Space Week: A Vocabulary Writing Craft FREEIBE and a Sale!

My students love learning about space! They are so curious about how the universe works and the awe they have at the size of things is exciting to watch. Our Reading Street story a few weeks ago was an informational text about space. My students were very excited! I love teaching informational text, but vocabulary is often the hardest part of non-fiction to teach. Yeah, it's easy to get kids to memorize definitions for a test, but to really get students to deeply understand and make connections with vocabulary words is another story. I have about 40% ELL (Engligh Language Learners) in my classroom so this makes effective vocabulary instruction even more critical. 

Lucky for me space vocabulary lends itself well to acting out and physical movements related to content is one of my favorite ways to teach. We had students ascending and descending from desks, orbiting around friends, and investigating tools! Once I felt like my students really understood the astronaut space vocabulary, I wanted them to demonstrate their knowledge with a writing prompt. Vocabulary writing can be a great assessment tool. I wanted to spice it up though and what better way to do that than with a craft! I came up with my Astronaut Vocabulary Writing Craftivity. 

First students wrote about what they would do if they were an astronaut on this space themed handwriting paper. Then they made an astronaut out of a paper plate, one of the best craft materials in the world I think. I gave them some black construction paper, crayons, and start stickers and the end product was not only adorable but a great way for me to assess their learning. 

I want to share this project with you so I just posted it as a FREEBIE! Astronaut Vocabulary Writing and Craft FREEBIE

To celebrate the end of October and the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year, I am hosting a 10% off sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store through Tuesday, October 28th! Happy end of October! Go here for the sale Mrs. Grisham's TPT Store

Iris and Walter: Urban and Rural Communities plus a Vocabulary Power Point FREEBIE

The first unit in my Reading Street Curriculum was "Iris and Walter" by Elissa Haden Guest.

Despite the current movement away from basal readers, I actually am really loving my Reading Street curriculum right now because it not only has great stories, but I am totally able to use the anthology as a shared reading basis for my Reading Workshop which is awesome!! I'm planning on posting about how I incorporate the reading curriculum with the workshop model soon.

Anyhoo, the main social studies concept from this unit was the concept of rural vs urban communities. Iris moves from the city and finds country life to be sad and boring until she finds a new friend, Walter.

After reading the textbook story, I gathered some pictures from good ole Google Image of urban and rural communities around the world. We went through the slideshow together, pointing out things we saw that were similar and different about the various pictures. Then, while the power point was on repeat cycle, students worked with their reading partner to find similarities and differences between rural and urban communities. Then the kiddos brought their sticky notes down to the rug and we learned about Venn Diagrams using their sticky note ideas (Sticky Notes are one of my favorite formative assessment strategies!!) If I was more on top of it, I would have had blue in the middle (Yellow and green make blue, duh!) but maybe next year! Also, the sticky notes were not very sticky so the pictures aren't fabulous, but you can see the work!

Here is what some of the smart little kiddos came up with.

Rural: "People, cars, skyscrapers"

"Cow, horses, houses, school buses"

"Pigs, horses"

Urban: "A lot of people and buildings"

"Cars, skyscrapers, Space Needle"

"Urban places have subways and skyscrapers"

"A lot of houses"

Both: "Houses, ambulances"

"Trees, schools, houses"

"Buses, schools"

"Moms, dads"

Students then did a word sort of urban and rural vocabulary words in their reading response journals and we read two of my favorite books about this topic. We of course read "Town Mouse and Country Mouse" by Jan Brett.

And one of my favorite books of all time, "The Little House" by Virginia Lee Burton. I would spend hours staring at the fabulous illustrations in this book when I was a child so I of course wanted to share it with my class. Oh nostalgia!

We also read Scholastic News which had a whole issue related to this vocabulary issue! The issue compared and contrasted urban, suburban, and rural schools. I get Scholastic News for my students every year and there is some weird sort of Scholastic News Magic where their issues almost always coincide with what we are learning about in class. Plus, they are aligned to Common Core now which is fabulous!! I love Scholastic News!

I'd love to share my Rural and Urban Power Point and Social Study Word Sort with you for FREE!! Find it here Rural or Urban Vocabulary Mini-Unit FREEBIE

Happy Day!

The First Grade Parade: Vocabulary Can Be Fun, Too!

The First Grade Parade: Vocabulary Can Be Fun, Too!



First Grade Parade is one of my FAVORITE blogs!! She is so fun and has amazing ideas and this vocabulary idea is no different. Vocabulary is something I feel I could work on. I hate having kids simply look up words in the dictionary and write down the meanings. I want them to really work with the words. I want them to use the words in their own writing and conversations. However, it's challenging to find easy, vocabulary instructional strategies that don't require a ton of prep-work. I'm always on the look-out though and this is a quick, easy, and effective strategies for increasing student vocabulary. The only materials you need are a book, chart paper, and markers. How cool and easy is that!! I will definitely be trying out this strategy this year and will post about it when I do. Happy Day!