Making connections!

Happy Thursday friends! School's out tomorrow so I'm going to be busy dyeing Easter eggs and playing at the park and, OK, maybe finishing up that Dinosaurs packet I've been working on. :-)

We've been working on text- to- text, self, and world connections in ELAR and every Thursday we read a folk tale from out Read- aloud books (Texas Treasures). These Folktales are usually perfect for plotting story elements because they are short and concise and easy peasy to figure out. Today we read "The Elephant and the Rabbit".

We start by making predictions from the title - there are no pictures so it is great for listening skills! After listening we always pick out the story elements and I draw them on our Story map:

 (sorry for the glare! and don't laugh too hard at the drawings!)

I usually use this as part of my small groups on Thursdays to check for comprehension. They retell me the story quickly and we usually write about the "lesson learned".

Because this folktale is all about bullying/ being kind to our friends it fits perfectly with what my little darlings are needing some help with right now! They are getting a tad bit tired of each other :)

We all drew about a time when someone was unkind to us - we did not name names and most of them used a brother, or cousin, anyway rather than a friend at school. They each got a sticky note and presented their text-to-self connection to the class. I made this chart at the beginning of the year and we use it a lot!

After discussing our connections as a class they all illustrated and labeled their connections:

If you'd like a copy of the graphic organizer, you can get it here.

Oh, and because intervention time was cancelled we made some fun little -op word family rabbit ears (with bunny patterns on the band!)

Have a fabulous night!