Principal's Pick, Whales, & Sequencing

Does anyone else do this?  

Each month our principal chooses a book, well, this year two books (fiction and nonfiction).  Each teacher then reads the books to her class and completes a reading/writing activity.

  September's nonfiction pick is Big Blue Whale by Nicola Davies.  I must say, I really enjoyed reading this book to my class!  And they loved it too. :)  

In fact, all of the nonfiction picks for this year are by Nicola Davies.  I read her book, One Tiny Turtle, last year and it was a great read.  I can't wait to read the others!

Before reading the book, we did some wondering.  What do you wonder about whales?

They really thought of some good questions!

Then we wrote one thing we learned about whales.

Hehe. :)

If you've never read any of Nicola Davies' books, I suggest you check them out!

In other news, we've also been practicing sequencing and writing stories.

My teammate shared an idea.  She photocopied some sequencing puzzles and had her class use them for writing.  

We tried it and the kids loved it!

I had a couple of volunteers come up and put the pictures in order and tell the story.  Then the class helped me write my sentences and spell some of the harder words. ;)

(Side note:  Please excuse my handwriting...)

Here are a couple of samples.  The kids didn't write as much as I'd hoped, but it was our first time doing this activity.  Hopefully next time they will add more details. :)

The cut the pictures out, glued them in order, and then wrote sentences to match.

"She gets the popcorn seeds and eats."

"The boy got paint.  And he painted his dogs house."

Happy Hump Day!