The Great Turkey Race FREEBIE

As we get closer to the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to share a Thanksgiving story with everyone. I read this book to my kiddos and they loved it! It is called "The Great Turkey Race" by Steve Metzger. It is about 3 turkeys who overheard the farmer talking about which "special" turkey would be chosen for Thanksgiving. Thinking that the "special" turkey was really something special they decided to hold Turkey Games to decide who would be the special turkey. Soon they realize just what special means and the 3 turkeys hop the fence on their last event and run away leaving the farmer to eat vegetable soup for Thanksgiving. It is a really cute story and I made a quick MISSING poster to complete with this book. Students are asked to describe the turkey, where they think it went, what they are doing there, and how they plan on getting the turkey back. If you complete this activity with your class let me know how it goes! I would love to see the finished product. 

Happy Reading!! 

The Great Turkey Race FREEBIE

The Reading Trail

As a Reading Specialist it is my job to put on Parent Nights for the parents at our school. This month I put on "Parent Involvement Night". This is a night for parents to come and learn how to best support their emerging readers. What I like to do is work on a "make and take" while the parents are with me. This year I have really been into the whole camping theme (I think it is because I have been dying to go camping). So I created The Reading Trail. It is a simple board game that is easily differentiated depending on the needs of the student. The parents are responsible for writing out their cards based on what their child needs to work on. It may be letters, letter sounds, sight words, or sight word phrases. Whatever it may be the parent will fill out the cards and they are ready to play. Roll the dice, land on a space, read your card, and off you go! Easy peasy. :)

This would also be a fun center game for students to practice their reading skills. It could even be differentiated by student. The sky is the limit!

I hope you enjoy this FREEBIE and be sure to let me know how you like it and how you used it.

Happy Teaching!!

The Reading Trail

Books Before Bed - My first book talk entry

Bedtime with my little ones is one of my favorite times of the day. We get a chance to settle down from our day, chat about what took place, and best of all we get to enjoy a story. I have been reading to my children as soon as I knew I was pregnant. We rarely miss an opportunity to read a book. I would like to use these posts to post about books that interest me, my children, teachers, and of course our students. I will also be including activities to go with each book. So look out for these posts and the FREEBIES that go with them! 

Our first book before bed is "Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up the Wash" written by Sarah Weeks and illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott. My son gets a huge kick out of the silly thinks she hangs on her clothes line. This is a great story for encouraging retell. It is a simple rhyming story that is silly enough to capture children's attention. 

I have included a retell activity to accompany this book. The large pictures are intended for a whole group activity. You can cut these out and have your students pin them to a real clothes line and then have them cut and paste the items on their own sheet which is also included. 

I hope you enjoy this story as much as we did!! 

Mrs. McNosh FREEBIE!!

Happy Teaching!

Thinkmarks

As an educator I do a lot of blog hopping to see some of the wonderful things that educators are doing. I had recently come across "Thinkmarks". Genius. I introduced thinkmarks to my third grade kiddos with wonderful results. When I introduced thinkmarks I introduced a couple at a time. Once we had read, my students go back through the text and put in three thinkmarks. I was shocked at the meaningful conversation that came from them! Not only did we have great discussion, they recalled so much more of the text! I love coming across wonderful resources like this one. Here is the anchor chart I use. Try it out and comment on how it went!

 

Happy Teaching!!

 

 

Reading Response Activity Part 1

I was recently speaking to a colleague about reading response activities with partners. She explained to me that her students are quick to answer the questions but she wanted them to actually talk with each other about what they had read. After thinking about it for a couple days I decided that task cards were the way to go. After sitting down and racking my brain of all the possible questions that could be asked, I came up with the Reading Response cards. These cards can be printed out for your students to use and the partner portion can be done one of two ways; You can either print off an entire set of partner questions or you can copy the quick version to the back of your fiction or non-fiction cards. This way your students have a quick reference when working with their partner. I plan to introduce these to my kiddos this week. I want to make sure that I model exactly what I want to see in their partner groups and go over each of the questions to ensure they are comfortable with the questions. So stay tuned and I will update on how it went!!

Response Cards

YOUR TURN! 
Let me know how you work with task/response cards in your classroom. Also, if you download my product, be sure to let me know how you are using it in your classroom!

Happy Teaching!! 

Book Pig

Hi Everyone!
I wanted to write a quick post about Book Pig. I often have parents that do not have access to the library in our community (its pretty far from our school) or minimal resources at home. One program that I have come across is Book Pig. It's genius. It is basically Netflix for books. Head to the site, sign up for either 1-2 shipments a month, how many books you want in each shipment, and the types of books you want and voila, books to your door. Once the books are returned you get a new shipment. It is a great resource to pass along to parents looking for some extra books for those avid readers.
Happy Reading!!

                                                                        Book Pig