#3019. My Caring and Sharing Book

Reading/Writing, level: Elementary
Posted Mon Jan 12 15:32:49 PST 2004 by Heidi Donald (donaldhr@pickens.k12.sc.us).
Six Mile Elementary, Six Mile
Materials Required: The Rainbow Fish, crayons, glue, sequins, glitter, fish cutouts, scissors, ribbon, hole punch
Activity Time: About 45 minutes
Concepts Taught: handwriting, artwork, creating sentences, using punctuation

My Caring and Sharing Book

Subject: Language Arts

Grade: 1st grade

Objective: The students will be writing about a particular thought or subject (caring and sharing). The students will also be creative by decorating their rainbow fish.

Standard: The students will be able to write to communicate ideas and print legibly.

Materials: The Rainbow Fish, crayons, glue, sequins, glitter, fish cutouts, scissors, ribbon, hole punch, card stock, and regular copy paper.

Background: The teacher will begin by reading The Rainbow Fish to the class. The teacher should then talk about caring and sharing and what those words mean to the students. The teacher will ask questions referring to when the students have shared with someone or have cared for someone.

Procedure:
1. The teacher will cut around fish cutouts made from card stock. Each child in the class needs two cardstock cutouts. The teacher will also cut out six regular pieces of paper fish cutouts for each child in the class.
2. Each student should be given six regular sheets of paper cutouts.
3. The teacher will tell the students to write three times in which they have shared with someone and three times in which they have cared for someone on the regular pieces of cutouts. One on each piece of paper.
4. The teacher will remind the students to use capitals at the beginning of the sentences and punctuation at the end of the sentences.
5. After the students have a sentence written on all cutouts, the teacher will give each student two pieces of cardstock cutouts of fish.
6. On one of the cardstock pieces, the students will write "My Caring and Sharing Book."
7. The students will decorate both pieces of cardstock by drawing, coloring, glittering, or even gluing sequins on the fish. This will become the front and back covers of the students' caring and sharing book.
8. After the glue has dried, the fish should be stacked together to form a book, the two pieces of cardstock being on the outside cover.
9. The teacher will then punch two holes in the fish and tie the book together with a ribbon.

Additional Assignments/Adaptations: This project may be made more challenging by adding more pages or adding additional sentences to each page. Upper grade levels may write paragraphs instead of sentences on each fish. This could also be adapted to lower grades by allowing the students to draw pictures instead of write sentences.

Assessment: The teacher may informally assess by walking around the room while they are making the book to make sure all students are following directions and are on-task. The students may formally be assessed by the sentences found on the inside of their book. The teacher may check for capitalization, punctuation, proper letter formation, etc.