Winter Mentor Texts and Antarctic Crittercam

There is nothing I love more than reading to my students. It is so exciting to share books with students, talking about the way the way an author puts words on a page and sharing connections.
Not a lot of snow down her in south Texas, so sharing as many mentor texts, videos and sites to create experiences for students is always fun.

I am in love with this book! Our second grade just finished up a unit on the water cycle. Here is a blog post about our fun lesson that has students experiencing the water cycle as a rain drop.
In this book, the journey of the snowflake starts in in the month of January and moves through the months, with the ever changing seasons. Beautiful pictures, lyrical text and a surprising plot unlike most water cycle stories. The Snowflake: A Water Cycle Story, is a perfect book to revisit the water cycle.

"Waldman traces the journey of a single drop of water throughout the year, with each month receiving its own spread. The water begins as a snowflake that melts into a droplet, flows into the ground, bubbles up in a spring, flows into a farm's irrigation system, evaporates into the morning fog, becomes part of a cloud, rains down, enters a plumbing system, washes a little girl's face, flows out to the ocean, gets swept onto the shore and evaporates into the sky to become a snowflake once more." -Amazon

Next up . . . 

In, A Snowflake Fell, there are numerous poems written by some great authors that share winter experiences. 

Ice skating, building snow forts, sledding down big hills, nights by the fire . . . 

It's a beautiful book that lends itself to having students create original winter themed poems.

One of my favorite go-to sites is Read, Write, Think. Diamante poems are a fun type of poem to share with students. Read, Write, Think has a great interactive poem generator for students, plus it gives a few examples. 

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Last one . . .

This book introduces the geography and animal inhabitants of Antarctica.

Mentor texts can come in many different forms, such as a really fun crittercam! You should venture over to Crittercam Chronicles to explore Antarctica through the eyes of a leopard seal. A fun adventure! 

In keeping with the winter theme, why not transform your reading center into an igloo made out of milk jugs? How great would it be to create this with your students? Click on the picture for the directions on creating this milk jug igloo.

Head over to Collaboration Cuties for some other great winter mentor texts. 

Happy Sunday!