Mice are NICE: A (Balanced Literacy) Character Traits Study!

Have you ever noticed that when going through your library- there are TONS of books that have mice as the main characters? So Miss Ewing asks: "Why do so many authors write books about mice?" And the next balanced literacy thematic unit was born!

So we thought it might be cool to approach this thought using inquiry based thinking with our kindergarteners. We spent a week using certain books as interactive read-alouds but we didn't really tell them what we were doing. We were hoping the kiddos would arrive at this idea...and they DID! We had a student notice that all the books we read had mice in them! Very exciting stuff for us.

 Here are a few photos from our K Babies searching for traits that might make mice good characters to write about!

So, coming very soon...is our first Co-Authored Balanced Literacy Thematic Mini Unit: Mice are NICE!

You'll have ideas and prompts for:
*Shared Writing
*Interactive Read Alouds with Accountable Talk prompts to get your kiddos THINKING
*Shared Reading
*Teaching Charts
*Mouse Poems
*Guided Reading Predicatble (and printable) books
*Comparing and Contrasting
*Mouse Math (patterns, counting, etc...)
* Word Work (rhyming, syallables)
*Fun Fingerprint Mouse Book
*A Spice Mice Cupcake recipe so your kiddos can make their own mouse in class! 

 Soooo stinkin' cute!!!

And the best part? It's all alligned to the Kindergarten Common Core Standards!

More Later,
Mrs. Tabb