Lists, Letters, and Cards... Oh My!

I'm baaaack!  I was really bad during the holiday season, but things were just so hectic for a while and then, to be honest, I just needed a break from everything!  But I'm back and I've missed sharing!

This is my favorite time of year for writing.  It's so easy to make it not only fun but relevant to the the kids' lives.  December was full of lists, letters, and cards.  Usually I just do the wish list and Santa letter, but I have always felt like that just wasn't enough practice to get the letter writing format down, as well as learning to use voice in the letters and make them sound like conversation.  You know what I mean!  First graders have a hard time understanding that a letter is actually corresponding to someone, not telling a story.  You want to give the reader an opportunity (and reason) to respond.

Opportunity #1: Elf on the Shelf
This year, my classroom got a visit from a very special elf, which we named Cookie.  Cookie had her own email address, Cookietelf@gmail.com, and would email us letters about our behavior and answer any questions we had.  This is how we first started letter writing- writing letters to our little elf to find out more about her and to tell her about us.  The kids had a blast writing to her and were so excited when she would address their questions in her emails.

Opportunity #2:  Reindeer in Training
Next, we read Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and then wrote to Santa pretending we were reindeer.  Now, the kids knew they were writing to me, not the actual Santa, because we know Santa doesn't have time to read our pretend letters about being reindeer!  The kids had to write a persuasive letter to convince Santa why he/she would make the best reindeer to lead the way on Christmas Eve.  I loved reading these letters- they were so creative and so funny!  The kids took word choice very seriously on this one- they wanted their letters to stand out!

Opportunity #3- The Grinch
Of course we had to view my favorite Christmas tale, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, because reading the book myself just isn't the same!  This is a great story for word choice and voice as well.  I loved that we could work on reading goals (we were working on retelling and story elements) and prepare for writing at the same time!  We discussed the Grinch character and his motivation for his behavior- great character study!  After discussing the story, the kids were to pretend they were a Who in Who-ville and try to convince the Grinch not to steal Christmas.  More persuasive writing!  It was so sweet how some offered for the Grinch to come celebrate with them or told him they loved him.  Some also may have been a bit stern with him, but hey, it's Christmas!  No one should ruin Christmas!

Opportunity #4- Santa Claus
Cookie the Elf offered to drop the letters off to Santa upon her final return to the North Pole.  So here was the ultimate persuasive writing task- convince Santa that you have been good and sweetly ask him for what you want!  First, we cut out pictures of what we wanted and worked on labeling, finding the words in the ads that we needed and copying them correctly.  We don't want Santa to bring us the wrong stuff!  We made lists and hopefully checked them twice, then use the lists to help us write our letters.

After all of this writing, the kids were on a roll.  I put out list paper from the Dollar Spot at Target and they were off making to-do lists, grocery lists, more wish lists, lists of friends, etc.  I also put out donated Christmas and special occasion cards and the kids wrote letters to Cookie, their families, and even to me.  My cards were cute because they were "thank you for the thank you card" or "you're welcome for the gift" cards in response to the thank yous I had written for the thoughtful gifts!  I love seeing how inspired the kids are to write after this unit!  They were writing letters to their own elves at home, too, then bringing in the letters that the elves wrote back to share with their classmates.

I think that these letters brought out my kids' personalities (aka voice) and had some of the best vocabulary choices I've seen in their writing.  Now I have to find a way to connect this to other writing and we are set!  We aren't done with letters just yet, though... we have Inauguration Day on January 21st, so we'll have a chance to write letters to the President finally, as we didn't get a chance to do this after the election.  We will also work on thank you cards for gifts, too.

Reading A-Z

Reading A-Z: This is by far one of my favorite sites!  I am lucky enough that our school has a subscription for each of us.  You can project or print leveled books on just about any topic, along with a comprehension quiz, discussion cards, grammar/reading skills sheets, and more!  This week I am using leveled books to help me integrate science into my 90 minute reading block.  We are studying animals in science, and there are TONS of leveled animal books on the site.  This is such a great way to get more nonfiction books in the kids' hands!

The Motivation Factor
All the kids love these books, but it has really, really been beneficial to my struggling boys lately.  They can't get enough of these books and I almost cried this week at the effort they put into reading their book.  It's quite the sight to see a group of first graders huddled at a table discussing sharks, with their highlighters out to highlight new vocab, facts they learned, etc.  One of my girls brought in pages and pages of information she printed after we read a book about marsupials.

Finding Time to Fit it All in- Integration of Science and Language Arts
This is a constant struggle for me because there is just so much we want/need to do every day!  With these books, however, I am meeting science and reading goals and we are having fun doing it.  Some of the books even have writing prompts.  When reading the discussion cards, I also thought that these would be perfect not only for guided reading group discussions, but also for writing about reading during Daily 5.  It makes like so much easier and learning so much more meaningful when you can tie it all together, but sometimes finding the materials to allow you to do it is hard... not this week!!!

The Materials

Here is one of the Level B books I will be using this week.  It is below most of my kids' independent reading levels at this point in the year, but the content matches our science lesson perfectly.  It matches more closely how many of my students write at this point and could be awesome inspiration for writing a nonfiction book to go along with our science lesson!



 
This book is my favorite because it is available in levels E, H, and K, so all of my readers can be reading the same information at their own level!  It also has comprehension quizzes and discussion questions at each level.  Finally, there is a readers' theater script that has parts at all three reading levels!  So we can work on decoding, comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, and science content all at the same time. :)  My life just got so much easier!

We also belong to the RAZ-kids site, which has many of these books in e-reader format for the kids!  They can listen to a book or read the book themselves, earning points for each.  They also earn points for taking a quiz.  All can be redeemed for fun things at the Raz-rocket store, which honestly I don't pay much attention to.  I haven't even turned this on for my kids yet because they are just motivated to answer questions correctly and move up levels... you gotta love that!

So my plan for reading this week is to work on main idea and details in nonfiction books, as well as studying nonfiction features such as the table of contents, heading, glossary, index, etc.  Our big question in science is "How are animals alike and different?"  Reading books about which animals have stripes or spots, animal tails, animal feet, animal babies, and more will provide students with knowledge to be able to compare and contrast many different animals and sort them into groups based on similarities.  This provides students with background knowledge that they may not all have come in with, and expands it for those who started with some knowledge of animals.

Extension to Writing
There are so many possibilities for writing, from the discussion questions, writing our own books following the patterns provided in the mentor texts, using the writing prompts, and more.  One of my favorites that I did last year adapted a Kristina Smekens lesson.  We were working on stretching out words, so I used the sound box paper from one of her lessons (I don't know where that is right now) and stuck an animal sticker on each students' page.  They had to stretch out the name of the animal in the boxes, then write a description of that animal (like a riddle) for other students to guess.  This worked on the traits of ideas and word choice and the kiddos loved it!  My kids this year will have so much more background knowledge that will make their descriptions even better, not to mention how accurate they will be due to the science content!  I was also thinking that students could answer "Would you rather?" prompts, such as, "Would you rather have a tongue like a snake, or a tongue like a frog?" after reading Animal Tongues, or, "Would you rather be a giraffe or a snow leopard?"  This would provide an opportunity for some persuasive writing.

So now that I've saved time integrating subject areas, my new problem is that I need more time again since there are just so many ideas!!!!  That's a good problem to have I guess!

I am so excited about these lessons and really recommend that you check out Reading A-Z and Raz-Kids if you are not already familiar with these wonderful teaching tools.