Friday, November 8, 2013

Pumpkin Observations
 
The holidays can be an exciting time for kids...especially Halloween! This holiday doesn't have to be all costumes and candy in the classroom so I tied in a fun pumpkin exploration activity for the kids. Pumpkins / Jack-o-lanterns, there's enough of a link, right?!
 
Science- life cycle- seed to pumpkin
Art- sketch
Word study- descriptive words
Math- seed estimation and counting with arrays, circumfrence, hight in base ten blocks
Reading- How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin, by Margaret McNamara and Brian Karas
Writing- story starter: "3 little pumpkinds were rolling down a hill..."
 
 
 



 

Personal Narrative Writing

How do you teach Personal Narrative writing?
I have found that kids write their best stories after a lot of modeling and exposure to mentor texts. My go to author to demonstrate personal narrative writing has always been, Patricia Polacco.
Below is one of the graphic organizers I made to use with my students this year to help them generate ideas for their personal narrative. I ask them to think about a time when they felt, sad, hurt, angry or worried. They write down one idea for each box, then pair-shared (adding in some detail words to each event/box).
We spend about a week reading and doing different graphic organizers to generate ideas- small/true moments from our life. After each student has a wealth of topics to choose from, they decide which event they want to turn into their very own personal narrative story, like Patricia Polacco's stories.
I can't wait to see how their personal narratives turn out this year!