Writing - How to Decorate a Christmas Tree


How did I get my firsties excited about this little writing activity?  I passed out brand new, freshly sharpened Christmas pencils and threw up a crackling fireplace on the smart board that I found on YouTube and they went right to work.  They even asked if we could do it again.  That's a WIN in my book!






I grabbed this sequencing freebie from KidSparks that can be found at this link:

The writing printable for this activity is from Stephanie Trapp at Primary Theme Park.  You can read her post about it and get her free printable at the link below:


Happy Teaching!

Nonfiction Writing First Grade Style

We recently used the Shadow Puppet App to share some nonfiction writing.  Here is one of my students reading his nonfiction writing.


{By the way - this writing activity ties in beautifully with the story "How Leopard Got His Spots" that is in the first grade Journeys reading series.}
Day 1
Zebra Writing
We read and discussed the book shown below and then we made a class word bank for students to refer to when writing.


Student then wrote several sentences about zebras and illustrated their pictures.

Day 2
Leopard Writing
  We read and discussed the book shown below and then we made a class word bank for students to refer to when writing.



Day 3
Title and Table of Contents
I gave my students their title and table of content pages.  We assembled the books,  they added a title and filled  in their table of contents page with the page numbers.

Note:  If we would have had more time, I would have added a giraffe page to their books.  And next time we do this, I will have my students add some labels to their illustrations as well.


 Here are a couple more student examples and if you go to the bottom of this post you can grab the nonfiction writing template {free} to use with your students.









You can grab yourself a copy at this link:



Happy Writing!