Horton and feeling special!

Also during Dr. Seuss week, my neighbor teacher invited us over to watch Horton Hears A Who. The next day we discussed the quote "A person's a person no matter how small!" and brainstormed ways we can help others feel special. We then did this writing craftivity with a peekover elephant. I saw the idea for the elephant somewhere online. Sorry I can't remember to give credit! We have also been looking for speech bubbles in our reading, so this was the perfect addition!

Dr. Seuss

We had so much fun reading Dr. Seuss books and doing fun activities getting ready for his birthday and Read Across America day. I found a million cute ideas on pinterest! We read The Foot Book then traced our feet and wrote antonyms on each foot, including a picture. We read The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and did some sequencing and venn diagram comparisons. One of the biggest hits of the week was definitely the day we read Green Eggs and Ham. We made predictions about whether or not we would like it, tasted it, and then graphed the results! Only half said they liked it on our graph, but most of the kids were getting seconds and thirds so I'm pretty sure they were enjoying it quite a bit!

On Friday, to wrap things up, we had "Seuss Juice" (recipe and how-to writing found on thefirstgradeparade) and starting an opinion writing piece about what our favorite Dr. Suess book was. It was a fun week!

Popcorn Adjectives

To kick off our study of adjectives, I found some cute ideas online using popcorn so I took the idea and rolled with it! First I explained what adjectives are (words that describe nouns) and then gave each student a small bag of popcorn to eat.

While they were eating, the students were thinking of words they could use to describe popcorn. What it tastes like, feels like, looks like, sounds like, etc. We then wrote those adjectives on the kernels of our popcorn anchor chart.

In the following days we did a few practice sheets where the students highlighted the adjectives they found in the sentences (they LOVE highlighters!!), wrote in their own adjectives, circled the describing words, etc.  I tried to upload these to google docs and it wasn't working. Too much frustration and work...sorry! Here's a picture so you get an idea.

Then we did an opinion writing piece on popcorn. The students started by brainstorming what to write about, their topic and three details to support their opinion. We use the idea of an oreo to help us remember we start with the topic (the top cookie), then put at least three supporting sentences with details to support the topic (the cream), and then a closing sentence that restates our topic in different words (the bottom cookie).

This was the graphic organizer we used for our prewrite.

Next we did our rough draft and used "rainbow editing" to fix our draft. First we use a yellow crayon to put a dot under each word. This helps the students make sure their sentences make sense and that they remembered a space between each word. Next they use a green crayon to capitalize the first letter of each sentence. Then they use a red crayon to put a period at the end of each. Finally, they use a blue crayon to circle words they need help spelling. After completing editing I go through their papers with them and finally they publish!
For this piece, after they finished I had them highlight the adjectives they used in their writing and they mounted it on a red popcorn bucket paper. They turned out really cute!