Cookie Cutter Writing Centers

I have had this pack of cookie cutters that a friend gave me (They were actually part of a #SecondGradeTribe tribe box she sent me! Thanks, Tara!) in my classroom cabinet for a year. I knew I wanted to keep them for something but aside from sugar cookies I had no idea what. Then it randomly dawned on me last week to use them in a seasonal writing center.

 I put the cutters in a bin along with the picture that came with the pack for the kids to use as inspiration. I think it will also be a good idea to label each picture so that the kids can use those words to write their stories. You could also include a Halloween word list. *If you're looking for other Halloween writing ideas click HERE and HERE* 

This is the story we wrote together in a small group, which is how I like to teach most of my center activities

My kids really loved the idea! When I modeled how to trace the inside of the cookie cutter shape and then add details and color, they were literally Ooooing and Ahhhing. It was awesome. They got really creative with their ideas when we were working on a piece together and said I should put a witch in the haunted house window. We wrote the story from her point of view. I was so impressed with their thinking.

 This simple center is so easy to put together and I can't wait to use the same format with all my holiday cookie cutters!

Opinion Writing with Mo

We wrote our first opinion pieces last week all about Don't Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. It's no secret that this book is a great opinion mentor author text and the kids always love the animated version of this book. Since we have writing at the end of the day, a video option is perfect for my rambunctious class!

I noticed some of my students weren't sure what an opinion was so we started by creating the first anchor chart and sharing out facts and opinions about the video as a whole group. Then we referred to our Opinion Sentence Starter chart when we were ready to write down our opinions (I copied mine from a chart by Live, Love, Laugh, Learn First Grade). There's nothing fancy about mine but it was effective so who cares!

Earlier in the week, we used the opinion prompts from my Opinion and Persuasive Writing pack to practice using all our different opinion sentence starters verbally. I find my students write better if they say it out loud first before putting pen to paper. I'm sure you do too!

I was really happy with their reasons and examples for why or why not the pigeon should get a shot at driving! For some of my lower students, I had them focus on just giving a reason without elaborating with an example.

We wrote our conclusion sentences last and then finished off the week with a cute pigeon directed drawing. 

Mo Willems is really so, so good! Piggie and Elephant are some of my absolute favorites. My daughter LOVES the books as well. I stumbled across this video one night when she and I were watching P&E read alouds on YouTube (instead of sleeping!). The kid in the video does a great job reading I Really Like Slop. I thought it was a really excellent example of fluent reading for primary students!

This coming week we'll take a break from opinion writing and try our hand at tall tales. Wish me luck!

Parts of Speech White Board Challenge {FREEBIE}

I love Scattergories. It's one of the things in life that I can say I'm reeeeeally good at (see also: napping, whining) which is probably why it's a favorite.

This parts of speech game, or as we like to call it in my classroom, White Board Challenge, reminds me a lot of my favorite pastime of total domination = Scattergories. It's essentially a review game. I divided the board into two sides and then (in this case) into four rows because we covered adjectives, adverbs, action verbs, and nouns (both common and proper in one row).

The teams line up in two lines and the marker gets passed to the person behind you. When you're up, you get a part of speech and a letter of the alphabet called to you and your opponent. The team with the most correct responses at the end of the game wins! Like Scattergories, if the teams have the same answer, neither get a point.

 

How I keep track of what part of speech/letter combo I called: I lay out my parts of speech cards in a column and stack the correlating letters next to them. When I am reviewing for points at the end, I just look at my stacks and go through them, checking off what the teams have as I go. Take a look at the freebie I created to go with the game to get a better idea!

I can see that my kids need to work on adverbs and adjectives and that we need to cover both topics a few more times. 

I created this freebie to go with the game.

 

 

 

Get the Parts of speech White Board Challenge game for FREE here.

 

If you like this idea, check out my previous post on how we do our Vocab Challenge in my classroom.