Halloween Poem Book

This is a project that my children did in elementary school, so I applaud the teacher I was working with at the time for the great idea. It consists of 26 pages, one page for each alphabet letter. The poem goes through the alphabet talking about Halloween type things. " A is for attic with spooky old things. B is for bats with black flapping wings." It continues like this through the alphabet. Initially I  wrote out the poem on chart paper, one letter a day. The students would copy it and then draw a picture which describes what the poem is saying.

As the years have progressed and I went from first grade to third, I changed it up a bit by creating a cursive version. The premise is the same, however I wrote the day's entry in cursive, for the students to copy. Even as third graders, they love this project. Now we have created a computer version of the poem, with pages for each letter and as well as a power point poem, so if you don't 

have time to re-create it on chart paper, you could show one slide a day for the students to copy. 

We have created two different files, one for primary grades which is titled Halloween Poem Book, and the third grade cursive version is titled, Cursive Halloween Poem Book. The file consists of the alphabet pages, power point poem, a black and while version of the cover page to make a book for each student. We start this project at the end of September, so we can get through all 26 letters of the alphabet by Halloween.

We printed our cover pages on orange copy paper, but the rest of the pages we printed front to back, which used less paper. I hope your students enjoy this project as much as ours do.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                           
                         

Word of the Day

Well the school year has set off like a bang and I'm convinced that there must be some sort of protection mechanism in a teacher's brain where we forget how long the first month of school truly is. For morning work I have been using something called Word of the Day. I got this idea from Made for First Grade a few years ago and then adapted it so that it would co-inside with whatever unit I was teaching. I also use the word of the day as a classroom management tool (something I saw on the teacher channel). I teach my students that when I am giving directions they are expected to stay in one place and listen to the complete direction. I am sure you have noticed that children, especially young ones are already on the move before you even finish the directions. This means that most likely the child has either missed all of the directions or at least a good portion of it. By having the students wait for the word of the day it means that he or she is forced to pay attention until all of the directions have been given. The word is then their cue to move forward and complete the directions. If you are interested in trying this in your classroom and you are planning a Frog and Toad unit (or a Frog Life Cycle unit) then you need to check out my Frog and Toad word of the day worksheets and posters! Check out the picture below for a sneak peak.