Thematic Thursday-Pumpkins Galore

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Thematic Thursday is a weekly teacher linky party focused on the sharing of ideas for a different theme each week. This week’s theme is “Pumpkins Galore”, and bloggers are asked to share their favorite resources, book ideas, activities, and suggestions to help students learn about spiders.  Please grab the image above as well as the template below, write up your post sharing your ideas, resources, and anything that fits the theme, and link up your blog name and intended grade level for the resources and ideas you share.  (Example-Comprehension Connection-4th and 5th)  Please remember that this link up is for blog posts only.  No store links will be allowed even with freebies as the hope is for readers to return to these themes later in the year or when they wish to focus on the theme.  Many themes can be used any time of year. The image below can be used to plan out your posts and once completed works beautifully for pinning. [This board] has been formed to collect our planning sheets as well as other themed resources.  I look forward to reading your posts.  Now, on to mine…
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Welcome to another fun week with Thematic Thursday.  This week, I am teaming up with my blogging buddy, Krista at Teaching Momster.   Krista’s blog is focusing on pumpkin math activities for her weekly Math Madness Linky while my blog will focus on literacy. Those who link choose to link up can choose one or the other or both!
the2bgreat2bpumpkin2bheist2bpartner2bscript-9575598I thought I’d start with what’s happening in my classroom. My students have had great fun with two fall themed partner scripts I’ve made.  The first set I used focuses on pumpkins and is  called The Great Pumpkin Heist.  I am using it with my fourth grade group, and the readability of the script between 3rd and 4th.  Here is the preview file I put together. The set includes a vocabulary page, question task cards, and a post reading character traits page. ($2.00)  The children started out with me for prereading vocabulary and schema building.  Then, I paired them for partner reading.  Afterwards, I brought them back to our small group table to use the task cards for discussion (Day 1).  On day two, we reviewed the vocabulary, did a mini lesson from an Interactive Notebook set I have on character traits, practiced a second time, and used the character traits organizer for post reading.  The children thoroughly enjoyed it.  

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Another great freebie that I’ve taken advantage of comes from my friend, Erin at Mrs. Beers Language Arts.  It fit perfectly since I’ve been using Close Reading Strategies with my students in both fourth and fifth grades.  However, it worked best for my fifth graders due to the reading level of the text.  I loved that it was an informational article since we’ve been working on summarizing strategies for nonfiction.  Gail Gibbons book, The Pumpkin Book, would work well as a read aloud to compare and contrast with the article later too.

This week, we’ve also focused heavily on paragraph formation.  I’ve discovered my students in the middle grades need a refresher on writing paragraphs that follow the Hamburger Model, and several of the themes from previous weeks work well for quick writes that stick to a topic.

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pumpkin2bplanning2bsheet-2540251When planning out this theme, I was reminded of many favorite books.  I love the book, Pumpkin Soup.  It’s one that is recommended quite often as a mentor text for writing recipes.  Of course From Seed to Pumpkin and Pumpkin, Pumpkin are a great ones for introducing plant life cycles, and The Biggest Pumpkin Book is always a hit for fiction.

In the activities section of my planning sheet, there are three activities that I want to point out specifically.  I love Jen Runde’s 3-d pumpkins for story elements.  Students love doing crafts, but at a time where content demands allow little free time, this is a nice one to do both.  I also love the options available with Mel Lloyd’s Pumpkin Flapbook. I can see using this with a Halloween/Fall book of choice as a book report project.

The links I have included provide options too.  The first link is to a blog post with 40+ ways to carve and use pumpkins in other lessons. For pumpkin research, All About Pumpkins offers factual information about how pumpkins grow, etc.  The final link is well…just a fun little thing for students to do on your smartboard.

pumpkin2bon2ba2bvine-2045592Before I sign off and add the linky code, I would love to share one little freebie with my fans.  It’s a little poem I wrote that is part of my Fall Poetry for your Pockets set.  You can use it for fluency work, for word hunts, and reviewing high frequency words.  

thematic2bthursday2bcalendar-1400294Before you move on to your next Bloglovin post, you would probably like to see what’s coming up in the coming weeks for Thematic Thursday.  I decided to map out the rest of the year using the suggestions I got from my readers.  You might want to print and save this if you are a blogger and want to join in.  Others may want to use it to plan centers, book choices, etc.  I will be working on getting Pinterest boards made for all of them and will add to them as I have time. Remember, those who link up are added as contributors, so I hope you’ll give it a try.  
Just a reminder…Don’t forget to check out Krista’s pumpkin math ideas and the other links below, and don’t forget to come back this weekend for a little fun with the Virginia Teacher Bloggers.
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Thanks for dropping in, and just think…only one more day til the weekend!
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Check out this and other linky opportunities at Teacher Karma by clicking the image below.

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This Post Has One Comment

  1. Thank you for hosting this fun link up! I actually entered twice (I didn't use the template the first time, oops!) and added your button and link to my second post. I would love to be added to the Pinterest boards (I'm a little bit of a Pinterest addict!). Here's a link to my boards http://www.pinterest.com/jlmorello/ and my name is Jennifer Lynn @pinkpolkadotsandprek!

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