Friday Fall FREEBIE Blog Hop: Round 3!!

Hey there!!! Welcome back for the Friday Fall FREEBIE Blog Hop: Round 3!!!  Thanks to Crystal and Marie at Once Upon A Classroom: Two Teacher Perspectives for getting this all together for everyone!! Now on to the FREEBIES!!! 

Before I share my freebie :), I just have to tell you how EXCITED I am right now!!! In less than 10 hours, my sister and I will be on a flight to Denver which then we will drive 3 1/2 hours to Wyoming to see our 2 nephews (and of course my brother and sister-in-law)!!! It's a trip just to get there from the airport, but it is so worth it to give a big hug to both of those boys!!! What's even better??? My brother is a principal and my sister-in-law is a 2nd grade teacher like me so they have school...which could only mean...AUNTIE time!!!! It is going to be the 2 aunts and the 2 nephews for a couple days next week!! I love my brother and sister-in-law, but you all know what I mean when I say it's even more special when you get to share time with just them! Thank goodness we have a 2 week fall break!!!!!! :)

OK, now I will get back to the FREEBIE!!! This is one I actually created last year, but I just recently was talking about it with other teachers as we were talking about teaching character traits. This freebie is called Cooking Up Character Traits! 

The idea behind this freebie was actually inspired by a character traits unit on Read Works website! If you have never used this website, you need to check it out!!! It is FILLED with step by step lesson plans for all the different reading comprehension strategies and has great choices for texts to use or passages that they have created. There are lots and lots of nonfiction passages too!! 

So once I got the idea to make it into actual recipe cards, I emailed www.readworks.org to make sure it was okay to post as a freebie. They were so kind and quick to respond with a yes, of course. They were happy that I was able to use their idea for inspiration. So I quickly finished it up and shared it with everyone. 

When we teach about character traits, we often talk about the actions, thoughts, and feelings that the characters show in the book. So we talked about a recipe and how we have to put all the ingredients together to come up with the end result. Well, it's the same with character traits. You have to take all the bits and pieces you find about the characters and put them together. For example, one action of the wolf's in Little Red Riding Hood is that he dressed up as her granny. The kids would write that in one of the ACTION boxes. Then they would think about what he was thinking as he did that action. So they would put something like he was trying to play a trick on her. Finally, they would write how they thought he felt as he was doing this. They would put something like sneaky or clever. After closely looking at each part that made up the character, we come up with the trait that they mostly portray. They write the character trait on the lines as well as using that evidence they wrote down in the organizer to back up their statement. Of course, they also draw a picture of the character in the box just like the food would be on the recipe card. 

I used our poster maker at school to enlarge these to a huge size which the kids loved. We also used them after that as normal organizers. They really started to get a good understanding of what they had to find or pay attention to in the books to be able to describe the characters traits of a specific character. Many times, they do notice these things, but they don't connect it to character traits. 

Click here or on the Character Traits Bulletin Board Title to download this FREEBIE!!

OH, and I also have a Reading Skills Posters/Organizers/Reference Sheet/Tests and Matching Game

set on TpT that includes the Anchor Poster I use when teaching character traits as well as the Cooking Up Character Traits freebie. I use the example from Little Red Riding Hood on it. :) Here's a look at it!

Well, I have to get myself to bed so I can wake up at about 4am to get ready for WYOMING!!!! :) I hope you and your students enjoy this freebie!!! Feel free to leave a comment below and/or on TPT to share how you like it or whatever you'd like! :) It makes my day to hear from all of you!!

Thanks for stopping by my little blog!!! Don't forget to FOLLOW me here or on Bloglovin to stay in touch!! :) I hope you have a FANTASTIC FRIDAY and a relaxing weekend!! 

Your next stop on the blog hop is with Mrs. Rossi at Sailing into 2nd!! Click on her blog button to grab your next FREEBIE!!!