Cowboy School = Glyphs, writing, branding, boots, and a lasso

We've been working our way through Scott Foresman's 2nd Grade Reading Street, and this week, we read Cowboys. I've been waiting for this selection because I knew our Cowboy School would be a hit. Here's what we did. I hope you'll be able to use some of these ideas with your lessons about cowboys too in your classroom and homeschool classrooms.


First, we read the Cowboys reading selection, talked about the pictures, worked with the new words, and talked about what it would be like to be a cowboy--or cowgirl too of course.


Then we worked through my Cowboy or Cowgirl Glyph. We started out with the glyph questions and patterns. If you're not familiar with glyphs, they are a visual way to represent data. For this glyph, depending on how you answered questions about cowboys, you colored the hat, boots, bandanna, and gloves a certain color. You could also use the same items printed on colored construction paper.

Then we worked on some writing. The prompt was simple... "If I were a cowboy ...."  and "If I were a Cowgirl...". This writing prompt was part of each cowboy and cowgirl craft.

Next, we looked at all the glyphs and worked a bit with data analysis and graphed the results from our cowboys. Check out the results! The kiddos even named their cowboys and cowgirls.

We had read about branding too in the Reading Street selection and the kiddos made their own brands. (Yes, Ninjago has had a big influence this year!)

Then we worked with symmetry and created these fun and colorful cowboy boots. I think I'd wear the brown and purple ones. What do you think? Would you wear them?

 And then we watched a YouTube video on how to throw a lasso. While we didn't have a lasso, we had some rope and our target was the deer skull you see here. We discovered this deer last year in the woods which made for an interesting science lesson.

 And that covered our cowboy school.

If you can read the writing prompts above, it looks like the line from Cowboys in Reading Street about what cowboys eat made a lasting impression. They wanted to eat cowboy food! But I didn't add that to the plan--maybe next time.

You can purchase my Cowboy and Cowgirl Glyph HERE at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. The symmetric boots are from Loreen Leedy's TpT  store.

Enjoy!
Robin @ Little Blogfish