I'm back from vacation and ready to roll after a fun week of hiking, free wine-tasting and poolside lounging! :) Just in case if you're new to the blog, here's how it works:
- Swing by the blog on Saturdays to snag a sweet free treat
- See a sneak peak of the Sunday Super Steal Deal item (or items)
- Super Steal Deals start on SUNDAY and last all week!
- Facebook Fans have an additional opportunity to win the Sunday Steal Deal (so make sure you're a fan!)
Today's free treat comes from my two class book packs. There are TWO covers (black and white/color options) and book-specific prompt pages to help your class start creating class books on Day One! Click on either picture to snag your sweet freebie. :)
My kiddos love to create class books. We usually make 1-2 per week (on Fridays when we have a shortened literacy block). During this time I do a whole-class writing lesson, modelling my response first before letting them go to write their own pages. I focus my mini-lessons to correlate with what we're learning about in writer's workshop and the weekly books relate to our theme. In the beginning I do a lot of mini-lessons based on the writing process and mechanics, such as...
- What is the first thing a writer should do? THINK what they want to say!
- How do I show what I want to say? Through pictures and words!
- How do I write that word? Stretch out the sounds!
And so on. We spend a lot of time referencing our writing anchor chart, which is modeled on this way more awesome and cute one from Mrs. Jones's Kindergarten:
Eventually mini-lessons progress to more complex aspects of the craft. For example, in the mini-lesson below I modeled using a nonfiction text feature (labels) to help teach my readers about penguins.
Then I let the kiddos pick their own polar animal to write about. Here's what they were able to say after two weeks of learning about our polar pals! (You'll notice that these are not prompt-specific pages. In the class book packs there are differentiated page templates to support the different levels of your writers, in addition to prompt-specific pages).
And this one is my absolute favorites! I just love all the blood and guts. :)
On the very first day of school we make The Kindergarten Kissing Hand after we have read the book with our parents and then said goodbye. It's a great way to start modelling making text-to-self connections (How did Chester feel? How do you feel?) and learning about the 3 ways to read a book (pictures, words, retell)! I also get a valuable portfolio sample with this book that tells me many things right off the bat- how they write their name, their knowledge of letters/sounds, and I get a self-portrait.
The kiddos get so excited when I put the class book in our special class book basket in the library and explain that this is where books we publish will go all year long and they will get to check them out. At the end of the year I have a system to determine who will get to take which book home, which you can read about by clicking on the picture below.
You can grab all these awesome book covers, prompt-pages, general templates and more for this week's Sunday Steal! BOTH book packages are discounted at 50%
P.S. The rest of my store is also 20% off for the next two days! Enjoy and good luck getting ready for back to school!
Thank you so much for these cute books!! It is so wonderful to have activities to work on during the first day/week of kindergarten!! Thank you so much for making this a freebie that we can complete with our kinders right and the beginning of the year!!
ReplyDeleteWarmest Wishes, Erin from Kindergarten Dragons