November...Thanksgiving...Primary Writing Here We Come!

It amazes me to think that it almost November! Oh, how the time flies once you hit October. At the end of September I wrote about how I got my kindergarteners to love writing by creating a Halloween Writing book. If you are just catching on to our blog then you can read about how I implemented my Halloween Writing Project and created a classroom of writers by clicking here. Since I received such positive feedback from my students about writing through the month of October, I had to figure out how I could keep this momentum going. Alas the Thanksgiving Poem Writing Project was born. This project was created with two goals in mind: first, continue this writing progress and second, sneak in a way to teach my students about the first Thanksgiving on a daily basis. To me, November always seems to be a month that if you don't plan it correctly it just sails by and I am always afraid that I will leave something out. Just like the Halloween book we go through one page a day.

This allows me to model my expectations for writing and illustrating. I also can then take the time to explain the historical event on that page. I have found that my students really enjoy the repetition of the poem and also look forward to what new fact the daily page is going to present to them. I always start this project right after Halloween because it helps to get my students off of the sugar rush and looking forward to the next holiday.

I have added in two different versions of the cover just in case you have a student who does not celebrate Thanksgiving.

If you want to continue to the writing momentum or just add in a fun holiday writing activity then click here to grab your copy.

For those of you who are wanting something a little more advanced I used this same project when I taught first grade only my students had to write the entire poem not just the second part as seen in the slide above. This was great because I used it for morning work and as a way to reinforce penmanship. Click here for the first and/or second grade version. For third and fourth grade students I (Susanne) have used this to teach and practice cursive writing. I found that even though I had older students they still got a great deal of enjoyment out of not only practicing their cursive but also participating in an educational holiday project which can easily fall by the wayside in the upper grades. Click here for the cursive version of this project. Happy November Writing!