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!

Read Across America: Celebrating Seuss

We celebrated Dr. Seuss with lots of books and activities this year! I'm lucky to have a fun team that works well together and we decided to do rotations through each others classes. Each teacher read a Seuss book and did an activity with each class. The kids had a blast! 

My door! I do love KG Fonts, but I had to improvise for a few missing letters. Silly printers.

We sent letters home that announced March 2nd would be Wacky Wednesday and the kids delivered on their outfits. They had so much fun!  Some of the second grade team also came dressed to the Seuss-y nines! 

I look like Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter but I had fun!

For my book, I chose Thidwick the Big Hearted Moose and was excited when I realized that many students had never heard it before. If you haven't either, it's about a sweet, unsuspecting moose that lets an ungracious group of guests aboard his antlers as permanent residents. Even when his moose friends ditch him to search for food in winter's cold, Thidwick doesn't kick out his unwanted companions. In the end he sheds his antlers and outruns the guests and some overzealous hunters. 

We made Thidwick bags and a simplified version of Moose Munch to fill them with. To make the bags, the kids cut out a printed picture of Thidwick and traced their hands to make antlers.

We added a few friends to the antlers with stickers too!

The munch was a combo of buttery popcorn, mini chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, and shredded coconut. It was a big hit! 

The kids also got to make Oobleck, a Horton head piece, a Cat in the Hat mask, Yertle Turtles, and cotton candy Truffla trees during their rotations with my teammates. It was a wonderful Wednesday!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! 

Getting Organized: Journals

Before I figured out that I needed a simple way to keep my students' reading journals organized, grading them was kind of miserable. They were a jumble of random reading responses and center word work and finding what I was looking for in them was a chore. I realized they must feel the same way!

I created a system that was very easy to set-up. I put their notebooks together in about 20 minutes and all I needed was some glue.

I printed out my labels and tabs on pretty Astrobrights and used a paper cutter to trim them. I divided up each notebook into three sections and glued away.

I included an "I Can" statement on each cover for my students' reference.

You could easily makeover your math, science, social studies, etc. journals as well with whatever tabs and covers you need.

I love this resource because if I want to change the way I organize my notebooks next year, I easily can. I like easy! 

The tabs and covers are editable and can be customized so that they make sense for your organization needs. There are also four different cute covers to choose from. I love Whimsy Clips clip art kids. They are the cutest!

Editable Tabs

Here is one editable cover option.

Click {HERE} to check them out in my store! * I created my notebooks before I updated this resource. The tabs in the download are a bit thinner in width so that you can fit much more than just three sections in your notebooks if needed*

If one of your New Year resolutions is organization then click {HERE} to revamp your notebooks.

Happy 2016!