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!

Follow me on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/theotherendofthereadingrope/

Follow me on TPT:

Comments

A New Way of thinking about comprehension

How many times have we, teachers, worried about testing to determine whether our students understand a comprehension skill or strategy? In LETRS, Moats and Tolman talk about the many hidden mental activities that happen in comprehension. In other words, comprehension is more of a process than a product. Well, that makes sense. So what are those processes of comprehension ? Monitoring comprehension - my favorite strategy for this is STP (Stop, Think, Paraphrase) Reading with appropriate pace - pacing actually correlates to understanding text Making inferences as you read - what are the characters thinking or feeling? Making a mental model to organize thinking and understanding Making connections in the text with views and background knowledge How can we support those processes of comprehension? Reading multiple texts around one topic helps to build background knowledge. In another blog I will talk moe about this critical com...

Vocabulary - it's more crucial than you may think!

Just like phonics, direct, explicit instruction is the best way to teach vocabulary. Explicitly teach a New Word - pronounce, write and read the word tell students what it means - using student friendly definition, props or actions say the words multiple times while giving examples, sentences, or asking questions using it ask yes or no questions ask students to use the words during the day How to Practice Vocabulary Words dimensions of word knowledge - look at synonyms, antonyms, categories of examples, multiple meanings, etc.. Four Squares are great graphic organizers for analyzing words in depth. Multiple Meanings - one of the biggest confusions with students are words that have more than one meaning. As you get into the Upper Grades, there becomes more and more examples in grade level text. One way to practice, is by taking the word and using a web to show the various meanings. Classification into Categories - sometimes we spend more ...

Thanksgiving Tradition - a mini shared reading unit

Thanksgiving i s fast upon us...are you looking for a quick mini unit that uses three Thanksgiving books centered around the topic of Community Thanksgiving Traditions. In our Kindergarten classrooms, we are learning about communities and neighborhoods currently and suddenly found Thanksgiving was knocking on the door. In order to continue to build background knowledge and connections to our community, we decided to create a mini-unit about how American families celebrate Thanksgiving. Even though this was created with Kindergarten in mind, it could easily be used in grades K-2.

The OTHER end of the Reading Rope - science of reading

Search This Blog