Christmas Descriptive Writing

I finally remembered to take a picture of my students' work with the Christmas descriptive writing unit.  After reviewing with them and comparing the two pictures together, I realized what an improvement the majority of them had made from Halloween.  I can't wait to see what they do in January.

 Enter at Teacher's Notebook for a chance to win this Christmas Descriptive Writing Unit! 

Freebie Friday: Christmas Multiplication Freebie

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Everywhere you go!!! Good thing you can't hear me singing. LOL

Anyways, the whole month of December I've been working to instill the concept of multiplication with my kiddos.  I am an absolute firm believer in knowing the concept behind the math before memorizing anything.  So we've done all kinds of work with groups of things and relating it to repeated addition and multiplication notation.  For some of my work, I used Pearson's Investigations Unit 5.  I made this freebie to complement that unit but it can absolutely be used alone.  Also, check out my Teacher's Notebook store while you're there picking up your freebie.  Everything in the store is 30% off and I'm also hosting a GIVEAWAY! Enter for a chance to win the Christmas Descriptive Writing unit.  This freebie can also be found in my TpT store as well.
Click here for your freebie!  These are some of the pages you get with this freebie!!

My students really enjoyed this unit and I think they did a great job with it!  They used some stencils I had in my room for the pictures.

My friend and teaching partner Nicole had a great idea for modeling arrays.  She had the students make trays of cookies.  Here are pictures of her students' work.  Love this idea and will use it next year!!

I love comments!  Please let me know if you use these ideas or if you have an idea that you can add to this post.  I love Blog Followers!  Please follow me if you like what you see!

Christmas Descriptive Writing Day 2

Okay, so my kiddos wrote their descriptions yesterday of their Christmas objects: a sweater, a stocking, or an ornament.  Their descriptions have definitely improved since we first tried the Halloween descriptive writing  activity.  Today we exchanged descriptions to see if students could determine which object was being described.  I laid out blank copies of each object.  As the students read the description that their friend wrote they went and picked out the appropriate object.  We had to make a few swaps in the end which led to a few enlightenments on both the part of the reader and the writer.  The students then had to recreate the object using only the written description.  It was so much fun this time.  The students asked as they turned them in if they could compare their drawings to the originals.  So many of them were very close.  I was very proud of my little authors.  I even had a couple debates today.  One student was determined that he wrote enough details and set out to prove it.  It turned out he was correct and the reader didn't read very closely.  LOL They were priceless!  I post pictures soon!  I am also working on a multiplication concepts unit.  So far it based around a Christmas theme but it could probably hold its own in January too.  We had a lot of fun with the picture story problems today.  I'll post pictures soon.  I am going to a conference tomorrow on CCSS so I won't be at school.  Here is a link to my Christmas Descriptive Writing Unit on TpT in case you would like to try it!

Christmas Descriptive Writing

I was so excited to start my Christmas descriptive writing project today at school.  To my dismay though I found out when I got there that the color printer is broken and we do not know when we will be getting it fixed.  I had to think of something quick to replace my idea.   I decided to switch my unit up a little.  I gave each student a blackline copy of either an ugly Christmas sweater, an ornament, or a stocking.  I told them to color the picture and/or add designs to it anyway they wish.  We did something similar to this for Halloween only I didn't give them a pattern.  They had to draw a monster from scratch.  Tomorrow my students will have to write a description of their picture.  I am going to mix up the descriptions and have the students try to guess from the description what picture their friend colored.  I will have a stack of blacklines for them to choose from.  Once they find the blackline that they believe matches the description, I will have them recreate the picture from the description only.  Originally, I was just going to have my students use the colored copy only and then write a description.  KPMdoodles has some of the most wonderful clipart.  I used her Ugly Christmas Sweater Set and her Holiday Trimmings Set to make a descriptive writing unit.

Here is an example of a sweater and a stocking for the kids to describe.  I can't wait for tomorrow to see how the students write their descriptions.

If you would like to know more about this unit please visit my Teacher's Pay Teachers store or click on the picture.  Here is a freebie from that unit that can be used in multiple ways aside from descriptive writing.