Our K-2 teachers are working hard to solidify the foundational skills students need when learning to read and respond to text. The Story of Snow by Mark Cassino and Jon Nelson, Ph.D. is a fun addition to your winter library. This great nonfiction book is about how snowflakes are formed. To download the lesson, click here and get it now! Since I was in a kindergarten classroom, I chose only 5-6 pages to read aloud. After I read each page, I asked the students what they had learned, and they shared it with me as I wrote it on my chart. When you download the lesson, there is also a narrative book lesson included as well! Lots of fun is to be had this winter season.
When we finished reading the book, I showed the students their assignment, modeled how to draw each shape of snowflake that we learned about, and told them to choose their favorite snowflake to draw on their paper. Students then took their paper back to their seats and drew a picture of the snowflake, and labeled it. This was a nice break from sitting on the carpet and charting what they learned as we read.
Next, I modeled how to write on the lines of their paper. I chose information from our list of facts I wrote as we read and also talked about how many of the facts would fit with each of the sentence stems on their paper. We did the first one together, and then they began to fill the rest in either from my chart or on their own.
NOTICE- I wrote the wrong word in my sentence, and one of the students said, "They are called arms on a star-shaped snowflake, not points." 😂 So, of course, I had to go and edit my word choice to correct it! I was so impressed with how much they could recall and use in our conversations throughout the lesson.