Must Read Mentor Text - How To Build Your Own Country

I am linking up with Collaboration Cuties for Must Read Mentor Texts.  This week we are focusing on Social Studies.

We have been reading How To Build Your Own Country.

The students have been loving to read how countries are formed as we are "creating" our own countries.  Some "countries" in my class include: Manland, Frozenia, and Shapetopia.  I will share our projects when we finish them up after Spring Break.  For now here are a few of the pages.

The book is written in small chunks that can be used individually for class read alouds, in small groups, or independently.  It has been one of the most engaging non-fiction texts I have found!

Learning About Frogs - Carousel

We are beginning a research/non-fiction unit on frogs (since we will be getting a class pet soon!). Before I told the kiddos what the unit was about (and what pet we were going to get), I had them complete a carousel activity.  I set up 6 stations around the room with pictures and chart paper. The chart paper was pre-labeled with "What I Notice" and "What I Wonder".

The students worked in groups of 3 and had 3 minutes at each station to talk about what they noticed.  Each group had a different colored marker and wrote down some of their observations and questions.

It was really fun to see what things they noticed (and what things grossed them out!). It was a great way to introduce the unit and get their brains engaged.  They did eventually guess that we would be learning about frogs.

I am working on the complete unit as they work on it, but I will eventually post the final unit to TpT when it is done.  In the meantime, you might want to check out my Can We Get a Pet Unit which kicked off the whole project you see here!

Have you used a carousel in class before? What other engagement ideas do you use?

Teaching Non-Fiction - Freebies!

This week we begin our unit on non-fiction.

One of the resources I will be using are these 3rd Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets from K12.com.  The site also features free reading comprehension worksheets for other grades as well.  I will be printing out worksheets from the other grade levels to help differentiate for my kiddos.  I have a few kiddos reading at a first grade level, and a few reading at a 5th grade level, so I love that I can do this.

The site features 36 free printable passages (you could use one a week or pick a few to focus on during a non-fiction unit like I am).  The passages include a a cross-curricular focus on earth science, physical science, history, social sciences, mathematics and life sciences. This allows students to build their reading comprehension skills and reinforce knowledge in other subject areas.

Hope you find them as useful as I did!