Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month.   Celebrating their heritage with my students is something I look forward to each November.

Legends are inherent in any study of the Native American culture.  Thus, I begin by sharing picture books that are based on such legends.  Here are some of my favorites:

Perhaps my uber favorites are:

After reading The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, my 3rd & 4th graders research other wildflowers in the computer lab. They choose one for their own legend, telling how the wildflower came to be.  

My 1st & 2nd graders focus on winter counts and skin stories. After sharing pictures of actual winter counts, we compose a skin story together.  I display picture dictionaries of Native American symbols and we collaborate on how to "tell" our story using the symbols. Then we prepare a "skin" using a paper grocery bag or construction paper.  Tear the corners and sides to mimic the shape of an animal skin. In an effort to be more authentic, we record the story on our skin by writing in an oval that expands outward.

This is a collaborative story by a group of 1st graders.  2nd graders can do this independently.

The vocabulary of the Native American culture is often foreign to my charges.  Thus, I have created several literacy center activities that allow the students to work with the vocabulary while practicing skills aligned with the CCSS.  

This one requires students to put the words in alphabetical order, using up to the 2nd letter.

This one asks students to sort the nouns cards into piles of people, places, or things.

For more activities to extend The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, check out my thematic unit.  It is available on TpT and TN.










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Hat Day Riddles

It's about time, teachers, for some Hat Day riddles.

No, the riddles are not about why the chicken crossed the road.  Rather, these riddles are about literary characters, historic figures, or occupations associated with hats.  Try these out:

          He may never grow up, but my, oh my,
          This boy in green can certainly fly!

          Who is he?

          His hat is striped in white and red.

          He put a pink stain on mother’s bed.

          Who is he?

          He  often wore a stovepipe hat.

          Do you know a president like that? 

          Who is he?

Were you able to solve them?  My students love the challenge!  I write 1 or 2 riddles on the board each morning of Hat Week.  As soon as my students arrive, they begin copying the couplets for handwriting practice.  While completing this anchor activity, they can ponder who is described in the riddle.  

At our morning meeting, volunteers read the riddles before we share the answers.  This affords me the opportunity to assess my students' ability to read fluently, with expression, and with regard for punctuation.  Mini-lessons on these topics are easy to slip in daily, giving valuable reinforcement for these critical reading skills.

Hat riddles are fun and motivating.  They can provide valuable information about your students' problem solving abilities.  Moreover, they provide the students with ample opportunities for making connections: text-to-world, text-to-text, and/or text-to-self.

These riddles are part of my thematic unit, Hats!  Hats!  Hooray for Hats!  There are 29 riddles in all.  If you have some gifted/talented students, challenge them to write more couplet riddles to share with the class.  Doing so causes them to employ higher order thinking skills.  I am always amazed at the riddles my kiddos compose.

The ELA components of this thematic unit include vocabulary work, comprehension, poetry, alphabetical order, writing center ideas, and a 14 page booklet for students to make about Hat Idioms. You can download the Hat Idioms Book for FREE on TpT or TN.  Following is a preview of the Hat Idioms Book:

Hold onto your hats!  

Next time, I'll share some math activities from Hats! Hats! Hooray for Hats!

The answers to the riddles above are:

Peter Pan

The Cat in the Hat

Abraham Lincoln

Hat Day -- Jan. 15

It's about time, teachers, for . . .

National Hat Day, while not officially a national holiday (that requires an act of Congress), is a day dedicated to hat lovers everywhere.  On this special day, hats come out of the mothballs to make a statement about the wearer.  What could be better for a little winter fun and learning?!?

In my classroom, we dedicate an entire week to hats, culminated by wearing hats on the last day.  Since Jan. 15 is National Hat Day, I like to make that the day when my students can wear a hat of their choice to school.  While there is a school rule that hats cannot be worn inside, my principal gladly suspends that rule for the day for my class.  I love to watch my kiddos walk down the hall, beaming under their headgear as students from other classes stare with obvious envy.

There are scores of children's books on the subject.  I like to read 1 or 2 aloud each day. Here are some of my favorites:

• The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss
• Abe Lincoln's Hat by Martha Brenner
• Aunt Flossie's Hats (and Crab Cakes Later) by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard
• Aunt Lucy Went to Buy a Hat by Alice Low
• Away Went the Farmer’s Hat by Jane Belk Moncure
• Benny’s Hat by Dirk Walbrecker
• Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
• The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
• The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss
• Do You Have a Hat? By Eileen Spinelli
• Don't Touch My Hat by James Rumford
• Hat by Paul Hoppe
• A Hat for Ivan by Max Lucado
• A Hat for Minerva Louise by Janet Morgan Stoeke
• Hats! by Kevin Luthardt
• Hats, Hats, Hats (Around the World Series) by Ann Morris
• The Hat by Jan Brett
• The Hat That Wore Clara B. by Melanie Turner-Denstaedt
• I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
• Jennie’s Hat by Ezra Jack Keats
• Little Red Cowboy Hat by Susan Lowell
• Madeline and the Bad Hat by Ludwig Bemelmans
• The Magic Baseball Cap by David A. Ham
• The Magic Hat by Mem Fox
• Magritte's Marvelous Hat by D.B. Johnson
• Milo's Hat Trick by Jon Agee
• Old Hat New Hat by Stan Berenstain and Jan Berenstain
• Pinkalicious and the Pink Hat Parade by Victoria Kann
• The Scarecrow's Hat by Ken Brown
• That 17th Hat by Trevor Eissler
• A Three Hat Day by Laura Geringer 
• Tornado Slim and the Magic Cowboy Hat by Bryan Langdo
• Who Took the Farmer's Hat? by Joan L. Nodset
• Whose Hat Is This? A Look at Hats Workers Wear by Sharon Katz Cooper

Hats provide a perfect platform for a thematic unit.  Over the next several days, I will post ideas for using a hat theme in your classroom.  These ideas are found in my product, Hats!  Hats!  Hooray for Hats!  

It is available on TpT and TN.

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Hanging Out with Stellaluna, Part 2

It's about time, teachers, for more Hanging Out with Stellaluna.  This is the second in a 3 part blog post.  The first post focused on things to do BEFORE reading Stellaluna.  Today I'll address actually reading the book.

The illustrations Janell Cannon made are exceptional.  Her full color panels are captivating and do a wonderful job of making bats cute and lovable. Be sure to give your students plenty of time to enjoy those works of art.

Have you ever noticed the small, pen & ink drawings at the top of each text page? They will not be very apparent to your students unless you enlarge them, at least not while you are reading the book aloud. Those drawings tell a story, too. Challenge your class to explain how the story the pen &  ink drawings tell is different from the full color pictures' story.  

This would be a great time to launch a lesson on point of view.  The pen & ink drawings tell the story from the mother bat's point of view.

As you read the story to your children, invite them to make predictions about the story before you turn the page.  For example, ask them what they think will happen when Stellaluna can't hang on to the branch any longer.  Or, what do they predict the mother bird will do when she finds Stellalluna in her nest with her hatchlings?  What will happen when Pip, Flap, & Flitter try to fly at night?  You get the idea.  

And now it's bedtime, so until next time...

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Both of these products are available from my TpT Store or my TN Shop.

Hanging Out with Stellaluna

Do bats give you the willies?  Then it's about time, teachers, that you met Stellaluna.  

Stellaluna is an adorable baby bat that stars in Janell Cannon's award winning book, Stellaluna.  Although the book was published in 1993, it holds timeless appeal for children.  In fact, just this year, School Library Journal named it one of the "Top 100 Picture Books" of all time.  Stellaluna was featured on Reading Rainbow (my all time favorite TV show for children), as well as in the movie, I Am Sam.  It has also been released in an animated version on DVD by MGM & Scholastic.  

If you haven't fallen in love with Stellaluna yet, you need to crawl out from under that rock where you've been hiding!

Before reading this book to my class, I like to do 2 activities.  The first one is designed to gauge their feelings about bats before we study them.  To this end, my students add their name to a graph like this:

[One of my anchor activities each morning is a graph.  My students join the graph of the day upon arriving at school.  There's a new graph every day, so this is a rote action by my kiddos.]

Be sure to save this graph so that you can compare it to your students' feelings about bats AFTER you've studied them.  

The second thing we do is complete a K-W-L chart about bats.  NOW we are ready to read the book.  

By the way, I always pull Stellaluna out in early October.  My school no longer celebrates Halloween.  By studying bats, I can give a nod to this holiday without breaking the rules.  

I hope you will have time to come back soon for more ideas about teaching with Stellaluna.

P.S.  In response to a request, the bat graph is now available via Google Docs.  Use this link: bat graph

You may like these other resources for October:

 


Both are available in either my TpT Store  or my TN Shop.

Hooray for Hats thematic unit FREEBIE

It's about time, teachers, to start planning for the new school year.  As a primary teacher, I {heart} thematic units. Immersing children in a topic, carrying it across disciplines, and finding creative ways to meet the Common Core Standards are my passion.  One of my favorite thematic units is Hooray for Hats.  

This unit integrates ELA, math, HOTS, and creativity.  It is intended to last for 1 week, but I freely admit that I usually stretch it into 3 weeks.  There are so many hat related books to read aloud, so many writing topics, so many math activities, ...


The ELA components include vocabulary work, comprehension, poetry, alphabetical order, writing center ideas, and a 14 page booklet for students to make about Hat Idioms. You can download the Hat Idioms Book for FREE on TpT or TN.  Following is a preview of the Hat Idioms Book:

Hooray for Hats! math activities include computation, graphing, patterns, Venn Diagrams, journal prompts, sorting, measurement, and money.  Following is an example from the math portion:

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) are also included in Hooray for Hats!  There are homework assignment sheets and a craftivity.  If you like thematic units, I hope you will check out Hooray for Hats!

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Mad about March unit FREEBIE

It's about time, teachers....for spring!  At least we can hope.  Yesterday there was snow on the ground; today it's 66.  Gotta love March weather in the heartland!

Speaking of March, I have launched my thematic unit, Mad about March, for primary grades. You can find it on TpT and, now, on Teachers' Notebook.  The unit includes ELA, Math, HOTS, and music curricula.  The ELA activities are:

And here's a FREEBIE from the ELA portion of the unit:

The math portion of the unit includes:

If you like what you see, blow on over to my TpT store or  my Teachers' Notebook store.