Gobble, Gobble

Another Thanksgiving-themed week in the library...

Thank You, Sarah, is a nonfiction book by Laurie Halse Anderson that tells the story of Sarah Hale, the woman credited with getting Thanksgiving to be recognized as a national holiday. I am always drawn to nonfiction books that a) tell a good story and b) highlight something I previously knew nothing about and this book delivers on both counts. In fact, I got quite a bit of mileage out of this book this week, using it in some capacity for 2nd, 4th and 5th grades!

Kindergarten and 1st grade once again shared the same read aloud, A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting (glad I have this blog to refer to, so I don't repeat next year!), but with different post-story activities. If you haven't read this one, it has a surprise ending, so it's a great story to use for practicing prediction. We began the read aloud and then I stopped the story about 2/3 of the way through (before the surprise is revealed). 1st graders divided into groups and drew on chart paper what they predicted was going to happen next. We shared our predictions and then finished the story. Kindergarten students had a more straightforward activity sheet, where they drew a picture of something surprising that might happen at their house.

This group's drawing included so many details from the text - yay for paying attention!

2nd grade continued genre with Nonfiction, using Thank You, Sarah as the representative text. We stopped throughout the reading to jot down what we thought were important facts and then students completed an exit ticket with these key facts of the story.

With the detour for Veterans Day last week, this was the week to kick off genres for 3rd grade with Mystery. I tried something new and attempted to read a chapter book - the November offering of the Calendar Mysteries - with mixed results. Maybe it was the book or maybe it's their attention span, but it was a little tough to keep their focus during this read aloud. Although, I did notice that a number of them checked out A to Z or Calendar Mysteries this week, so maybe they just had their own way of showing their interest level ;)

4th graders did some independent Chromebook work by working through a Webquest from Plimoth Plantation. They were really engaged throughout the exercise and seemed interested in finding out more about life at the first Thanksgiving.

5th grade had a refresher on primary sources and worked in small groups to actually translate Sarah Hale's letter to Abraham Lincoln. It's harder than it sounds (see how much you can decipher from the snippet below!). There was a connection to their Passion Project - I wanted to them to think if there were primary sources they might be able to use in their research.

The most successful of the 9 groups - not too shabby!