Mirror, Mirror… We have Courage one and all!

We have had a lot of fun this week working on Courage.  For the past two days my students have been working on making Courage Mirrors.  They have also made some personal connections to understanding courage and being courageous by writing their own personal narrative on a courageous experience and making a Courage tab booklet.  I love how cute their "reflections" turned out in their mirrors!

If you would like to use this activity with your own students you can pick up a copy at my Teacher's Notebook store.  

Courage Unit Review

This week we are spending time reviewing our Courage Unit.  My students will be making a little booklet where they create an award for each character we have read about.  I am so excited to see how these turn out.  I did something similar last year - but it always gets better the second time around:)

 You can grab a copy of this activity at my Teacher's Notebook Store.

Brave as a Mountain Lion

This week we read the story, "Brave as a Mountain Lion," in our Imagine It book.  My students really enjoyed this story - I think mostly because they could really relate on how a character had to do something very ordinary - like be in a spelling bee - but was afraid.


We worked on Cause/Effect events from the story as well as characterization.  Then my class worked on making their own connections to the story by thinking about things they have done a million times and were very comfortable doing.  As well as how they fell when they have to try something for the very first time.


Here's some student work samples:

To help them come up with ideas for this project - we brainstormed as a class.  First characterizing Spider at the beginning of the story and then again at the end of the story.  

I am not very good at drawing cute "anchor charts" but my students got the point.

If you'd like to use these resources in your classroom - you can visit my Teacher's Notebook store and pick them up!  Thanks:)

Akiak : A Tale from the Iditarod

My students have been busy….busy…busy.  We use the Imagine It! Reading series and I can't believe we are almost to our last unit.  This school year is just flying by.


This week we are reading a great story about a dog's courage called, Akiak: A Tale from the Iditarod.  My students have fallen in love with this story.  It has led to many discussions about how animals can show courage and be just as brave as people.


I thought I'd share a cute activity that they are working on…

I think he turned out adorable!  I can't wait to hang these in the hallway.  They are working on sequence this week - so they had to "draw" the major events in the story.  Then they used their drawings to write the sentences.  

Student Samples:

Love the blue eyes!

I made up a little packet to share on Teacher's Notebook.  It included the patterns to make Akiak as well as a variety of writing forms/prompts.  I also made a little scavenger hunt where my students have to look back in the story to find some things.  Hoping to help them remember important details about the story.

Click on the picture below to visit my Teacher's Notebook store to get this great resource!

Courage: Mirror Mirror on the Wall....

Our class has been reading stories about Courage in our Imagine It! Books.    After discussing many stories and ways different characters have shown courage, they wrote their own stories of courage.  I think they did a great job and I was very pleased with how neat they turned out:)

The Hole in the Dike and Courage Project #1

We started a new unit in the Imagine It! Series called Courage.  Students have been learning about what it means to show courage and how sometimes we might not be brave but are courageous when with friends.  This week we read a story called, "The Hole in the Dike."  Students sequenced the events from the story using vocabulary words and creating a "scene" from the story in Holland.

We have also been working on our Concept and Question board.  Our first project was to search the media (newspapers, magazines or the internet) to find an example of courage and reflect about it.