New Year's Resolution Writing FREEBIE and Firework Craft

The first few weeks back from Winter Vacation can always be . . .  interesting. I love the idea of goal setting during January and how better to do that than with resolution writing! I've attached a link to the writing paper FREEBIE if you are interested in doing this with your class sometime this month. Look for it at the bottom of this post. 

First we read a Shared Reading book from Reading A-Z ( I LOVE that website!!) about New Year celebrations around the world. We typically do a workshop model, but the first week back we do a whole group book all week. 

The last page was about resolutions, a great transition! After we read the book, I modeled for students how I would write a resolution. Their learning target was "I can write a resolution using the writing process and the capitalization and punctuation rules I know." The first step in the writing process is pre-writing so we made a large class list of some resolution ideas. 

The second step is writing your first draft. I saw this great idea on someone's blog (I forgot who, but if you know who, let me know so I can credit them please!) about writing first drafts on whiteboards so because this was a small, one or two sentence writing project, the whiteboards worked great for first drafts!

Then they had their partner peer edit. Finally I looked it over and gave them their final draft paper once they had fixed any capitalization or punctuation errors. They wrote their resolutions and they turned out so well!

To make it more fun and to incorporate art, we also finger painted fireworks and then glued our writing onto the fireworks. Fireworks are a custom in many culture's New Year Celebration so we watched some videos of fireworks and then they were able to finger paint their own. I taught pre-k for 4 years and did this finger painting firework craft with them, but my 2nd graders loved it too! I pulled small groups of 5 kids over to the table to paint while everyone one else was working through the writing process. This was efficient and made managing 23 kids finger painting much more doable. 

I also like reading "The Night Before New Year's" Natasha Wing because it is so cute and follows a similar pattern to the Night Before Christmas. I'd love to hear about your New Year ideas!!

Anyhoo, here is the link to the FREEBIE and I hope you had a great New Year's!!

New Year's Resolution Writing Paper FREEBIE

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