Thanksgiving is on the way and our first graders are thankful for so many things. I shared with students our library's wonderful Thanksgiving books. We read several including one of my Thanksgiving favorites, Thanksgiving Cats, a whimsical rhyming story about farmer cats preparing for Thanksgiving. It was written by Jean Marzollo, better known for her I Spy Books of Pictures and Riddles. Students were thankful for Mrs. Marzollo's wonderful ability to rhyme!
After reading a few more Thanksgiving books, first graders wanted to share what they were thankful for this Thanksgiving season!!
To help them share, I thought of one of my new favorite websites, Padlet.com. I am really thankful I found this one!! I used this site to share last week's Mixed-Up Class projects. What I love about Padlet is that every student can write on the same online "wall" simultaneously!
This week I asked each student to write one or more things that they were thankful for on a Thanksgiving Padlet. While they were writing, students were able to see and read what their classmates were writing. They sparked ideas for each other and helped each other with spelling. This also gave students an opportunity to practice their basic word processing and keyboarding skills - capitalizing (shift key), deleting, spacing and the return key. Students didn't care so much about that, they just loved being able to share. Check out our wall of thankfulness from all the 1st grade classes!