I Dream of First Grade: Splat, Parts of Speech, Balanced Equations Freebies

I have put together some freebies for everyone this week. I hope you can find something you can use. Please leave a comment if you can. It always warms a blogger's heart. Also feel free to pin to your boards. I make it easy for you to pin by having a Pin Button for each picture! We had an amazing workshop by Kathy Bumgardner at our school last week. It was packed with ideas for getting children to examine the text. She has a great website so check it out. After the workshop I decided to use a book we were currently reading in our classroom Secret Agent Splat by Rob Scotton. We had read the book several times but this time we really took the book apart. We found the characters, settings and listed the major events as a group. Here is the anchor chart we created together.

After we created the anchor chart, read through the book again and checked our major events by using the text I decided to type the major events as given by the children. I used power point to create my document using the events named by the children. The next day we reviewed the major events together. The children then cut out the strips and put them in order working together and using the anchor chart. I think it is so important to use what the children create. They have ownership of the material.

They worked together to put the major events in order. I let the children work on the floor or wherever they felt comfortable. They used the anchor chart for a reference and discussed the text. Here is a finished product.

We are working on parts of speech and balanced equations in our class also. I created these freebies to use in my classroom. The lines are clean and simple. Some of my honeys seem to be overwhelmed by the extra fluff we love to add to printables. I needed to do away with the extras and create some clean sheets that were focused on the skills we need to learn. I love swirleys and twirlys but I needed to bring these skills into sharper focus! Check out the printables. I hope you can use them.