George, Abe, and Barack…

Hello everyone!

Click here for Katie’s Pack on TPT

This week, we’ve been working on activities with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  Our state standards require that first graders learn about influential Americans.  Although I’ve been creating a lot of resources for my students…I came across a pack by Katie Knight that has been a real time saver for me. 🙂  Her pack highlights 13 American Heroes.  I have placed the timeline pieces up on my cabinets, and as the the famous American ties into what I am teaching, I select pieces of her pack to use in my classroom.  We’ve already studied Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King.  This week, we used her resources for George Washington and Lincoln! 🙂

I’ve been really working towards pairing texts in my classroom during the read aloud times–making an effort to balance my read alouds with a mix of literary and informational texts. George Washington’s Teeth, by Deborah Chandra, A Picture Book of George Washington, by David Adler, A Picture Book of Abraham Lincoln by David Adler, The Gettysburg Address and Of thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama.

Today, I’ll share about my George pairings.  On Monday, we read the historical fiction text George Washington’s Teeth.  A true account of the struggle that Washington had with his teeth–written in rhyme.  The second book is a biography on the entire life of President Washington.  The students really responded to both texts.  While I read the book, I stopped and monitored their comprehension through targeted questioning and partner sharing.  (We’ve also been working on collaborative ways to ask and answer questions about our reading.)

On Monday, I read both of my George texts.  On Tuesday I read both of my Abe texts.  Today, We reflected on both texts with this Venn Diagram activity that I whipped up! 🙂  I took facts from each book and asked the students to fill it in!  They did a great job with it! 🙂
Once we did that…I had them brainstorm about what words they could use in their George Washington stories.  I just made a simple bubble map on the board.  The classroom was SO QUIET when they were writing!  They were really thinking about it! 🙂  It was so cool! 🙂

When we were done with our activities, I used Katie’s Assessment pages as a grade.  The kids really learned a lot!  I am so thankful for the time saver Katie’s pack will be for me over the course of the year as I teach about famous Americans.  Her craftivites are super sweet, and the kids REALLY got into doing George for morning work. Tomorrow we are going to be working on our Dr.Seuss hats for the parade on Friday, but they REALLY want to do the Abe craftivity too.  (My kids want to do a craft for every writing extension.  LOL…I think I’ve kind of spoiled them that way! LOL! 🙂  Our end of the year writer’s notebook will be SPECTACULAR though! 🙂