Children's Books for Grownups

As a teacher, I have a feeling that you have a large collection of books....and some of them are YOUR books...as in, kids can't touch them. GUILTY! I just want to know where they are when I need them! I may share them after I read them, but they have to go back on my special shelf in my classroom!

Okay, well there are some children's books that I own that I haven't shared with my class...only because I think they are a little bit too much for them to understand, but I love them! (Probably more than my adult books!) Do you have any books like this? I am still deciding how I will present this one to my students!

If you have followed my blog for a little while, you may have seen my post about meeting Patricia Polacco last fall! She doesn't live too far away from me and she had announced a book signing at a small hometown bookstore, so Abbie from Tales From the First Grade and I drove up (about an hour) to see her! It was so much fun! Here's the post and a picture!

She's just the sweetest lady and it was such a memorable day! Before she started her book signing, she spoke to the small crowd that was there and told a few stories about the books that she had in the works. First of all, she's an amazing story teller, as I'm sure you can imagine! Plus, the stories she was talking about publishing sounded AMAZING! Well, of course I also follow her Facebook page and the day that this book (Tucky Jo and Little Heart) was announced that it was available for sale in August, I ordered it on Amazon right away!

Since I had heard her tell the story in person, I couldn't wait to see and read the book! It didn't disappoint! It's a heart-warming story about war, friendship, trust, and just a true miracle. One of the sweetest stories that I've read and it reminds me of how things always happen for a reason! Just when you think it's a sweet story, like all of Patricia Polacco's, it has an amazing twist, which seems almost too good to be true!  Do yourself a favor and either purchase this book, or look it up at your local library, just for a heart warming read!

Click on the picture to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)

I've been working on the rehabilitation of my leg and was just doing some stretching on my exercise bike, grabbed it, and read it again while I was riding...just a lovely story! It's okay for grownups to read children's books, right? Now I'm thinking of how I can share this with my class when I return and some of the lessons that we can learn from the heart-warming story! Since I had just read it again today, I decided I wanted to share it with all of you! What is your favorite Patricia Polacco book?

Making Read Alouds Interactive {How Santa Got His Job Edition}

I love making read alouds interactive. In fact, I love teaching literacy skills straight from read aloud books. It's a great way to not only get good stories into your classroom, but to teach skills that your students need at the same time.

One of the most important things to do while reading a book aloud is to model THINKING WHILE READING. Your students need to HEAR what you are thinking in your head while you are reading, so they can understand what THEY are supposed to be doing when they read. They need to be interactive when reading on their own, too!

The lesson that I'm posting today can be done easily with any book, but if you want to do this exact lesson, all you need is the book How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky. (Plus chart paper, markers, and sticky notes if you choose!)

In my classroom, I usually get the anchor charts "prepped" beforehand with a title, but other than that, we do our anchor charts TOGETHER as a class. That's what makes it interactive. My students give me feedback on what we should add, what they want to add, etc. It's a SHARED anchor chart. I never pre-make a full anchor chart. I find that then it's just a poster for them to stare at. If they make the chart WITH ME, they have more ownership and understanding of the concepts.

For this lesson, when students arrive in the morning, they will see this anchor chart and they are asked to grab a sticky note and record their answer/prediction on it and then stick it to the chart. This should be quick and easy, and it will get the students thinking and engaged right away, even if we aren't going to be reading the book until later in the day. In fact, they may not even realize that the question has anything to do with a book! This is PART of the "before reading" activity.

 If you aren't into using the sticky notes like I am (I do it all the time as a quick strategy!) You can also just ask students for their predictions when you start the lesson and record the answers for them on the chart.  I have them all record their answers, stick them up, then once it's time for us to meet and start this actual read aloud, I start pulling them off, read them to the group, then record our ideas onto the chart. (Without repeating any!) 

Show your students your "During Reading" anchor chart that you have prepared, so they know what to be listening for and looking for when you start reading the book. You may decide that you want them to look for other things, but here is what I put on my anchor chart. The "ways Santa got his job" could be changed to "Skills Santa has for the job." These are basically just a few big things that happen in the story that you want your students to be ACTIVELY listening for!
{To stay engaged and interactive!}

Next, is the easy part...start reading the book! As you read, THINK ALOUD, stop and say things like, "Oh, here is a good skill that would help him be Santa, I'm going to add that to the anchor chart." and "Wow, I think that job will help him get the job as Santa, I'm going to add that to the chart." Also, "Oh no, that's a big problem and obstacle that got in Santa's way, let's record that to talk about later." Let the kids raise their hands and "think aloud" too. Sometimes, if you don't normally teach like this, it can be hard to get used to because the story will be interrupted many times! BUT, that's super important if you are really modeling how to "think while reading." The only way to truly model it is to do it OUT LOUD and unfortunately, that may interrupt your perfect story... in a GOOD way! 

             

After finishing the story, we go over and discuss some of the things that we came up with DURING READING and decide if we need to add anything that was really important. Then we move onto the AFTER READING portion of the lesson.

There are a few ways that you can do this. You can simply just have a discussion, you can pose and post the questions, then have the students choose one to answer on a sticky, or you can actually have them pull out a response type notebook to answer the questions. The "after reading" portion should connect the before and during reading portions of your lesson and shouldn't skipped! It's important to help with your students' comprehension!  Although I just have my students respond on a sticky note or in a response notebook, I am including a freebie today with some of the response questions and a place to answer the questions. You can choose one of them or all of them, or you could have your students choose which one they'd like to answer!

Visit my store for this freebie (click on the picture below!) and please let me know if you do this lesson and how it goes! I can't wait to hear!

12 Books of Christmas

I'm excited to be teaming up with 11 other AMAZING bloggers to share some of our favorite Christmas and holiday books in a fun 12 Books of Christmas Blog Hop!

Along with FREEBIES for each book, we are also giving away a copy of each book. Make sure you read all the way to the end of this post to find out how to WIN!

For my book, I chose The Not Very Merry Pout-Pout Fish. Love all of the Pout Pout Fish books and I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one!

I have created a packet of activities to go with it. I have a variety of activities to choose from to use after reading the book as a read aloud with my class! Please download the freebie below to use a few of my activities after you read the book. Remember, if you don't own the book yet, you'll want to enter the raffle for a chance to win ALL of the books above! What could be more fun than that?

Thanks so much for stopping by! Before you hop onto see my sweet friend, Abbie over at Tales From the First Grade, don't forget to grab my number! Each blogger will have a number at the end of his/her post. Collect all the numbers along the way, and when you're done, add them all up and enter the total number in the Rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy hopping!

Bear Says Thanks {Read Aloud Lesson}

Good morning! I wanted to share a post that I wrote over at Classroom Tested Resources, a collaborative blog that I'm part of! I was featured just yesterday with this post!

In case you haven't read it there yet, I wanted to share it here too! PLEASE be sure to head over to the CTR blog though to see tons of awesome ideas that a collaboration of teachers share DAILY! There are a variety of topics and grade levels covered...and some GREAT ideas!

I'm always looking for fun ways to teach (and review/practice!) nouns. I'm going to share how to use a simple read aloud and have your students help you find nouns in the story by recording them in their reading notebooks. Also, you could easily modify this by you (the teacher) creating an anchor chart as more of a shared lesson. It would depend on the age of the kids. My second graders can be kind of in between when it comes to the ability on this. Sometimes it's just easier for me to do a shared anchor chart together, rather than wait for each kid to "keep up" with us in their own notebooks. In doing this, I would have my own notebook under the document camera and I'd be working right along with the kids, so it would still be a "shared/guided" lesson.

First of all, I love The Bear Books by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman. My girls at home love them and my students love them. They are adorable and fun stories! (They are pretty quick reads, too!) For this lesson, I used "Bear Says Thanks".

I started by doing a quick mini-lesson with my students about what nouns are: person, place, or thing. However, I did add in ANIMALS to my list, too.  This can be kind of a questionable subject I have found, some teachers think you should just put animals under THINGS, which I agree with since they are THINGS. However, for this particular story, it worked well for me to actually add the extra category of ANIMALS because this book is all about animals and there aren't any PEOPLE included in this story. So, in this case, I had to show them that you won't always find something for all of the noun categories in a story because sometimes people or animals aren't included. I did keep the PEOPLE category on the simple chart we made though. We have done other activities where they have practiced finding PEOPLE as nouns, so I felt comfortable doing it this way.

Next, I started the read aloud and told students to listen for nouns that they hear in the story. But, I reminded them that we will read it a second time, so they won't if they don't remember all of them! (I just wanted them to enjoy the story first!)

Next, I asked students to just verbally name some animals, places, and things that they remembered from the story. We are sitting on my carpet (where we always do read alouds) and they raise their hands and share with the class some nouns that they can recall from the story. They could name quite a few!

After that, we head back to our desks and take out our reading notebooks. In my own reading notebook, I model how to draw a quick, simple chart (nothing fancy!!) and they copy it into their notebooks too.

Then, we opened up the book (under the document camera) and I started rereading the story while the students followed along, and we searched for nouns. We stopped on each page and started filling them into our chart together. They helped me and I helped them. 

We all worked together and my students loved it! I found it to be a fun and easy way to "come up" with nouns instead of just trying to think of them on their own. Especially because authors of some of these awesome books use such GREAT vocabulary in their writing that students would most likely not think of on their own. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't think of them either!!

Obviously, this idea could be used with ANY book that you choose at any time of the year! I also think this has helped my students with not only knowing what nouns are, but giving them some ideas for better vocabulary when it comes to their own writing! 

I've created a freebie to go along with this story as a special gift for reading my blog post today! You could easily put it into a workstation after teaching this lesson, just to reinforce the skill. Also, if you notice some students just not quite grasping the concept, this would be a fun and easy activity to do afterwards in a small reading group or one-on-one. 

If you really enjoy this book Bear Says Thanks, please visit my store for a full literature companion pack that contains multiple centers and activities to go along with the book. It's coming soon!

Don't forget to check out the CTR blog for some awesome ideas from a great variety of bloggers! Click below to head over there now!

Back to School Book Favorites {Freebie Linky}

I did a post earlier about my favorite back to school books, but I wanted to tell you more about A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue! {Plus there are some other blogging buddies linking up to this that will tell you about their favorite back to school books too!}

I just discovered this book this past school year when I asked for recommendations on my Facebook page and a few teachers recommended it. I ordered it right away on Amazon and ended up loving it! It's a book that you might want to revisit a few times through the school year, or just revisit the topic and remind the kids of "tattle tongues." They will remember what you are talking about! I even find myself saying it at home, then realizing that I haven't read it to my own kids yet! LOL

The book goes over rules of when you should and should not tattle. For example, if someone is in danger, you should tell someone immediately. But, if someone is not in danger and what they are doing has nothing to do with you, you shouldn't tattle. It's fun to give the kids examples after reading the book and see if they can transfer what they learned in the book into "real life" (even though it's on paper!) Then as the year goes on, you will find out if they can transfer the rules to real life too. If they start to have trouble, read it again!! 

This year, I'd like to give my students this quick "check for understanding" after reading and discussing the book. If you'd like your own copy for free, click on the picture below. Don't forget to leave feedback and then click on the others in this linky below for more ideas for back to school books to read!

An InLinkz Link-up

Back to School Read Alouds {Who's Who and Who's New Post}

I'm a guest blogger over at Who's Who and Who's New today! Here's a little peek at what's over there...

Last year, over the summer, I asked my readers for some suggestions and I was amazed with how many books I hadn't heard of. How can I have a classroom FULL of books (and I mean, FULL!) and also be so "out of the loop" on current books? It just goes to show how many books are out there and that we need each other to collaborate and share our finds with each other! I can't say that I didn't know about ALL of these, but I had kind of "forgotten" about them. 

First Day Jitters is just hilarious. The kids love it and it breaks the ice with them about being nervous for the first day. Spoiler Alert---it's the TEACHER that has the first day jitters, even though you assume through the entire story that it's a kid that has the first day jitters. A good book to make connections with your new students on the first day! Plus, it will make them laugh!

Just like the title says, this book is great for teaching kids how to treat others! I think everyone needs that reminder at the beginning of the school year! (And maybe again later!)

A great story for reminding kids how to act...OR ELSE..... Also for letting them know how they should act if they ever have a substitute teacher. You never know when an unplanned day could pop up. This past year I had to take a day off the first week of school! Talk about stressful! 

I have read Chrysanthemum at the beginning of the year for quite a few years. I like reading it because it reminds the kids again how to treat others and how we are all different and unique in our own way. Plus, I just love Kevin Henkes! 

Sadly, this past year was the first year that I read about filling each other buckets. Why didn't I do this sooner? We made a great anchor chart after reading the story and talked about how we could fill buckets in our room everyday. That chart was a reminder all year to ourselves, "Are you filling someone's bucket today? How CAN I fill someone's bucket?"

Love Enemy Pie. It's a cute story and AGAIN, shows kids how to treat others! (Even an "enemy"!)

The Recess Queen is a good story to show kids how to treat each other on the playground and how to make friends with people, even if they are being mean to other people. It teaches kids how to be the bigger person and maybe even be FRIENDS with the "mean" kid. Maybe you will find out they aren't actually mean....

Tattle Tongue is definitely one of my favorites and it's one that I just discovered this past year. It teaches kids about appropriate and inappropriate tattling, when you should and SHOULDN'T tattle. I found myself referencing this book all year long! I was even asking my own kids at home, do you have a "Tattle Tongue"? Then I remembered that I really needed to bring that book home and read it to them!   

Main Idea and Details

Again, I'm reminiscing about back when I started this blog. Here is a bulletin board activity I did about 5 years ago! 

I'm thinking about doing this with some of the winter titles I have been reading and snowflakes! What do you think?

 

After working on identifying the main idea and details in fiction and non-fiction text, my class worked together to create this bulletin board. We used some of our favorite read aloud books from this year so far and we found the main idea and three details for each book.

1. Have students choose which book they'd like to work with. (I had them work with partners, so I just chose two students who were interested in the book to work together.)

2. Give each pair of students 4 sticky notes. One for main idea, 3 for details.

3. Have students reread the familiar read aloud story.

4. Have students identify what they think the main idea of the book is and write it on a sticky note labeled "Main Idea"

5. Have each pair of students find 3 details that they find important from the story and remind them that the details need to support the main idea that they have chosen. They may write these 3 details on the other 3 sticky notes.

6. After checking capitals, punctuation, etc. on the sticky notes, I let them copy the sentences onto cut out leaves for our fall themed bulletin board.

7. Add the main idea and detail leaves to the book covers that are on your bulletin board.

8. You could also have students share their main idea and details of these books with the class. Each of the books should be familiar to the entire class, so they may help them decide if this was the main idea or not.

Those Shoes

One of my favorite books with a great lesson! Have you read it with your kids? Our kids all receive the book through a program called Real Men Read. We have a local volunteer come in and read the book with our class, then all of the kids get to take the book home. It's an awesome program here in our city! This was our January book!