Celebrate November with a Salute

This time of the year many teachers are teaching vocabulary for the big holiday in November. I'd like to take this time to remind you of a very important group that gets forgotten in the hustle and bustle of turkey season...the veterans. I've laid out my November plan in hopes to spread the love to our brave soldiers and of course express my gratitude!

I introduced the topic of Veterans Day with vocabulary: honor, respect, thankful, salute, celebrate, faithful, loyal, serve.


I work in a school for the Deaf and hard of hearing and targeted auditory skills by counting syllables for words from arlenesandberg.blogspot.com:

Words included 1-4 syllables: world, war, peace, wreath, sailor, parade, solider, salute, medal poppy, November, 11th, veterans, memorial, ceremony, military.

I explained what Veteran's Day was and we made flags out of hand prints. Some of the terminology used on the poster is from a pin I found on pinterest (http://www.mylifeasathirdgradeteacher.com/).

November 11th: a day to honor those who have served and are currently serving in the military

What is a Veteran?
-A person who has fought for our country
Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard

What do they do?
-Protect our country!
-Fight for our freedom!

I used "The Wall" by Eve Bunting and created my own reading comprehension questions based on the student's goals (i.e. main idea, recalling details, sequencing).





My older kids (5th-7th grade) get a kick out of my "Speechgram". We created usernames in the beginning of the year and I post a new picture every week. The kids can ask questions and write (grammatically correct) comments! It's fun to see what the kids come up with, and they are all super motivated to write! This is my friend Bridgett, she is a marine.

#who #what #when #where #why #how

(We are still working on the grammatically correct...and spelling)

Now for my favorite. Writing to Bridgett and her soldier friends. Operation Gratitude is always looking for letters to soldiers! Collaborate with your OT friends for a super fun writing a letter lesson! It was a fun process for the students and they were excited and motivated. I broke down the process into parts and really drilled ASKING and ANSWERING questions. I created statements (i.e. "My favorite movie is Frozen.") and had the students create their own questions; What's your favorite movie? Who is your favorite character? Again, since I'm in a school where Auditory Verbal is a big component of speech; I asked questions presented orally only and incorporated it into this part of the lesson.

It was an easy way to transition into Thanksgiving; as we were all feeling very thankful for the brave men and women in the military.

THANKS for reading.