I have been able to use “The Mitten” comprehensively across all of my groups this year.  I wanted to share a few more activities that my students have been enjoying!  The versatility of children’s literature is one reason why I love doing literacy-based therapy.

1) Sequencing & Writing

As a group we summarized four main parts of the story. I wrote our summary using the plastic sheet cover.

Then the students had a chance to write their own summary using the same template.  We focused on the sequencing words :First, Next, After that, Last.  You can see the visuals I used in the graphic organizer to help remind them of the actions of that part of the story.

I also did some dictation to scribe for one of the students.  We focused on writing sight words and simple sentences, which aligns with what he is practicing with his teachers.  I also carryover their strategies to highlight the letters for him to trace.  The next step once he can generate some spelling will  be to highlight the line for him to write a word.

Check out this freebie from Stephanie Chambers!

All of this work using this graphic organizer to to prep us to be able to make these amazing flip books that I found (for free!) from Stephanie Chambers.

2) Simple sequencing & Sentence structure

Some of my students are working on simple sentence structure, so having a sentence starter is important to give them some repetition.  We retold the sequence of the animals using the story board as a reference.  With each animal we created a sentence.  Eventually we will build up to have more variety in our sentence structure, but for now we need the familiarity of repetition.

3) Summarizing facts to generate writing

With one of my older groups, we actually didn’t even read the story, but used their prior knowledge of the story characters to do a writing activity using “Animals of the Ukraine” fact cards that I have had in my stash of materials.

Their instructions were to read the facts about their animal, “ID the Key” for 3-4 facts, jot them on their draft paper in their own words, and then transfer their info to their final mitten.  We were targeting: following directions, sentence structure, identifying key fact, summarizing, peer interaction, and work completion.

I hope you have an enjoyable week!