Mixing Great Ideas for Turkey Book Reports

I am so thankful to have sooooo many great blogging friends out there that have some amazing ideas to help spice up my classroom teaching this year. I have been mixing and matching from different blogs and items bought from Teacher Pay Teacher that hopefully I will give credit where credit is due. Please forgive me if I forget something or post it wrong. Just let me know and I will definitely fix it.

What a fabulous last day of school before Thanksgiving Break. I don't know about everyone else but there are some teaching days that I wish would last longer because we are having so much fun in the classroom.  Today's lesson involved math, reading and writing. I love when I can use all my main subject areas in one lesson.  Here is how our day began:
                        We started out with cashing the students checks at our classroom bank called

"Flickinger's State Bank".  

This idea came from Beth Newingham's website.



They received their check that morning when they came into the classroom.  We talked about endorsing the check and why we need to do that.  Then the students endorsed their check and waited until their names were called to come to the bank.  I chose two bankers and one date stamper.  The date stamper's job was to check to make sure that they endorsed the check correctly. If they did, she would stamp it and hand it to one of the cashiers. If they did not have it right, she would show them what to do and send them back to their seats.  My two bankers were in charge of taking the checks and giving the cash to the customer.  Once the student received their money, they put it into their wallets and went back to their seats.  The other students that were waiting for their names to be called were coloring their turkey that they will be using for their book report.

After we finished with "Flickinger's State Bank", the students were informed that they would be buying the items that they need to complete the rest of their Turkey Book Report.  I set up the store very quickly and this is what it looked like.  Very Simple!


This idea came from Lesson Plan SOS.
Click on the picture and it will take you to their blog.

I handed the students a shopping list and the students needed to write down what they were going to buy and how much each item cost.  They needed to be very careful because if they bought 2 orange pieces, they had to make sure that they added $3.00 +$3.00  for a total of $6.00. It was an eye opener to see who could do this and who needed help.  The one item that I told the students that everyone needed to buy was 2 large brown pieces of paper.  Each of these pieces were $5.00 for a total of $10.00.



Here is their wallet with their money, shopping list
and their turkey they decorated.

Once the students received their supplies, they went and found the book that they were going to do their Turkey Book Report on.  They went to a spot in the room and began reading their book. (Read To Self Time).

  

                  

           

Once Read to Self was over, the students came back to their seat and began working on their reports. They received six feathers. Each feather had information that the students needed to answer about their book. When they were finished writing the information, they cut out their feathers and glued it to one of the colored papers that they bought. They cut around the feather leaving some of the color showing.  They cut and glued their turkey onto the brown paper and also cut around that.  They glued the feathers to the turkey and began working on their summary of the story that goes inside the turkey.

Some of my students decided to add goggly eyes to themselves instead of their turkey's.  What a laugh!! Once she did that, it was a chain reaction.  Every student that bought goggly eyes were placing them on their eyes. :)

Here is the final product. They turned out so cute. I love the ones with the BIG EYES. We displayed them out in the hallway for others to enjoy also.

We still have a lot of learning to do with writing a summary but we are getting better every time we do one.  I so love my class and my students. They are really a great group of kids.  Thanks to all the great bloggers out there that helped me come up with this fun activity.  While I am speaking of great bloggers, Amanda at Teaching Maddeness is having a 1,000 follower giveaway. 

Go visit her page and see why 1000 people are following her.  She has wonderful ideas.  Thanks again for reading my blog.  Enjoy your family time and have a Wonderful Thanksgiving.

Until Next Time,

        Happy Blogging