A Week of Spider Fun

This week during Writer's Workshop, it was all about those creepy, crawly 8-legged arachnids. Spiders had my students going "spider crazy." This was our first "focused" informational writing. In other words, I didn't let my students choose what animal to write about like usual. I pretty much told them we were all going to write about spiders this week. While I was a little nervous about giving them only one topic, they did an amazing job! I read books about spiders, showed pictures of spiders, watched movies about spiders, etc... we were ALL about spiders! I just wanted to share a few pictures of the things we did.

I read the book Spiders by Gail Gibbons and filled out this fantastic chart with the students. I read over the questions first, and told the students to listen for the answers. As I was reading, they would raise their hands when they heard an answer. They used these charts while they were writing their books.

We also created a Can Have Are chart about spiders so the students could reference it while they were writing.

Please ignore my handwriting... 

Instead of using the chart idea, my amazing classroom neighbor, Mrs. Murdock, made a spider chart of a different fashion. It looks amazing! She gave each group of students a "leg" and had them write facts that they learned from one of the spider books. 

Our completed spider books and hallway display! They did an amazing job! 

We needed a bigger web!

Adorable! 

 (I traced a plain old paper plate to get the size of the spider I wanted, then I cut lined paper to fit inside.) 

I wish I would've taken a picture of some of my students' completed pages of their books. 

If you have not written about spiders yet, I suggest you write about them soon. The kiddos LOVED them!

Check out my Pinterest Halloween board for a few more spider ideas you can use.  

Have a fabulous weekend bloggie friends!