IT'S ABOUT TIME, TEACHERS, for STELLALUNA & ALL THINGS BATS!

 

Introducing my learners to Stellaluna, by Janelle Cannon, is one of the things I most look forward to in October. Immersing my class in all things bats is so fun. Check out these resources:

Here's a peek at some of the activities in this unit:

Extend the learning with these bat-themed centers:

These resources are bundled to save you 30%!

IT'S ABOUT TIME for STELLALUNA!

 

Introducing my learners to Stellaluna, by Janelle Cannon, is one of the things I most look forward to in October. Immersing my class in all things BATS is just so fun. Check out these resources:

Extending the learning for Stellaluna has never been more fun! This thematic unit includes activities for literacy centers, math centers, writing, poetry, & word work.  Also provided are math journal prompts, lots of printable worksheets, and more!

THE BAT CAVE Literacy Center is a word sort to practice rhyming words. Students will move each bat/word card to the bat cave with a rhyming word. This FREE activity exercises onset and rime exchanges with basic C-V-C vocabulary, as well as with irregularly spelled words. THE BAT CAVE is also available in digital form on TPT Easel.

Promote phonemic awareness of initial consonant blends with this bat themed phonics sort. BAT BLENDS is available in print and digital versions (TPT Easel).

Students will sort words with the long and short sounds of /a/. This activity is provided in print and digital versions (TPT Easel). 

Tangram puzzles exercise concepts about geometry (transformation, rotation, congruence, symmetry, etc.). This differentiated activity is great for center or individual work in primary grades.

These resources are available in a bundle.  Purchasing the bundle will save you 30%!

IT'S ABOUT TIME for STELLALUNA RESOURCES!

 

STELLALUNA, by Janelle Cannon, is not only one of my favorite picture books, but a unit I love to teach in the fall. For one week, I immerse my 1st and 2nd graders in all things batty.

To that end, I have created Hanging Out with Stellaluna, a thematic unit that includes activities for literacy centers, math centers, writing, poetry, word work, math journal prompts, lots of printable worksheets, and more! This unit is also available digitally on TPT Easel.

Naturally, center work includes bat related activities.  Tangram Puzzles tailored to the story make a fun math center.  

There are 2 phonics centers.  Bat Blends provides practice with consonant blends.

Bats & Bridges is a phonics sort focusing on vowel sounds.  

Both phonics centers are also available digitally on TPT Easel.  

You can get all of these materials in a bundle that will save you 30%!  

Autumn Themed Centers

Autumn themed centers for your classroom -- check them out.  

Ghosts Say, "Boo!" is a literacy center for primary classrooms. In this activity students will focus on 2 sounds of /o/:  ō and ōō.

There are 2 ghost work mats: 1 labeled "Ghosts," and the other labeled "Boo!" Students sort the 20 word/picture cards by matching the vowel sounds to the 2 ghosts.  This center includes a recording sheet and labels for your center folder.

Bats & Bridges Literacy Center also challenges students to work with vowel sounds; long and short /a/. Students will sort the bat word cards and fly them to the proper bridge for roosting.  A recording sheet is included, as are labels for your center folder.

This center activity is part of my thematic unit, Hanging Out with Stellaluna.  It is now available as a stand-alone product for the first time.

You get to combine 2 subjects in 1 center when you use Scrattle: Halloween Edition.  This wildly popular activity challenges your students to exercise their verbal fluency by making words out of the letters provided on candy corn pieces. Each letter has a numeric value, as in Scrabble(TM).  As your students record their words, they compute the value of each of them.

Then they challenge a friend at the center to compare their numbers.  In the process, your students will practice using >, <, and =. The winner of this word battle is the 1 with the most >s.  (Scrattle gets its name from Scrabble + battle.)

Not only does Scrattle give your students practice with ELA and math, but it comes with 3 different recording sheets: 1 using addition only, 1 requiring multiplication, and 1 employing mixed operations. Thus, you can readily differentiate your instruction. Moreover, this center is CCSS aligned. And better yet, it's FREE! Even better, there are multiple editions for several holidays and they, too, are FREE!

John Hughes, author of An Educator's Life blogspot, is hosting a Fall-Tastic Activities and Resouces linky party.  You are sure to find some great activities there.

Until next time...

Hanging Out with Stellaluna -- Pt. 3

Now that you've read Stellaluna to your class, it's time to extend the learning.  One of my goals with this study is to change my students' attitudes about bats.  To this end, I invite experts to come talk to my class.  I'm fortunate to live in a college town (Go ILLINI!) where it is easy to find a bat expert.  A professor from the U of I's Natural History Museum is kind enough to spend some time with my kiddos and brings lots of cool artifacts.  Moreover, I have a personal friend who is a caver and professor at the local community college.  She also gives her time to my class.

In addition to these awesome resources, I like to read several non-fiction books about bats to my class.  A couple of my favorites are Amazing Bats by Seymour Simon and Bats by Gail Gibbons.

Armed with new knowledge about bats, my class then completes a Venn Diagram comparing bats and birds.  I have always done this with the traditional 2 ovals intersecting in the middle.   Yesterday, as I was perusing Pinterest, I found this idea for putting the diagram on a bat.  Well, duh.

Well done Kinder by Kim!

Being a "poet-tree nut," I just have to include some poetry writing.  We write acrostics --

and bat shaped poems -- 

 

and stories -- 

Because I teach first grade, I don't assign factual reports to the class.  I do, however, challenge my gifted/enrichment students to create a factual report -- 

We make a bat nursery with origami bats --

and share our learning with the school --

Can you see the echolocation lines in Katie's drawing above?  They are purple lines right beside the bat's head.  

We publish a class book with all of our poems, stories, and reports.  One copy goes in our class library, one copy is given to the school library, and each student takes a copy home.

If you would like more ideas for teaching about bats through Janell Cannon's Stellaluna, check out my Hanging Out with Stellaluna product on TpT or TN.  In addition to the activities already discussed, Hanging Out with Stellaluna includes math journal prompts, origami directions, and center ideas, such as this phonics center vowel sort --

I don't need a standardized test to assess my students' learning.  It's obvious.