Thrills and Frills in First: Comparing and Contrasting

Well I started writing this post over a week ago and never had time to finish! Life is just getting too busy.

Last week we got back in the grind of things and focused on comparing and contrasting..

To begin some comparing and contorting fun, we first read this book The Recess Queen.. if you don't know this book, you should! It is about a girl named Mean Jean who is the recess queen and rules the playground, until Katie Sue comes around...
There are so many ideas that popped in my head while I was reading this....you could do some great cause and effect activities, along with a character traits lesson.. Next year, I will def. be doing more with this book.

As a class we compared and contrasted Mean Jean and Katie Sue. In groups, my students were given sentence strips and had to come up with similarities and difference between the two characters.

The following day we did another Venn Diagram activity where we compared and contrasted themselves to a friend in class.. (not sure where the graphic organizer came from, I just had it in my files from years past.) This helped my firsties complete understand what a Venn Diagram is, and how it is used.

My students enjoyed comparing and contrasting with a friend so much, I decided the following day they would make a poster with the partner. I loved the way they came out, too cute...

This week we are focusing on Main Idea and Detail, I began today by doing and activity from our new unit, A Wintery Mix... click HERE to get our unit

Each group was given 4 picture cards and were instructed to figure out the main idea. Once they were finish, they present to the class, and as a class they had to agree if it was the Main Idea. My Firsties always love to get in the front of the class to present, so they truly enjoyed doing this.

This week I also started our Interactive Notebooks, to be honest at first, I was very hesitant to use them. I personally felt that it would take too much time having students cut/color every activity. To make things easier, I have the activities for the day already glued in their notebooks, and then during our guided reading time they fill in the information. If they have free time later in the day I let them color it in.