We started our farm unit with our week long Apples, Apples, Apples unit. We started by reading The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons. The kids did this cut-and-paste activity in which they matched the illustration of the tree to the appropriate season.
I love this activity because it is so easy to differentiate. Students who are ready to write independently write sentences describing the trees. Other students can choose an appropriate description and glue it on the page.
Next we started our Farm unit. This group of kiddos needed to spend a bit of time learning how to conduct research before moving into informative writing, so I developed a research chart to help them gather their data. It's so exciting to see what kids can do when they have the right tools!
We added a simple flap to their charts, made a cute craftivity, and voila! The student work was displayed in an adorable format!
Throughout the unit, we learned more about how food gets from the farm to the table...
...identified the names of farm animals....
...and learned to label animal body parts....
The final step was to transform our researched facts into informative sentences and paragraphs.
I pulled in our Three Little Pigs and The Little Red Hen unit resources to provide students with differentiated reading books. They loved reading these booklets over and over again to each, and couldn't wait to get home to read them to their families!
They especially loved reading a Southwest version of The Little Red Hen and comparing it to the traditional version.
Happy Fall!
