Must Read Mentor Science Text & I DID IT! Facebook Freebie

It's Sunday, which means I'm linking up with Amanda and Stacia at Collaboration Cuties for their Must Read Mentor Text party.

My Must Read is actually a series of non-fiction life cycle books from Books Are Fun.  They are all completely amazing, perfect for second grade readers, offer a variety of topics, but all within the same genre and unit of science study, and have non-fiction text features galore!

Y'all, the whole set is only $14.99 (for all 8), and I ordered a whole class set of each title last year.  We LOVE them!  I wish I could show you an inside shot, but you'll have to click on the photo above to go to the exact page for Books Are Fun and take a look for yourself.  Their website doesn't like the "save photo" feature!  If you didn't happen to see Amanda and Stacia's graphic organizer, take a look at it, too, because mine is almost exactly the same!  I'm putting mine here for you, because of the second page, which I use as the back.  It defines each non-fiction text feature as a reminder for my little ones, and can be used alone (in reading journals) or with the graphic organizer.

First, we use these little flip books I made to study non-fiction text and graphic features.  The kids glue the title pages to the definition pages, but only along the center vertical boxes.  Then they cut apart the left and right flaps and can "reveal" the definitions.  Stay with me, here.  Finally, they glue the center vertical box (of both pages, already glued together) to a piece of construction paper and go to work searching for examples in magazines.  When they're finished, they can see the name of a feature, flip the first flap to see its definition, and then flip the definition flap to see an example they cut from a magazine and glued to the construction paper!  The whole thing takes about a week to complete, but it's powerful learning!

After a week of studying the features, with my mentor texts, we choose a different text to read independently, or with a partner, and complete the scavenger hunts (with the definition pages copied onto the back) for a grade.

Now for the I DID IT!!!  I finally got my fan gate up and running on Facebook.  So, if you'll head over to my page, I've left you a Freebie.  I'll update my freebies often - you never know what you'll find there!

Hugs to My Friends,