Teaching Toolbox: 

Winter Stories

By Larissa Juliano

*Originally shared on www.storymonsters.com 
A RICH resource for teachers, students, and all literature lovers 
So many exciting things are happening in the classroom now that we are about to embark on the second half of the year.. I’ve wanted to share some extension activities I’ve been doing with my students that I feel enhance their learning and also provide literature immersion opportunities. Future columns are going to focus on despite having lots of decodable text for our reading time, there are ALWAYS opportunities for our students to have gorgeous picture books in hand. 

Our school district and teacher classrooms are plentiful with rich, diverse, and authentic literature that has many social emotional lessons in them and extend into our social studies lessons. I have had so much fun pairing these books with non-fiction books, and also allowing the children to browse through additional books about the topic.

For instance, we paired “No Two Alike” by Keith Baker along with “Best in Snow” by April Pulley Sayre and talked about similarities and differences between the two books. Not only were the children so insightful with their responses (They both have birds! One is illustrated and the other is photographs! Wintertime adventures!) We extended our learning by talking about animals in the winter and their habits and rituals. 

I look forward to their insights about our books in our reading time (and additional stories I share just for fun) because it gives us a peek into their world and perceptions of things. One little girl shared that when she sees birds fly by, she thinks of people in heaven coming to say hi to us! Another child told us about how no two snowflakes are alike (which is true!) and this brought us into reading another story- about a very special photographer from the 1800’s named Snowflake Bentley. 

For our writing time, we shared these two books for snowy winter inspiration and I had two different ideas for children to write about. What snowy adventures do you enjoy having? What do you know about woodland creatures and the forest? 

First and foremost, I always model my own writing on chart paper and ask for children to contribute to a shared story/journal topic. 

Each lesson I explicitly model:

*How we sound spell (whisper the word you want to write over and over again and try to get down all those sounds!) 

*Letter formation

*Proper punctuation and spacing between letters

*Adding in an additional detail to give our writing SPARKLE! 

Throughout my chart paper time, I think aloud as I write down my ideas.

For example, with “No Two Alike” I referred back to the text to remember which woodland creatures I wanted to write about and then added an additional sentence about their footprints in the snow. I’ve seen how this influences and inspires my students writing as they work on this same process with their writing, along with adding their own creative touches. 

What are your favorite books to pair together? How does the Writing Workshop model look like in your classroom? What are your must have anchor charts that help them with this process? Share your teaching toolbox ideas with us so we can share with our teaching and homeschooling community! 

Larissa Juliano is a literacy specialist in upstate, New York. She enjoys being with her three children and husband, hiking in nature, savoring home-cooked food, and writing children’s books. 

Larissa’s latest book, Grandpa’s Workshop
(Clever Publishing) inspired by her beloved Dad is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and her author website- www.larissajuliano.com Larissa appreciates the support and love from her colleagues and fellow StoryMonster friends as she pursues her writing passion.