A Nonfiction Writing Unit

   Fall is definitely in the air! The mornings have a little chill, there are pumpkins everywhere I look, and to top it off we might get a little dusting of snow this Friday! My kiddos have been so excited for the fall activities that we have been working on this week.

   Everyday my kiddos practice their Daily 5 Math stamina. We even have a little daily countdown reminder on our board that lets us know how many days left we have to build our stamina to begin the rotations independently. 14 days left! I don't know who is more excited my kiddos or me?!?! I am excited to begin pulling math groups EVERY day during this 30 minute block. Today we introduced our math bins with graphing. I found some cute little Halloween erasers in the $1 section at Target and we used the graphing page from my Halloween Math Centers unit. After graphing how many erasers we had it was time to use our data to answer some questions.

   This week in our writing block we are using my Pumpkin Nonfiction Writing Unit. Our kiddos are learning about the pumpkin life cycle. They are using the vocabulary in addition to the steps of the life cycle into an expository writing piece including the transition words we have been learning. Here are some pictures from our unit...

 We began by finding pictures in magazines that display living and nonliving things.



Our vocabulary picture cards on our Science Focus Wall.

 Using our anchor chart to fill-in our graphic organizer.

We labeled each picture and wrote a topic and closing sentence.

   We are finishing up our final drafts tomorrow. My kiddos will then get to make a pumpkin life cycle craft on Friday. Here is a peek at what it will look like.

 When students pull out the "stem" the pumpkin life cycle will come out of the pumpkin on a string.

You can get these activities and many more in my Pumpkin Nonfiction Writing Unit by clicking on the image below.