Turkey Takes a Vacation

Ms. Tulbure's class loves to be creative. In December, students created fanciful stories about a creative turkey and used technology to take the turkey to another land where he would not become Thanksgiving dinner.

Steps Taken to Complete Turkey and Research

First, students choose a book they read in November, and decorated a turkey to look like the main character. 

photo by Ms. Tulbure

Second, students selected an exotic vacation location for turkey. (If he left America over Thanksgiving break, he would not get eaten.) Some turkeys stayed home.


Third, students researched a vacation destination using reference books and World Book Online.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Fourth, students wrote the first draft of our turkey narratives. Students opened up their Google Docs and started typing their story. A link with a writing prompt was provided in Google Classroom. 

photo by Ms. Tulbure

Steps Taken to Complete the Vacation Photos 

First, students were guided in adding the application Google Earth to their GAFE (Google Apps for Education).

Next, students located the country they had researched, and used the man icon to get a street level view. 

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Then, students took a screen shot of their selected location.

Lastly, students uploaded their photo onto their Google Doc. 

To Bring it all together.....

We used the app Green Screen to superimpose the turkey onto the Google Earth image

. 

Below are the published pieces (more to come soon)

Turkey swims to the Pacific Ocean:

by Belana 

Turkey visits Israel: 

by Amit

 Turkey visits the Grand Canyon:

by Sam

Turkey goes to Scottsdale, Arizona: 

by Tyler

 Turkey jets off to Canada:

by Cameron

Where would your turkey go if he tried to escape Thanksgiving?

Which story did you enjoy and why?

 

What are Text Features?

Ms. Tulbure's class is learning about informational text. 

Informational text, or nonfiction writing, is based on facts, real events, and real people. There are many helpful text features found in nonfiction writing. Some common text features are:  headings, subheadings, captions, diagrams, timelines, maps, charts, table of contents, index, and the glossary.

In class, we used published informational texts as mentor texts.


Here are some headings, photos, and captions.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Look closely. Here is a diagram and a heading! 

photo by Ms. Tulbure

Here is a map with a key. I wonder what the arrows means? Check the key and it will unlock the meaning.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

It's easy to stay organized. Just look at the Table of Contents for clues on chapters or in the glossary for meanings of words. The index will also help you find specific topics or guide you to answers to your questions. 

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

 

 

Wow! Text features are everywhere and you can sure learn a lot if you pay attention to them.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

What are your favorite text features and why?

(Headings, subheadings, captions, diagrams, timelines, maps, charts, table of contents, index, and the glossary.)

What are TWO facts that you learned from a mentor text explored in class? Be sure to tell us the text feature you used to learn the factual information!