Books & Brackets Blog Hop!

It's finally March which can only mean one thing...March Madness. Okay, maybe more than one thing...St. Patricks Day, Easter, and SPRING are also packed into this exciting month! 

I do enjoy spring but a little unknown fact... I love a good game of basketball. I went to George Mason University and was lucky enough to be there while they went to the FINAL 4! I will admit I didn't know much about basketball until GMU was in the finals but after attending my first basketball game in college, I loved it! I loved how fast paced the game was and I love the excitement in the crowd. 

I have found that in the classroom I could used the excitement of March Madness to engage my students in language arts. I discovered the book Midnight Madness at the Zoo by Sherryn Craig and it is perfect for the month of March! In the book, the crowds start to thin out as the zoo closes for the night. But soon the elephant's trumpet rings through the zoo calling animals from their pens for the nightly game of basketball. Animals, big and small, from all over the zoo come to play but they must finish their game before the zookeeper makes her nightly rounds! This book is a hit with my sports fans because it uses basketball terms throughout the book so our basketball experts can educate us on some new vocabulary! Meet the author and check out how the she got her idea to write this book:

{video clip: Sherryn Craig}

Enter to win a signed hardcover copy of the Sherryn's book here:

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

I have created a few activities to use in the classroom to go along with this book! I have included a prediction page, students favorite part part page, a summary page, and rhyming word cards with rhyming words from the story. You can download these activities for FREE in my TPT store! I hope you enjoy this color OR black & white FREEBIE!  

 {black & white copy}

{color copy}

To celebrate the arrival of March Madness, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and SPRING all in the month of March, 14 other primary grade teachers and I have collaborated to bring you 15 book giveaways and a grand prize $75 TPT Gift Card! All of the giveaways will end at midnight on March, 13th so make sure to enter THIS WEEKEND!

Enter the TPT Giftcard Giveaway below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

To find out what other great books to use in your classroom during the month of March make sure to continue the hop below! We have 14 other amazing K-2 grade teachers who are excited to share their favorite books, a FREEBIE, and a BOOK GIVEAWAY!

The Krafty Teacher Don't forget to hop back through Monday morning to see if you are the lucky winner of any books or the grand prize TPT gift card!

Presidents' Day

I am excited to be linking up with Cole from Teach Glitter Grow to bring you three great things focused around Presidents' Day! February might be a short month but it is a great month to celebrate our Presidents and take time to reflect on their contributions. 

To introduce Presidents' Day I like this short video clip from Scholastic that gives students a few fun facts about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It gives a quick overview of their lives and I love that this video also makes comparisons to life today and life when these two Presidents lived.

When learning about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln my class researches their life through a QR code scavenger hunt, a timeline, books from our library, and videos from BrainPopJr. and Pebble Go. They take their facts and turn them into short biographies once their research is complete. 

We then construct a interactive bulletin board and their research about these two Presidents launches our Social Studies unit on Famous Americans! 

We use these headers to organize our bulletin board and then add facts to each American to help us learn, compare, and make connections between their lives and contributions.

If you teach Famous Americans, check out this bulletin board set in my TPT store!

To wrap up our President research on George Washington and Abraham Lincoln we compare their lives. It helps students to reflect on their learning and put some of their thoughts into a more concrete graphic organizer. We pull important words from a word bank. I find that using a word bank for this activity really helps because it makes students comparisons unique and gives them more flexibility instead of just cutting and sorting facts that are already written out for them. 

You can also find this comparison in my store for FREE!

I hope you have a wonderful Presidents' Day! Thanks for stoping by!