn't trade them for any others!

This book really helps children understand that all children have different parents with different experiences, but we love them just the same!

I have created a simple freebie to help students reflect on their own parents, whoever they may be.  They can write about their parents and then draw a picture of something they enjoy.  Just click {here} or on the picture below to grab it.

Next week, come back for a fun Halloween themed book!

And head back tomorrow for the Virginia bloggers fall blog hop!

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The Write Stuff with Melissa of Teacher Treasure Hunter

I am still away, enjoying, I hope, Disney World!  Melissa from Teacher Treasure Hunter is here to give you some great writing tips!

It was so nice of Andrea to let me write this guest post! My name is Melissa and I have a blog called Teacher Treasure Hunter. I teach 1st grade and LOVE it! I blog about teaching tips, technology, deals, picture books and random stuff!

I'm so excited to be able to share with you something that I have grown to love - teaching writing to little ones! When I first started teaching, I struggled with teaching writing. It seemed like such a daunting task! I knew it would help them strengthen their phonics and reading skills. But how do you motivate them? What do you edit? How do you help them strengthen their writing skills?

I definitely don't have all the answers to these (sorry!) but I can share what has helped me! I now feel much more confident about teaching writing. I've seen many students get excited about writing and have heard positive feedback from other teachers about their love for writing as they have advanced grades. My students love to share their writing. This was a story one of the boys wrote about his fish. I'm sharing it with you because I thought it was so sweet. I liked how he shared his emotions and I love the creative ending! I wanted to play with him and show him the sun and moon...It sounds poetic!

The first thing I want to share is an awesome resource that I discovered a few years ago. It is called No More 'I'm Done!' by Jennifer Jacobson. Amazingly, you can preview this WHOLE book at the Stenhouse webpage. Just click on the book title above. I have to warn you though, that you will probably be like me and want to buy a copy of the book! She has so many great ideas about helping primary students foster a love for reading and become independent. Some of her ideas (like writing with a pen) I started out using and adapted (I couldn't abide the messy, smeary pages). I still embrace the philosophy behind it which is that you want students to focus on the message and not the mechanics! This has helped me to let go of much of the editing during writing time. When I meet with them during conference, we still have editing goals of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, but I try to focus on the content. When I meet with a student for a final conference before publishing, I help them fix some of the things that they should know (phonetic words, capitalization, etc.) by asking them questions. What does every sentence need at the beginning? Let's stretch out this word. What sounds do you hear? Then they can publish on the fancy paper. It won't be perfect by any means, but it will be readable and make sense.

I'm going to share a few writing tips and then there will be some freebies at the end of this post. :)

Melissa's Writing Tips:
*Kids love freedom while writing! Limit the writing prompts and let them write about the things they love.

*Kids thrive on challenges! As soon as you have a student who has written a really long piece (you may have to nudge someone in that direction - Wow! This story is getting so long! How long do you think it will be when you finish it?) brag about how long it is. Wonder aloud if it will be the longest story written that year. If you have students who have written really long stories in a previous year, share that information with your current students. See if they can beat the all-time record for the longest story! That has inspired so many of my students to really put effort into their writing.

*Kids love colored pens and pencils! I have my students write the rough draft in pencil, but they can edit in red pen and revise with green pen. It's always a big deal to use pens!

*Kids love to show off their work! Don't miss out on an opportunity for the class to share their final writing with the class. I like to have a celebration time where they read their story to the class. We all clap. :)  I let them call on 2 students when they are finished. One student gives them a wish and one student gives them a wow.

*Kids like to write about animals! My first graders have been very interested in learning and writing about animals. They have a natural curiosity and you can fan that interest by including super cool facts about some of the animals. Did you know that the cheetah is not the fastest animal? It's the fastest LAND animal. The Peregrine Falcon dives at a speed that is almost 3 times the speed of a cheetah! Wow! Those kind of facts will get your kids excited. Also, provide them with research materials that are written at their level. This is a great way to meet those non-fiction common core standards.

*Kids love to read stories that other students have written! Keep their final work in a 3 ring binder. Each story can be placed into sheet protectors so it is kept safe. Put the binders in your classroom library.

*Kids love it when their teacher shares awesome work with their parents! Bring that binder to conferences and brag on the writing of their student. Hint: Take the individual student's writing out - you don't want it to be a time of comparison to other students.

I have a couple of writing freebies to share with you. One is a list writing freebie that is at TPT. These are great for "quick" writing and generating ideas. The other freebie has some papers that you can use for final copies. There are some that can be printed and some lined paper to copy onto "fancy" paper. Just buy some cute printer paper and run it through the copier to have fancy, lined paper. I like the kind at Wal-Mart. The dollar tree paper is very thin. I like to have a variety of papers in a drawer for them to choose from as they write their final copy.


Thanks for reading and I hope you found something that you can use in your classroom!

Thanks, Melissa for some wonderful ideas for helping with writing!  Come back next week to see if I survived Disney!

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Trading Spaces Tuesday ~ Writing Celebrations

Hello again! I am excited to be Andrea's guest again this week!  I had the privilege of writing about phonological awareness last time I visited!  But this time, I thought I would focus on writing celebrations.

My situation is very unique because my school is departmentalized; therefore, my teammate, Maria, teaches writing ALL day long.  She loves it! I'm the Title I teacher and co-teach with her during two of her four classes.  This is our second year teaching this way and we have learned so much along the way.

One of Maria's main goals was for our students to leave her knowing and believing that they are writers.  We have tried to accomplish this goal through writing celebrations.

I wanted to share these celebrations with you!

First up...Animal Research Gallery.  Students displayed their research and posters.  As Kindergarten students, second grade students, and parents walked around, students read their research aloud to them.  Here is some of their hard work:

Next up...Fancy Tea Party Time.  We studied Fancy Nancy and the adjectives that she uses when speaking.  Students used some of these adjectives to write about how they "got fancy."  Then we celebrated this writing by hosting a fancy tea party for all the parents.  Students dressed up for the occasion and read their writing pieces to the families that joined us.

This year we were able to get a Donor's Choose project funded to help celebrate our student's writing.  We were able to print each first grade student's personal narrative on a white t-shirt.  We told them that "You are what you wear."  They are writers because they are wearing their own writing!  It was really amazing to watch their excitement.

Upcoming celebration:
We will study Mo Willems later this year.  Students will write a Mo Willems-inspired piece.  We have decided to host a "Doodle Party."  Students can read their writing pieces to their families and then write a short one together!

What do you do to celebrate writing in your classroom?  We would love to have some more ideas!

Please head over to Hanging Out in First!

Happy Tuesday!

Em from Curious Firsties!

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