Favorite Books For Fall

I am joining my Kinder Friends to share some of our favorite books to read during the Fall. The book I have chosen is not really a themed book but is an amazing title to help continue beginning of the year learning through fall.

The book that I would like to share is called The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak. It is a great way to show your K/1 kiddos how to read a book with expression and to really focus on comprehending the type of character that is talking in a story. It models how as a reader you should adjust your tone and voice to sound like what you think the words would sound like. This story is a very engaging read aloud. When I read it to the students, I stop and pause and model how to actually think about what the words are saying in order to adjust to them. Sometimes I will have them repeat the words after me. Then I challenge the students to go back to their reading spots and try it out with books of their own. It is certainly a text that I use in the fall to get the student's minds prepared for all of the character work that we do at the beginning of the year, but it is also a great book to refer back to through the year. If you are interested in this book,  You can get it here. 

I hope you give this book a try in your classroom this fall. Now hop on over to my friend Cristina at The Primary Besties to find some more great fall titles!

Stories For Their/Your Soul

This week I am joining my Kinder Friends to share about stories that we think are good for your soul.

I love reading. It is my favorite subject. I had a very hard time deciding on just one book that I love, so I am sharing 2.

1. A book for your teacher soul:

I have to tell you about this book that I read, researched, and continue to go back to while I am planning for differentiation in my classroom. It is UHHH-Mazing. It is called The Common Core Companion. This book goes through EVERY K-2 Informational and Literature Reading, Writing, and Listening/Speaking standard. It will take one standard then show you the K level of it, the first grade level of it, and the second grade level of the standard. Then it will give you examples of what the student could be doing, questions to ask, and examples of how to expand or remediate EACH standard. The Common Core Companion is a wonderful tool that can ease your soul when planning for whole group, small group, or individual lessons. I highly recommend you get it and use it! You can get it on Amazon for about $28.00

2. A story for the Classroom Soul:

One of my ALL time favorite stories to read is called A Frog Thing by Eric Drachman.  This story is about a little frog named Frank. Frank is determined to fly. But flying is NOT a frog thing!  Frank sets his mind to it even though others laugh at him and tell him he can’t.  This story is so much fun to read with the students in your class.  It teaches so many great lessons and will really warm the kiddo’s souls. The students learn (above everything else) that if you just be you and try, anything is possible. If you don’t have the book but would love to try it, you can get it on Amazon here OR watch and listen to it on You Tube here.

After using this text with your class you can always connect it to Science by learning all about frogs and their life cycle.  I use this Frogs Can Grow Too life cycle reader and activity set to work with my kiddos.  

This product will be for sale in my store until January 22, 2017. You can get it by clicking the link above or by searching #kinderfriendswinter on TPT.

Your next stop is my good pal Elaine over at Kitty Kitty Kindergarten.

She has a fabulous and uplifting story about empowering a class to share with you!

First Grade Book Talks

Do you have your kiddos partner reading yet?  We start off the first week of school learning how to read independently in our book nooks. We are learning how to care for books and to protect our reading time by staying focused on our stories, not walking around the room, and being very quiet.  The second week of school I introduce partner reading.  We learn to EEKK (Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee, Book in the Middle so we BOTH can see) read with our partners.  Along with partner reading we spend another couple of weeks really learning how to talk about books with our partners and the different things we can share with our partners.  The kiddos learn how to use stickies to track their thinking. After about the third day of this practice, I begin calling partners to my table to show me how they have been talking with each other.

This year I decided to record a few of their book talks. If you listen closely in the videos there are some good examples and some good non examples (where the partner is talking but not listening to what his partner is saying and others). I used these videos with them whole class to see if they could figure out what was going good and not so good in their book discussions.

By critiquing themselves and offering advice to each other it brought a whole new personal meaning to their learning.  I thought I would share these videos with you guys in case you wanted to use them also.  (Of course the personal meaning won't be there for your class but the examples/nonexamples will be there for them to find!)

Here are the links:
http://youtu.be/sjzFqdHVCBI
http://youtu.be/Ls2d-3OLxVw
http://youtu.be/XNdjE6rjWNY
http://youtu.be/G78mU4peMPI