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!

Literature Companion Units {Corduroy}

Well, this is so fun and exciting for me! I've always had my certain favorite read alouds for my 2nd graders, and while I'm reading, I have all of those teachable moments and end up using the book for a variety of lessons. I've decided to organize all of those thoughts to share with everyone else! Earlier this week, I completed a Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse Unit (one of my FAVORITE read alouds!) and it was so exciting sitting down and writing down and PLANNING all of the things that I could use that book to teach! 

Now I have moved on to Corduroy...another favorite! I use a basal reading book in my district, but I love to incorporate in as many read alouds as possible. KIDS LOVE TO BE READ TO! It's amazing to sit down and dig into one book and discover how many lessons you could teach from it! 

I have created this "Companion Pack" to be used during and after reading Corduroy to your class. There are vocabulary cards and definitions included, ideas for anchor charts, graphic organizers for story mapping, 

I have also included five hand-on workstation/centers that can be used throughout the week that you read the story, or even all on the same day, whichever works for you! There are two centers to practice the vocabulary words, then there is a Cause and Effect center, Synonyms center, and Compound Word center. (All using words and scenarios from the story!) 

   

I also had a ton of great response to literature types of questions that I would ask my students, which I think would work great at writing time to tie everything together for your day/week, however you choose to plan this Corduroy unit! I'm showing two examples below of the writing that I included, but there are actually a few more in the packet. 

I said this when I blogged about my Lilly unit, I think it'd be great to use for an emergency sub kit..just leave the book and this unit. However, I wouldn't want to miss out on all of this fun with my kids, so I'd probably want to do with them! 

If you are interested in trying out this packet, please check it out in my store and see the full description, there honestly is a TON included. Also, be watching for future blog posts of me actually using these packets in my own classroom. Like I said before, I have actually pulled out a lot of these skills during those "teachable" moments, but I'm so excited to finally have all of my thoughts and ideas organized and ON PAPER! 

Just a quick sneak peek...here are some of the other books that I plan on working on "organizing my ideas" into companion units: Chrysanthemum, The Pout-Pout Fish, a bunch of Eric Carle books, and The Napping House. What are your favorite read alouds that you would like to have units to go along with? Let me know if you have any that you think I'd love too!

Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse {Literature Companion Unit}

I've been super excited today because I finished this adorable unit to go with Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, which is one of my favorite books!! I just wanted to give you a sneak peek and I can't wait to use this with my 2nd graders this year!

I've included vocabulary words that you can discuss before reading the story to front load your students' understanding. I've made them on big cards that you could put in a pocket chart.

There are graphic organizers to complete after reading the story. You could even have students working on them while you read, you could stop at various places and complete them together. Or you could enlarge them and do one big one as an anchor chart!

  

I have included five literacy centers to go along with the skills that I found in the story. These could be used for independent workstations or in a small reading group. If you really wanted to, you could print an activity for each kid and use it more like seat work. It's up to you! I even think this would be great to leave for emergency sub plans...it'd keep your kids busy for your entire reading block for sure! All of the literacy centers have accountability/recording sheets included with them. I love having these so that the kids aren't just playing around, but they are actually held accountable with something to turn in as proof! {Sounds like I've had a lot of off task kids...right?!}

I've also included some writing activities that I would use in centers/workstations in my room. One of them includes response to literature questions, which students will respond to questions regarding the story, but also use details from the story to support their answer. Another writing activity is to write a letter to Lilly about what she should have done in the story. Last, there is a writing activity that refers to a simile found in the story. 

 If you are interested in this unit, please check it out in my store. If anything, add it to your wishlist for when you really need something fun for your room (i.e. Emergency Sub Plans...or maybe a day off...then again, you'll really want to do this SUPER FUN unit WITH your kids and not leave it for someone else to enjoy all of the fun!)

Click on the picture to see it in my store.

Other Literature Companion Units in my store:

              

Student Created Anchor Charts: Compare and Contrast

Again this week, we worked on "Student Created Anchor Charts" during our "intervention time". This is when about 8 of the kids are out of the room getting reading and math intervention and I'm looking to challenge the kids that are left with projects and extra review of skills. This week I used my Reading Wonders leveled readers for the week and the skill for the week: Compare and Contrast.

Last week, we did a similar activity to practice Main Idea and Details.

First, students read the book with others in their reading group. The books are leveled, so this was a nice way to differentiate it very quickly.

Each group or set of partners then worked on creating a rough draft compare/contrast anchor chart on regular paper by using my anchor chart from a lesson earlier in the week as an example and reminder of how to compare and contrast.

    

We finished the reading and rough drafts on the first day of the project. Day two (which ended up being a few days later due to snow days!) was actually using those rough drafts to create the full size anchor chart with markers. The kids love this!