Turkey Time

Hey friends! Before Thanksgiving comes and goes, I wanted to share a few of the things my kids have been working on this week. We just began learning about author's purpose, and to help the kids learn more about what it means to persuade, I read I Wanna Iguana to the class. We talked about how persuading someone means you are trying to convince them to do, think, or feel what you want them to do, think, or feel! Then I told my kids that they were going to have to convince me that I shouldn't eat them for Thanksgiving, because they were going to pretend they were turkeys! They had to write a persuasive story from the turkey's point of view to convince me, the reader (and the eater!) that eating them for Thanksgiving isn't such a great idea. Some kids suggested I eat something else as my meat (like chicken), some tried to convince me that they were small, so they wouldn't be as delicious as a bigger, fatter turkey, and one student even told me he thought turkeys evolved from humans, so eating a turkey would basically be like eating a human! I love it!



One student's final draft. So cute!

We've also just started a unit on money, so I wanted to find a way to incorporate finding the total value of a collection of coins with Thanksgiving. I found inspiration from this pin, and my kids created turkeys using pattern blocks. Each pattern block had a coin value, and the kids had to calculate how much their turkey's tail feathers were worth. Their creations turned out so cute!

 

 

 

 

This was my example. Below is the record sheet I used to calculate the total value of my turkey's tail feathers.

 

My students had so much fun with this, so I thought I'd share the record sheet with y'all in case any of you want to create these with your class! You can pick up a copy of the record sheet for free here in my TpT store. If you grab a copy, please let me know!

 

Only two more days until we have a week off! I can't wait - I'm going to North Carolina with my sister to see my mom and her side of the family, and I'm looking forward to having a little down time before I come back to school. I can't believe it's almost December already - how has the year gone by this fast?! At least that means the Holly Bloggy Christmas Exchange is coming soon! I loved participating last year, and am looking forward to doing it again this year! Have you signed up? If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here to read more about it and sign up!

 

Have a great day, friends!