{Bloggers Love Books}-The Apple Pie Tree & a FREEBIE

Welcome to the Second month of Books Bloggers Love, a monthly link-up between 12 teacher bloggers! We will be sharing our favorite book to read for the month of September, share with you how we use it, and you might find a freebie or two. The best part?! Each month, you will have a chance to win 4 of the 12 books we blogged about!

 

The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall Click the link or picture to check it out on Amazon. I chose a book that is perfect for the month of September and the traditional primary September theme of apples!

  

I love using themes in my classroom. In first grade, we are already so focused on rigor that it can be hard to find a balance in the classroom. Using a theme for read alouds, a book display, my poem, a few work stations, and a writing project REALLY helps keep my kiddos excited but also challenged at their independent level. 

I love using  The Apple Pie tree as a read aloud to introduce the apple theme in the beginning of September. It is such an easy and quick read aloud.

By the time September rolls around, my class is already focusing on learning specific comprehension skills during mini-lessons and read alouds.In order to keep up the rigor of my lessons while incorporating a theme, I make sure I am focusing on an important comprehension skill during each lesson. 

First, I tell my students about sequence and we discuss why it is important for a story to be in order! Next, we take a picture walk, and the students make observations about what they see in the pictures.Then, I read aloud the story, without stopping.

Last, we discuss the beginning, middle, & end. We then complete the sequencing activity in a pocket chart as whole group. Once I'm sure most of my students had a working knowledge of sequencing, they completed the same activity independently.

I love to extend the apple theme across any subjects as possible. Here is a freebie apple adjective lesson I like to use towards the end of my apple unit.

  Click the picture to download the FREEBIE!

To read more about how I use the apple theme in my classroom, click the pictures below!  

Be sure to enter the giveaway and check out the other bloggers below and see what books they are using for September!

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Apple Fun!

I LOVE apple week because it just finally feels like my year is started and I am not teaching procedures all day everyday.  For me, the easiest way to incorporate a theme and some fun into my daily lessons starts with my weekly poem. I have a simple little routine I follow each week.  Monday-Read aloud and discuss the theme/title Tuesday-Use highlighting tape to find whatever writing conventions we are covering Wednesday-Use post its to find different grammar things (nouns, verbs, adjectives)  Thursday- Review and read aloud  Friday-We glue a half sheet copy of the poem into our poetry notebooks and highlight something we talked about in whole group and decorate.  The kiddos LOVE that they keep their poetry notebook in their book basket/box so they can read them during read to self. 

During any theme week, I have to make sure I incorporate any theme activities into the TEKS I have to cover that week.  This week I needed to teach story structure/elements, adjectives, and inferencing. It is a ton to cover in first grade, but we introduce all the concepts pretty quickly in the first nine weeks and then cover each one more in-depth throughout the rest of the year. To kick off apple week, we read Apple Trouble to introduce the concept of story structure. The problem just gets worse and worse in the story and is finally solved in an easy way. It made it super easy for the firsties to understand problem & solution. 

We retold and reread the story a couple more times during the first few days of the week and then the kiddos then filled out this story structure map as an assessment on Wednesday. 

The real fun started on Thursday and Friday. My district does 'prime time' each morning for thirty minutes. It is when everyone drops everything and teaches reading, even the math teachers! I normally have a little routine that we do for phonics, sight words, and little decodable readers just during that time each morning, but for apple week my sweet student teacher read the students Applebet the ABC book. 

They loved it! The kids each then made a personalized book page for the letter of their first name! 

 

We also read one of my favorites, "The Apple Pie Tree" by Zoe Hall and reviewed story structure. 

We did sequence of events last week, so to keep that fresh in our schema, we did a quick cut and paste activity after reading this book. It turned out super cute for only taking about ten minutes!

We spent the last two weeks talking about nouns and verbs so this week we needed to introduce adjectives. We read Fancy Nancy's Apple book to find some fancy words for our adjective apple anchor chart. 

 I found the big apple adjectives chart on pintrest, there are a million versions but here is mine. I only teach reading so I usually try to laminate and use dry erase or use post its so both classes can have a fresh anchor chart! 

The kiddos then made a smaller version of the chart but I forgot to take a picture (it was the last activity of the day on a friday!) 

I adore these "Let's write about ____" in this case, apples, by Latoya Reed. I think I have every theme she has available except maybe one or two! I set up the words and the writing papers from the packs in my writing center that the kids can go to during work on writing during Daily 5. 

Here's a sample writing from one of my cuties! I love the paper she puts in the packs! 

 The big event was the apple tasting and favorites graphing! I did not go all out and make applesauce or any those things this year! I just did not have time! Here is a couple shots of the tasting and the graph that followed! So much fun! 

They LOST IT when I had to start taping the green ones above the white board! Too funny!

 Some cuties trying to pick their favorite flavor!

 We also did a quick segment on the parts and some apple vocabulary, I can't take too much time with these topics because I don't teach science or math! 

That's a wrap for apple week in first grade! I am already ready for pumpkins! :)