Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum!

This week we started our Kevin Henkes author study.  Our comprehension focus is character traits and comparing characters, so his books are *absolutely perfect* {see what I did there ;)} for that!  Yesterday we read the book for the first time, and compared ourselves to Chrysanthemum using a Venn Diagram from this unit.  We also finished the writing stem “Chrysanthemum felt____ because____”

Today we re-read the book, and focused on Chrysanthemum’s character traits.  After re-reading, we made this quick bubble map… don’t you just love my sloppy handwriting and dirty easel??!!  #justkeepinitreal #everythingaintalwaysprettyinroom43

Then, we used Michelle’s unit to make our little character trait flowers.  My kids LOVE making things, which is good because I LOVE construction paper 😉

I really like how they had to support the character trait they chose with proof from the book.  This wasn’t easy for all of my students, so it was good practice!

After my students brainstormed words I realized they would be great character traits to hang up in the room for my students to use throughout the next couple of weeks, so I rewrote everything on sentence strips and stapled it all up {during lunch because who needs to eat for 30 WHOLE minutes ;)}!

And I surrounded our new bubble map with our character trait flowers!  Now my kiddos have a whole bank of words to use when writing 🙂 and they are meaningful because they thought of the words as a class!