I'm Special, I'm Me

During one of my student teaching placements in second grade I taught a lesson about being yourself. First, we read the book I'm Special, I'm Me by Ann Meek. The book was the school's Book of the Month book for May. The story is about a boy who tries to discover what makes him special in comparison to his classmates. It's a great story and would be perfect for a beginning of the school year read aloud!

After reading the story, the students had to think about what made them special. They wrote about the things that made them special in their writing journals. Their responses were adorable!

They then published their pieces onto final paper. I didn't get any pictures of their completed responses but I got the Final Copy paper off of Pinterest. You can get it here. Their responses were so amazing I knew I had to display them all somehow and our classroom bulletin board needed to be updated so I decided on a craft project to go along with our writing. 

I cut some head shaped tracers out of card stock and had the students trace them onto paper they thought best matched their skin tone. Then, they added features like eyes, a nose, and mouth. Some cut their hair out of paper and others chose to draw it on, I left that up to them. Then, using a big stack of fabrics my cooperating teacher had been given they cut their shirts out of the fabric. Some of them even chose to add ties and bows to their hair :) Finally, we mounted it on construction paper of their choice and added a frame. Here's the end result...

It came out so cute! I hadn't got the chance to put a heading up when I took this picture but you can see where it's going

 They're even cuter close up! Plus you could really identify which student it is based on their self portrait. I love their interpretations of what they look like, they were all pretty spot on!

You can get the paper I used for their final writing from Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas!