Twas the Night Before Christmas

One of my favorite traditions as a child, was to sit and listen to this famous poem snuggled up with my mom or grandmother. They both introduced me to the beautiful artwork that went with this poem, by GrandMa Moses, and we spent hours looking at the tiny details in her paintings.

Most teachers like to take a break for the daily grind right before the holidays. When I have looked for resources before, they are usually very cute and very fun! While I love cute and fun, as a Reading Specialist I want to add meaningful to the list as well.

This unit is designed to take five days. You will read two stories about the Night Before Christmas - one is the actual poem and is told from the viewpoint of the father in the house. The second is told from a mouse's perspective - a lonely mouse none the less. Each story has two days of shared reading in which we explore multiple skills - Characters, Setting, Events and Perspective/Point of View. It is a two day close read for each book.

Since my units are based on the Other End of the Reading Rope - Language Comprehension, they will include:

Ways to elicit and build background knowledge

Vocabulary words and strategies

Sentence Structure analysis

Verbal Reasoning and Visible Thinking

Written responses

Interactive Read Alouds

Another added bonus with my products is integration of another subject area. For this, I chose to integrate the visual arts of GrandMa Moses.

We will look at several of her paintings and work together on a critical thinking task to notice and note what is happening in the pictures.

I am also working on two other Christmas Resources that will be release soon. One is more for 4-5th grade and deals more with helping others and historical fiction of Patricia Polacco. The other is my absolute favorite arts integrated unit - Using the Nutcracker! Stay tuned!

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