VA is for Bloggers - Southern Hospitality Freebie Blog Hop

Welcome to Virginia!

Virginia is for Lovers Bloggers!

A bunch of us Virginia bloggers are bringing in the new school year by extending a bit of southern hospitality.  You can follow along the blog hop to visit 20+ Virginia teacher blogs for terrific teaching tips and fun freebies to help get your new school year off to a great start.

At the end of this post, you'll be able to see everyone who's a part of this blog hop! Pick one of us Virginians to start with and roll through all of our blogs to collect a ton of great freebies, ideas and resources!

The freebie I have today is one that is perfect for back to school! The activity is simple but it's a great way to kick off the school year in writing. 

I always start the year by reading and passing around a book called "Amelia's Notebook." It's a great mentor text for writing because it's fun and shows how students can tie in their personality to their fiction and nonfiction writing. The kiddos have really been excited about writing when we start off the year with this book.

This is Amelia's Notebook and it's a series so there are multiple books!

So then the next step is for the kiddos to begin their writing notebooks. I know that an empty notebook can be daunting to a fourth grader, so the first page of our writing notebook is our Heart Map. We fill in each space of the heart with something that is important to us that we can later reference to get ideas for a story.

The example on the right was made by one of my students that was so creative but told me on the first day of school that he hated writing and reading. I like to think that starting the year off with a fun, artistic activity made him hate writing just a little bit less. 

Click on the images to grab this freebie from my Teachers Pay Teachers store! I love receiving feedback on freebies, it helps me make my freebies even better!

You can also enter into this giveaway to win 3 products from my TPT store! That's right! You win, you choose!

Here's some of the products you could grab for free if you win!

Beezus and Ramona book companion with tons of vocabulary study!

Word Study or Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe for independent student practice with weekly words

Math quick check cards- put them on a binder ring and quiz your kiddos during transitions! See the blog post about these useful little things here.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The next stop on the hop is Nikki from Teaching in Progress! She is the hostess and organizer of this whole blog hop sha-bang so you can't miss her blog!

Be sure to check out all the blogs below too!