Book Bingo!

Hello and welcome to Adventures in Literacy Land! I'm Pixie Anne from Growing Little Learners and I'm here today to share an idea for promoting and encouraging children to read for pleasure in your classroom and at home!

I hand out recommended book lists most years and have set up challenges to read a certain number of books with rewards many times. However this year, I wanted to do something across the school that was a little different and would get children a little more excited.

The idea of book bingo is all over pinterest. I loved one I saw by Children's Books and Reading which included challenges to read certain book types as well as ways to read such as 'read by torchlight' and the ideas from Ebook Friendly.

I decided to use a mixture of specific books which were age and content appropriate for each year group and more general challenges to encourage children to choose their own books and have more control over the challenge. So year 4 might be asked to read Fantastic Mr Fox or Journey to Jo'Burg, but can also choose to read any book that was made into a film, or a book with a number in the title!

I created book bingo cards for ages 7-11 (year 3-6):

The reverse of the bingo card explains the rules, rewards and how to record which books are being read.

Books must be newly read and there must be a different book recorded for each square. There will be certificates and small prizes for 1, 2, 3, 4 lines and a full house!

 (Apologies for the terrible photo!)

For each line completed, children must complete a book review (I've just used ready made ones from sparklebox and twinkl) and hand it to me for display in the library so great recommendations can be shared with everyone!

The kids were so excited when I introduced Book Bingo to them and, while not everyone is taking part, there are quite a few who don't usually read that much who are definitely making more of an effort. 

They'll do anything for a stamp, sticker and certificate!

Have you any other great ideas for getting reluctant kids to read or to encourage them to read different books? If so, leave a comment below as I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Using Framed Paragraphs to Help Young Writers

Hello, again, Literacy Land!  It's Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars. I have been working closely with our second-grade teacher to help her struggling readers {and writers} to show success in literacy activities.  Recently, took on the writing aspect with these 5 students. We started by writing about someone in the group.

I started by modeling the entire process for them.

First, I made  T-chart about my "friend" Beth.  Now I don't have a friend named Beth, but she reminds me a lot of my daughter. We chose three items in each column to use in our paragraph.

Then I used the T-chart to write a short paragraph describing her.  The kids helped a little, and we talked about making sure our sentences were not all the same.

The best part of the process was letting them work on their own paragraphs.  They first interviewed a person in our group and wrote the information on the T-chart.  _____ looks like and Things _____ likes to do.  Then they chose their items wisely.

Finally, they used a framed paragraph that I created for this purpose to help them write a paragraph.

They loved doing this because they could feel successful in writing something that makes sense. It's amazing how something so simple can help students be successful in writing and take that success with them everywhere they go.

Seasonal Literacy: Valentine's Day

Happy February and Happy Groundhog Day!  Are you hoping for an early spring or more winter?  It feels as if we haven't had much of a winter here in NE Ohio, but no complaints here.  This month, I want to share a couple ways I have incorporated the excitement of Valentine's Day in our classroom.

The first one involves those little mailboxes they have a Target in the Dollar Spot; you will need 5 of them. The ones pictured are the metal ones with a detachable opening in the front, but I've also used the plastic ones with a slot for math.  You could absolutely use those for this too.  I used a piece of index card to write each of the 5 vowels and taped one vowel to the flag of each mailbox.  I pulled out old valentines and put them to good use.  It seems to every box has a few more cards than I need, so I decided it was time to stop letting them pile up.  I circled a character or object on each Valentine for students to focus on.  They then determined the vowel sound heard in each character and sorted them into the correct mailbox.

This center has been a big hit with the kids over the past 3 years.  I laminated the valentines so they can be used again and have added the valentines I've received from students over the last couple years as well.  You could sort by whatever skill you are working on; we just tend to be working on vowel sounds are this time of the year.  Old valentines could also be used as writing prompts!  I use the plastic mailboxes from the Dollar Spot for math; we practice fact to 5 to build fluency with this freebie.

Our writing center becomes the post office.  Students busy themselves writing letters, special notes and drawing pictures for their friends. I do not have mailboxes in my classroom (though if I could find some I loved I would totally splurge), so I taped a brown paper lunch bag in the hallway for each child.  After creating their "mail", each child donned a mailman vest, purchased at Pat Catans (a local craft store) to deliver the mail.  Mail is transported to the mailboxes in a special mail sack, a felt bag from the Target Dollar Spot.  

Making her deliveries

This task certainly increased the traffic at the writing center!  On each bag, I wrote the child's name and added their little school picture that you get from the photo company. This made it easy for children to deliver their mail.  I have a variety of paper, hearts cut from the Ellison machine, envelopes and stickers for them to make their special mail.  At the end of a few weeks, everyone read the mail in their mailboxes.  This year I'm having students decorate their own mailboxes at the art center for this project as mail delivery starts tomorrow!

I hope this gives you a couple ideas that you can either put to use now or begin gathering materials as they go on sale/clearance and save for next year!

Giveaway Winner Announcement