Pawsitively Teaching: literacy

I am looking forward to reading one of my favorite winter books this week during read aloud time. If you will be including this text in an upcoming read aloud, I encourage you to download this FREEBIE and give interactive read alouds a try in your class.

I have been using interactive read alouds in my classroom for some time now. I am so proud of how much my little readers are developing in their ability to think about what they are reading as a result of participating in interactive read alouds.

For The Mitten, I have all the prep work completed for you to use it as an interactive read aloud. It is available as a FREEBIE.

The teacher guide outlines how to preview the text with your students, gives you talking points throughout the texts, and provides ideas for the students to respond to the text in writing. With everything planned for you, all you need to do is grab a copy of the book from your school or public library and enjoy reading it with your students.

I have also included a vocabulary builder graphic organizer with this FREEBIE. If you don't use read alouds in your classroom, I encourage you to give it a try this month. Everything you need for The Mitten is available as a FREEBIE by clicking on the image above.

Have you fallen in love with interactive read alouds? THIS UNIT contains 20 books that will keep your kids reading and thinking all winter long.

Happy Fall!!!! I just love Fall.....although we have yet to experience it this year in Texas there is hope it will be coming soon!

When you think of Fall.....PUMPKINS are always one of the first things that come to mind. What could be more fun than mixing PUMPKINS and literacy?

Sequencing is one of the many skills that helps increase a student's ability to comprehend what they are reading. Sequencing is the ability to identify the beginning, middle, and end of a story, and also the ability to retell the events of the text in the order in which they occurred. As students develop their ability to understand and place the details of a text in the correct order, they need to master the use of transition words.

Little Boo is the perfect book for October. It tells the story of a pumpkin seed that just can't wait to grow up and become scary. It is a great fictional text that describes the life cycle of a pumpkin. The illustrations in the book are wonderfully done.

After reading the book, the kids work on completing this graphic organizer showing the steps in the life cycle of the pumpkin. You can grab a copy of this graphic organizer by clicking HERE or on the image above.

Once the students have their graphic organizer completed, they use it to assist them with their writing. This is a fun way to work on using transition words to show correct sequence in their writing. The pumpkin mini-book includes a list of transition words that the kids can use as a reference. Since it is still early in the year, I like to have my students highlight the transition words they use to illustrate how transitional words improve the overall flow of the writing.

You can grab a copy of this mini-book for FREE to use in your classroom by clicking on the image above or HERE.

My literacy block is based around a theme each week. Little Boo fits in nicely during my pumpkin week.

In addition to working perfectly for sequencing and as a supplement to any unit on pumpkins, this book also conveys the importance of patience. Through this book, children see that sometimes it is necessary to wait a bit for what they want or for a dream to come true.

Did you catch my mystery word? If not, it is PUMPKINS. Now it's time to hop to the next stop. Thanks for visiting my blog today and I would love for you to stop back by sometime!