Let The Olympic Games Begin!

I love the Olympics! To be completely honest it is the only time I watch sports. I have quite a few students this year that are very eager to start reading chapter books, especially the Magic Tree House series. For a first grade student the biggest challenge after word recognition is reading comprehension and stamina. I decided to create a unit to use as an enrichment piece for small group instruction, that would include the current events that are going on in the world. The unit was designed to accompany the Magic Tree House Book #16, Hour of the Olympics. It includes comprehension questions for each of the ten chapters, character maps, a character map writing activity, a map skills activity, four non-fiction close reads that tie in social studies elements, a compare and contrast activity, two comprehension tests with keys, an olympic sports log, a narrative writing prompt and an opinion writing prompt, an olympic craft and a gold medal graphing activity. This unit was also created with both the Summer and Winter games in mind, so that it could be a resource for either one. This is a great way to include current events and non-fiction into a whole group read aloud or small group instruction. This could also be used for literature circles. Check out some of the unit pictures below and let the games begin!

Let's Start the Year with a Freebie!

Happy New Year! As part of my first grade morning work I do what I like to call a word of the day. This is a really great way to introduce and reinforce vocabulary. I like to pick words that correlate with what I am teaching for my Common Core ELA block. These usually have a Science or Social Studies theme since everything is now integrated. At the beginning of the year the students are required to trace the word, write it three times, fill in a sentence using the word, unscramble the letters and paste them in the correct order, and then use the word in their own sentence. After I have taught nouns, verbs and adjectives I have my students start to circle these parts of speech in their sentence using certain colors (red for nouns, blue for verbs and green for adjectives). This has really helped my students with their writing while at the same time reinforcing these grammar components. When we return this January, I have updated the activities to make them more challenging. They will only need to write the word twice, fill in the sentence using the word, and then instead of unscrambling the letters they will need to write two sentences (one asking and one telling) using the word and identify the noun, verb and adjective in each sentence. If you would like to try out a few of these worksheets with your students be sure to check out my New Years Word of the Day Freebie as well as my other Word of the Day Units in our TPT store!