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.

The Teaching Heart

Homeschool Share

Carol Hurst

Hubbard’s Cupboard

EconEdLink

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.

Masks

Left Mitten

Right Mitten

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.

 

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.

Prediction Worksheet

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

Posted by admin on March 5, 2011 in First Grade, Free, Grade 2, Grammar, Powerpoints, PPT, Primary, Reading, Sentence Construction

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.

Simple Tense – Short, Tall, Fat, Thin, Old, Young

Free Conjuction PowerPoint

Conjunctions are like box cars that link phrases, clauses and words together.

Below is a short PowerPoint I put together for my primary students on the proper use of using the conjunctions and, but, and or.

Conjunctions I

I created it specifically to compliment my Conjunction Junction mini-unit. You can check out the details here.

Gingerbread Man Thematic Unit

Posted by admin on December 22, 2010 in Christmas, First Grade, Grade 2, Holidays, Reading, Uncategorized

"Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!"

I’m kind of picky when it comes to Christmas stuff. I don’t go for the usual Santa Claus fare, but I do like gingerbread and in particular, I like the story, The Gingerbread Man.

If you teach emergent readers DLTK has a nice little Gingerbread booklet that you can print out. The focus is on I can… sentences. I copied and print it out and then stapled it together in order to save time in the classroom. On the first day, I read it to the kids and let them start coloring it, then the bell rang. The next day, I read it to them again and made them follow along, broke them up into pairs and then they had to take turns reading the booklet to each other. Once they were done, I let them finish coloring it.

Family Fun Magazine offers a PDF download that I’m using to create a gingerbread man booklet. There are two sizes of gingerbread men. I picked the littlest size and then fooled around with the copier to make 4 men to a page. You will need seven men for the following activity.

I’ve condensed the story down, so just write the following on the board:

Title Page – The Gingerbread Man

Page 1 – There once was a little old woman who decided to bake gingerbread cookies.

Page 2 –  When the cookies were done baking, out jumped the little gingerbread man!

Page 3 – “Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”

Page 4 -  he called as he dashed out the kitchen door. No one could catch him, until…

Page 5 – he came to a river and was outsmarted by a fox.

First, read the story to the students, most of them are already familiar with it. Then show them your sample. Be sure to write the procedures on the board (1. cut 2. staple 3. write sentences 4. draw 5. color.) Otherwise, a whole lot of class time may be wasted. I try to stick to the same general procedures every time I do this sort of activity so the kids know what to expect. Plan on stapling the hands and feet, but make sure that there are 7 men for each booklet and that the hands and feet aren’t too short, otherwise one of the men may try to get loose!

Kidzone has a whole page devoted to a gingerbread man thematic unit and  little giraffes has a nice page on the gingerbread man too and don’t forget to check out virtual vine’s gingerbread page.

How to Create a Graphic Organizer

Posted by admin on December 11, 2010 in Grade 2, Graphic Organizers

Family Members + Rooms in a House

Several times a week I find myself creating custom graphic organizers for my class. This is partly because I have to stretch out the curriculum and partly because I want to reinforce a concept or grammatical point.

I usually take my cue from the text book and focus on a specific skill.

I don’t consider myself especially tech savvy, but I do know my way around Word 2007. That is what I use to create the custom graphic organizers. I use the insert option a lot and try to liven it up a bit by using shapes with text inserted in the shape.

The graphic organizer below reinforces family members and rooms in a house. I used these family flash cards and these rooms in a house flash cards to reinforce the lesson from the text book. First, I had them practice their English conversation skills by having the students pick a family card. Then they had to ask their partner, “Where is your _____ ?” and the partner would pick up a room card and say “(He’s/She’s/They’re) in the _____ .”

The following graphic organizers were created for my second grade class in order to reinforce this skill.

G2 Where’s your…

G2 family.rooms

The following two graphic organizers are meant to go together. The students must match and paste the family relationship vocabulary to the correct definitions.  Detailed instructions can be found on p2.

family relationships p1

family relationships p2

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