‘Twas two weeks before break and all through the school,
All the children were crazy and not following the rules.
How about you? Are you ready for Christmas Break, yet? I love almost everything about the weeks before Christmas. (Christmas crafts, Christmas decorations, Christmas programs and plays, Christmas music, …) However, wouldn’t it be perfect if we could slow it down and not try to squeeze everything into a short time frame? Then, the icing on the Christmas cookie would be to have perfectly behaved students. I know…I want to still believe in Christmas miracles. Anyways, I wanted to show you a couple of things that we are doing in the classroom in preparation for Christmas.
We will be performing our ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas Reader’s Theater next week. I wrote this last year for my students, but then made it editable before putting it in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. I’m so glad I did that because it was so easy to switch out my students names for this year.
You can grab the reader’s theater HERE if you are interested.
We also made these measurement trees from Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten.
To gear the lesson towards 1st graders, I have them actually measure their strips and cut them appropriately. I cut out 8×1 inch strips from a packet of scrapbook paper. Then, the students each picked 5 strips. They glued the first 8 inch strip on the bottom, cut the second strip into a 7 inch and a 1 inch piece, the third strip into a 6 inch and a 2 inch piece, and so on until they created their tree. Then, we used white paint and Q-tips to make snow. They make a really easy bulletin board display.
Another great way that we have been helping to control the Christmas chaos is by using my Reading on the Move Christmas Edition.
The students have so much fun moving around while they practice their reading. It’s a nice way to mix things up a bit during the holiday season. You can check it out in my store HERE.
We have also been busy with our Gift of Kindness. You can read more about it HERE. Today, we gave out candy canes to every adult in our building.
The students absolutely LOVED this activity. The first set of students delivered the candy canes to the office staff. When they came back, two of the boys immediately told me how good it made them feel to give something to someone else. Too cute! You can download this editable note HERE.
We have also been completing activities from my Christmas Comprehension packet.
We are having fun reading Christmas stories while practicing our comprehension skills. You can check it out HERE.
Even though I cannot wait until Christmas, I still cannot believe that we are in the middle of December already! How are you surviving the last week before break?
The Five Step Fluency Process includes:
We read the article together and discussed the things we learned. Then, I had the students highlight anything new that they learned from the article. They loved going back into the text to look for new knowledge.
We reread the article and discussed the main idea and key details in the text. This particular article was perfect for this nonfiction skill. I had the students come up and place a Post-It note on each part.
This gave them a perfect visual of this comprehension skill.
I have to admit, I was a little worried about this at first. I explained over and over again that they needed to work together and plan out their charts. I tried to explain to my students that they did not want to just start cutting and gluing. They would have to come up with a plan as to where to place things before they glued everything down.
I eventually just let go of the control of wanting a “pretty” anchor chart and allowed them to plan and learn from their mistakes. I was SO pleasantly surprised!
Their end results were amazing. We only had one group that accidently threw away two of their text feature labels, so they left them off of the chart. One group out of 5…I call that success.
Scholastic believes that students learn when educational topics are meaningful to them. That’s why each Scholastic Classroom Magazine takes a specific subject like math or language arts and uses captivating photos, informative writing, and impressive online features to make it relevant and engaging to every student. Not only do students love Scholastic Magazines, teachers love using them in their classrooms because they provide invaluable instructional materials that meet current academic standards that prepare students for state tests.
I am a little bit obsessed with cute monsters…not scary ones. I even had a “monster themed” 1st 
