Honoring Veteran's Day

Tomorrow is officially Veteran's Day...a day to honor, celebrate, and remember all those brave heros who protect our freedoms and our country.  

It's also the day I gave myself as a goal to share another product.  This fall has been not friendly to my creative side.  Boo!!!  When given any down time (and by down time, you clearly know that I mean in the shower, driving in the car, or while cleaning up the kitchen) I have been trying to think of a way to share this day with my kiddos.  

And I'm happy to say that the creative juices started flowing finally just a couple hours ago.   Here it is!

On sale now in my TPT store.  

Here's how I'll be using it.  

I like to start by asking kiddos their schema about words such as honor, soldier, veteran.  This always gives me great insight as to what students know and how to guide my lesson from there.  It's especially important if there are students in my class with family members who are away and serving.  

Then I will take the time to read some of my faves...

...having great discussions as I go.

After I will have my students follow up with my asking and answering flip book.  Given 4 vocab words and our conversations, see if students can create some insightful questions about the words.  Then we will look to see if we can answer those questions...which they will add to their flip books.

In partners, I will have students complete my Soldiers Can/Have/Are.  I think it's a great way for students to take their thinking one step further.  We have done these with firefighters and a couple other  ideas so far this year.  I like to see how many and WHAT ideas students come up with.  We will take the time to share our ideas with other partnerships as well.

Independently, I will have students do the Thank You writing.  This will be a handy tool to assess whether or not students understand what our veteran's do/have done for us and what that means.  

For example, if a student were to write

"Thank you for wearing camouflage.  It's my favorite.".....clearly not the message or thought I was hoping to instill.  We may need to go back and do a little reteaching if needed.

As a fun way to wrap up the morning, my students will create their own red poppy with either paint or red tissue paper.  (I'm actually still deciding what I will do....)

I think these activities hung with the red poppies on display will drive our THANK YOU, VETERANS point home.

So...even though it's technically already Veteran's Day and you probably have your day planned, feel free to check out my new product.  Save in your files for perhaps next year.  ;)

Thank you to the men and women serving, who have served, 

and who we remember and honor on this special day!