The Mitten – Activites, Lesson Plans and Ideas
The Mitten, by Jan Brett is an excellent book to read with your ELL students during the long Winter doldrums that continue on after the return back to school from the long holiday break.
I’d like to give my friend Miss Christie a special shout out for reminding me about what a fabulous resource Jan Brett’s book, The Mitten is for ELL students.
The main reason I like The Mitten is because it’s the perfect Winter themed activity that is great to use during the January/February doldrums.
The sites I’ve included below, contain lots of activities, lesson plans and ideas that you can use in your classroom.
Jan Brett’s Site – Includes some really cute PDF printouts that you can use to have the children retell the story while they “tuck” the animals inside the mittens.
The Animals that you can tuck inside the mitten.
The Fly Swat Game
The fly swat game is very versatile. You can use it for spelling, academic vocabulary, math and just about any subject that requires students to identify a word, sentence, phrase, number or equation.
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this game.
Here’s how we play it in my classroom. First, I divide the board up into two sides, a side for the boy’s team and a side for the girl’s team. Next, I assign a score keeper. The score keeper sits on a little stool off to the side and keeps track of the points.
On the board, I put up the vocabulary words we are studying or short sentences that focus on the grammatical skills we are building. I’ve even put up clocks to reinforce time-telling skills.
This is also a great game to play for test reviews and reinforcing vocabulary.
Vocabulary Director & Word Detective Literature Circle Response Cards
Literature Circle response cards help students focus in on their task without overwhelming them.
I cruised through my little stash of literature circle resources and decided to condense them into a mini version of some of my favorite literature circle worksheets.
It’s a work in progress…
Vocabulary Director and Word Detective Response Cards - This page contains two vocabulary cards.
The first one is for the Vocabulary Director job. The instructions are below.
While you’re reading, write down at least four words that are new to you. Write down the page number, the paragraph and line you found it on. Write the word and the definition that best fits the sentence. Record the information in the space provided on the cart below. Your next task is to come up with a presentation plan. How will you present it to your group? Will you challenge your group mates to a race to see who will find the word first? Be creative!
The second one is for the Word Detective. The instructions are below.
While you’re reading, write down at least four words that are new to you. Write down the word and the word origin. Does the word contain any Greek or Latin root words? What is the meaning of the root word? Find the definition that best fits the sentence. Record the information in the space provided on the chart below.
Unit Spelling Words
What's the scoop? Well, the scoop is that each week the new spelling words will be posted in a PowerPoint that has links to the dictionary for definitions, pronunciation and oh, so much more!
Each week from now on, until the end of the school year, I will post our new unit spelling words. Even if you aren’t part of my class, please feel free to download a copy of the PPT and use it in your classroom to reinforce spelling and vocabulary.
Next to each word will be a “click here” link. The link will take you directly to the dictionary where there will be the definitions, examples and a sound file that students can listen to for the correct pronunciation of the targeted word.
Literature Circle Response Cards
Literature Circle Reading Response Cards divide and chunk down the roles, so English Language Learners (ELL) can participate in Literature Circles in an authentic and meaningful way.
Literature Circles can be overwhelming even for native language speakers, but there is a way to get ESL students interacting with the text without having them freeze up in a panic.
Literature Circle reading response cards chunk down the roles in to manageable bite size pieces. I wish I could take credit for this one, but I happened to stumble upon it while browsing through the teacherspayteachers.com website.
While some of these TPT free worksheets may not be exactly broken down into chunk sized pieces, you can be the judge as to their usefulness in your classroom adapt them to meet your student’s needs.
Non-Fiction Reading Response Cards
Read and Draw Silly Monsters
Students read sentences about silly monsters and then draw them exactly like they are described.
Check out the two worksheets I developed for my first graders. They have to read a sentence about an imaginary animal and then draw it exactly as it is described.
G1 Greeperdorn – This worksheet has two imaginary monsters on it, the greeperdorn and the bumblesnap. I’m going to use it to walk the students through the process and then they can take it home to use it as a study sheet.
G1 Woogle – There are two monsters on this worksheet, the woogle and the wubble. I plan on taking a grade on this one. Be sure everyone knows what a beak is otherwise there maybe some confusion.
Free ESL Simple Sentence Writing Worksheets
Sentence paterns make writing English a breeze.
Below are two free down loadable worksheets I put together for my first grade class. They are a mix of the three sentence patterns we have been working on this unit.
- _______ can ________ , but he/she can’t __________.
- Do you like _________________?
- Can you play________________?
Classroom Surveys
Classroom surveys are a great way to get your students speaking "authentic" English.
Amazingly enough, for the first time this year my first, second and third graders are all working on the same theme at the same time.
The worksheets I created are available for download. Just right click your mouse and click “save as.”
Fruit and Vegetable Class Survey – use this Word document to get the students speaking and writing English. Class surveys are always a hit. Just be sure to monitor them closely, to make sure everyone is using English. Typically, I have them write the sentences and that usually generates spontaneous conversations about spelling and grammar.
What Do You Want To Eat? – use this Word document to get students used to using new food vocabulary. You decide on which vocabulary words you want your students to focus on – the worksheet is divided up into categories. The students ask their classmates a simple question and they fill in the blank. I deliberately doubled it up so you can cut the paper in half and then have the students use their own notebook paper to write the sentences.
Free Prediction Worksheets
Prediction is a skill that every student needs to master.
Prediction is a skill that is on most standardized tests.
You can download a copy of the prediction worksheet that I whipped up for my class, below. I saved it as a Word document, so you can add additional columns/rows. It is best to use with picture books that are light on text. You can adapt it to go with any book you choose.
Below you will find links to other resources that contain lesson plans and worksheets all geared to mastering the fine art of making predictions.
Have Fun Teaching – links to a website that has some worksheets.
The Teacher’s Corner links to a page with a lesson plan that reinforces prediction skills.
Reading Rockets – links to a website that lesson plans and anticipation guide templates.
Making predictions about pictures – links to a pdf file.
First Lines- explains when and how to use this strategy.
The Reading Lady – links to a page with a list of PDF worksheets and Word documents you can download for classroom use.
Free First Grade PowerPoint
Students practice writing simple tense sentences using short, tall, fat, thin, young and old.
I’ve created a simple PowerPoint that focuses on constructing simple sentences. Click the link below to download. As always, all my PowerPoints are free.