Biography Interactive Notebook

I've had a busy weekend.  Over Winter Break I started this interactive notebook, but didn't have time to finish it.  So, this weekend I spent a lot of time coloring, cutting things out, and making sample notebook pages to finish up this notebook.  One of our social studies standards in Arizona for 3rd grade is "Recognize that individuals worked for and supported the rights and freedoms of others (Susan B. Anthony, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, MLK, Cesar Chavez)"
I chose to NOT focus on Martin Luther King, Jr. because it seems that every grade K-2 does something for him and my students know about him already.  Instead, I figured I would concentrate on the rest of the people that they might not have heard of already.  Click on the link here to find this in my store.

You need specific books for this notebook-
A Picture Book of Cesar Chavez by David Adler
A Picture Book of Rosa Parks by David Adler
A Picture Book of Jackie Robinson by David Adler
Susan B. Anthony by Lucille Davis
There are vocabulary words for each book and three different notebook activities for vocabulary.

Then each book has at least two different activities.  The pictures below show the activities for the Cesar Chavez book.

The picture below shows the activities for the Rosa Parks book.

The picture below shows the activities for the Susan B. Anthony book.

The picture below shows the activities for the Jackie Robinson book.

There is also a culminating activity that lists four events- one per person- and ask students to write about how the events are connected.  

 One of my favorite activities is a life quote circle map that I made for each person. I chose a quote from each person and wrote it in the middle of a circle map.  My plan is that the students will write events from the person's life that represent that quote.  For example, Cesar Chavez's quote is the UFW's slogan "Si se puede" which means "Yes, we can."  I want the students to think about Chavez's life and write down things that happened to him that represent his belief of not giving up on making things right for the migrant farm workers.  Then I want students to write a paragraph explaining how that quote defines Chavez's life.  Here's are my samples to give you can idea.

Figurative Language Interactive Notebook

Ok- I am loving interactive notebooks just a little bit right now.  In fact, I think I am going a little bit overboard... but, they are fun and it's a good way to practice skills or reinforce a lesson.  I know I am not doing it correctly according to the interactive notebook gurus, but it's working for me right now.  With that being said, I created a new interactive notebook for figurative language, specifically idioms, homonyms, similes and personification.  Here are some pictures that show my samples. (I used the colored versions of the clip art to save me time coloring it all- the students are blackline pictures they can color.) It's in my TpT store at this the link here.  Hope it's something that might be useful to someone.

 These are flaps with an idiom on the front cover.  Under the flap, students write what the phrase means.

 This is a cute flap book.  The front gives the meaning and students have to match it to an idiom.  For example, one says "If something is really expensive, you say..." and the picture and words that match say, "it cost an arm and a leg."

 These pictures show the activity for homonyms.  There are ten words that have multiple meanings.  Students have to write a phrase to explain that particular picture.  Then they glue it on as a flap.

 This picture shows an accordion book of similes.  All students do with this one is glue, color,  and put the book together. The last page has a space where they can write what they know about similes.

 These pictures show an activity for personification.  Students read the phrases and under the flap they write what the phrase means or when it would be used.  For example, the one that says "His feet are tired" underneath the students might write that it was a long day and the person maybe had to walk or stand for a long time.

Quotation Marks and Commas

Happy New Year!  It's a frigid 37 degrees here in Phoenix, Arizona at 1 pm.  For those of you who live where it really gets cold, don't judge- we desert rats are freezing!!!!!!

Since it's too cold to go outside (LOL), here's a quick and fun activity I made that I plan to do with my 3rd graders when we come back.  It focuses on L.3.2.c.  Commas and Quotation Marks in dialogue.

It's a series of speech bubble dialogues.  The students have to write the conversation as dialogue using commas and quotation marks correctly.

 There's a couple of blank ones where you have students write their own dialogue.  And, there's an interactive notebook page that you can use as a formative assessment.