Story Map Chart and Graphics

Wow!  I feel as if I fell off the face of the earth for awhile there!  I hope you are all having a great start to your new year!  We have completed our 16th day of school and are beginning to get the lay of the land with the new group.  It takes a few weeks but the kids are doing a great job adjusting.  We even completed our first full day of small reading group rotations!  Woohoo!!

I was googling an image for Plaidypus Lost, our third story in the Scott Foresman program, and I came across this post from April at Chalk Talk from last year.  I loved the idea of a permanent Story Map to use week after week with each story read.  I am currently making my chart and will include a photo when it is complete but I am copying the same design shown in the Chalk Talk post.

Here are the graphics and text I am using for my pirate theme this year, which I am loving by the way! I printed the text on colored paper and will use a large sheet of white chart paper for the chart.

Story Map Chart

Thanks to Scrappin Doodles...
Story Map Graphics


I also made these signs to differentiate fiction and non-fiction books that we read in Scott Foresman.  I have used google images to download pictures of the book covers and laminated them.  As we read each story, we will place the cover under the fiction or non-fiction sign.  I have been meaning to do this for the past several years so finally, here they are!

Fiction Non Fiction Signs

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

I love Eric Carle and the kids do, too!  We have a Bear unit that we teach-typically about the third week of school.   We start with Brown Bear, Brown Bear for color word recognition and story sequencing. 

Our team has taught this unit for several years but I did get some fresh, new ideas from my friend, Suzan at http://krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com/. 

Like this one!  We color story cards and usually glue them onto a sentence strip in story order.  Suzan uses a Story Bag so that's what my class tried this year.  You place the story cards in a brown paper bag decorated with a Brown Bear picture.  The children then use their story cards to tell the story. They loved this-we had story cards all over the carpet but they all made sure they had every picture to put back in their bag.  They were serious about it!

We learned the poem, Brown Bear Happy.   Each child gets a copy of this poem to include in their Poetry Journal.  We circle punctuation in orange, rhyming pairs in green and sight words in blue.  I got this idea from http://www.jmeacham.com/ who has printable poems all ready to copy.  Jessica has so many wonderful ideas.  I also made Homework Bags for children to check out on a weekly basis based on Jessica's system.  My class loved the homework bags last year and I will begin allowing students to check them out soon for this class.

I bought the Bulletin Board set for Brown Bear, Brown Bear and knew I could use the mini pictures from the package somehow!  I laminated them and velcroed them to a chart.  The kids can practice story sequencing using this chart as a Go-To Activity when they finish their literacy job.  I also printed and laminated word labels for each animal for the kids to practice matching the words to the character. 

I also got this idea from Suzan at http://krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com/.  We painted our own Story Map working in teams to paint each color in the order of the story.  We then placed the story characters on the map to match their color.

Ms. Larremore at http://larremoreteachertips.blogspot.com/ 

used this writing activity to help reinforce the story but also to practice name recognition of friends in class.  These writings will go in their Kindergarten Scrapbooks with Bear Art.