Woohoo-it's October! One of my most favorite times of the school year. The weather starts to change, the colors are bold and bright, and we get to start all the fall crafting! I was able to put all of my Halloween goodies out this weekend, too.
It wasn't 100 degrees yesterday either, which meant I was finally able to grab some mums for our porch. Bummed I can't find any white pumpkins though...anyone know where I can find some???
Oh, and we snagged this guy yesterday, too. 💁
It's never too early, right? 🎄🎅🤶
Not only do I love decorating my house for the holidays/ different seasons, but I love adding decorative elements to our classroom as well-it makes my kiddos so excited and really adds a touch of "home" to our space. Like this cutie my Grandma painted for me awhile back. He's certainly our favorite.
It's also a time to change out our classroom behavior chart! I'm telling you, the kids get so excited about this simple change 😹. Not gonna lie, I do too.
If you'd like to read more about how I handle behavior in the classroom, check it out here.
You can find this and my other seasonal behavior charts here.
This week we learned all about story structure and how to summarize a story using beginning, middle, and end. We of course started with our "fill in the blank" anchor chart.
I always enlarge my anchor charts using our school's poster maker, The students also have a small copy glued into their reading notebook. We complete the chart together by filling in the blanks. This saves me time on having to complete the entire chart with my students, however we are still completing the chart together, so the research behind making them WITH your students still applies here.
We started the week discussing sequencing and putting events in order. We read the story, "Pumpkin Jack," about a boy's rotting pumpkin but it's actually teaching about the pumpkin's life cycle!
So obviously, that's what we had to do for writing this week!
You can find this resource in my Reading, Writing, and Math Halloween set here.
After reading, we chunked the events from the story using beginning, middle, and end, and then sequenced them within each section.
You can do it visa versa, too, but when you have a lot of events (in this case we had 9), doing it this way is a little easier for them to manage.
We also watched, "Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat," via Youtube and completed a BME graphic organizer in our reading notebooks.
At the end of the week, we read, "The Witch Next Door," by Norman Bridwell. I had first anticipated to use this at the start of the week to model our BME skill, but then changed my mind when I forgot about these adorable witch legs we make every year!
After reading the book, students summarized the story using the PLOT. We discussed the plot and related it to BME-I typically teach these skills in isolation, however doing it this way allowed the students to see the connection of events between the two.
I mean, come on!
Grab this cutie in my TPT shop HERE!
Can you guess what I'm teaching next week?
I'm changing the way I teach this skill too, so check back next week to see what fun we're up to!
Hope you all have a great week! Please pray for us in NC to receive some cool weather this week. 🙈. I cannot take anymore playground sweat...
