So Many Picture Books...So Little Time

Summer is one of my favorite times because I have more time to read than I do during the school year.  Also, (please don't throw things at me) I like attending professional development opportunities provided in my area by the local educational cooperative.  My FAVORITE professional development every year is "So Many Picture Books...So Little Time" presented by Wendy Ellis, Director of the Reading program at Harding University.  She shares over 50 picture books during the PD that are current (published in the previous year).  It is the best way to keep current on all the great books being published.  Today, I am going to share some of my favorites with you.  Sit back, relax, and be prepared to add some books to your Amazon wishlist.

Simpson's Sheep Won't go to Sleep by Bruce Arant

Farmer Simpson wants to sleep, needs to sleep, but isn't getting any sleep because the sheep keep coming up with reasons why they aren't ready to go to bed.  What will he do?  How will he get the sheep to sleep?  As I read this book, I immediately made a text-to-text connection between the sheep (and all of their excuses) and to the pigeon in Mo Willem's Don't Let the Pigeon Stay up Late who continually made excuses why he should be allowed to stay up.

 

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

Duncan wants to color, but his crayons have other plans.  Each crayon writes him a letter with their grievances.  What will Duncan do?  Will he ever get to color again?

This book has a FABULOUS book trailer that gives you hints about how each crayon is feeling.

 

Charlie Goes to School by Ree Drummond, illustrated by Diane deGroat

You probably know Ree Drummond better as the Pioneer Woman.  She also write books.  Charlie is her basset hound that lives with her on the ranch. The book starts with Charlie seeing the kids going to school (home school) and he decides that he can have his own school.  Find out what happens by reading this adorable book.

You can read more about the book on her blog HERE.  The book also has a recipe at the end for Strawberry Oatmeal Bars that look delicious.

Book Trailer:

 

Llama, Llama, and the Bully Goat by Anna Dewdney

My little girl loves her Llama Llama board book that we read every night as part of our going-to-bed ritual.  This Llama Llama book is a great read to help students understand what bullying is.  Llama Llama is learning a lot of new things at school, but Gilroy Goat is teasing him.  What is Llama Llama going to do?  What will happen to Gilroy?

Kid President has a video that would be a wonderful accompaniment to this book:  Kid President Pep Talk.  One of my favorite lines from the video:  "If we are on the same team, then we need to start acting like it."  Read the Llama Llama book, watch the video, and have students discuss what connections the video has to bullying.

 

The Little "Read" Hen by Dianne Las Casas

This spin on the classic "Little Red Hen" is great for introducing young writers to the writing process.  Little "Read" Hen wants to write a story, but none of her friends will help.  What will she do?

This book has phrases that keep you laughing and engaged throughout the story, like "busted her tail feathers."  At the end of the story, there is a "recipe" for a story that would make a marvelous bulletin board to showcase student writing pieces.  The author has a page on her website that has activities to go with the book:  educator guide and theater script.



Thanks for sticking with me through these recommendations.  Dr. Ellis did share over fifty books with us, so be on the look out for more posts here and at my blog.  I LOVE a great picture book!

Fresh Ideas For Summer Writing: Using an Observation Calendar

 

 

 

Hi everyone! Who's excited that summer has finally arrived? Let's not even think about that nasty winter for one minute! I'm Emily, from The Reading Tutor/OG. During the summer months, I work with children who struggle with writing. Over the years, I've searched for ways to make writing fun during the short time they are out of school, but still need practice. Today, I'll share one strategy you can try with your own students or children at home. You are welcome to join the conversation at the end and share your own ideas for using it too.

Observation Calendars

Keeping a summer journal is an easy and inexpensive way to keep writing skills sharp. I pass one out to each of my students that come to work with me over the summer. Coming up with ideas for summer journals can be fairly simple for teachers. We can print out a long list of prompts and assign away. But how do we help young writers brainstorm their own ideas for writing?

After searching and pinning ideas to my Pinterest boards a few years ago, I came up with a solution: an observation calendar. It's based on pins I saw when I was researching how to create a smash book. (which, by the way, are loads of fun and addictive!) When I ask children to keep a summer journal, we glue in an observation calendar with large boxes to write. I usually have lined boxes for kids that need help with organization. In the boxes, they write about something they have observed each day. It can just be a phrase or sentence, but they have to do it EVERY day.

What do you write in the calendar?

• Things you observe or wonder about in your world.
• Maybe jot down an observation about an interesting shell, a rock you found, a pet, something in the news, or a favorite meal. 
• Use your senses to become more aware of your surroundings. This helps you become more observant. People, events and things will begin to stand out, and you'll WANT to add them into your observation calendar.
• Be selective in what you add to it. It's only a small space!
• Use it for burning questions.
• Choose a certain time of day and place to fill in the box for the corresponding day and commit to it. Consider taking it with you on trips.
• Use sentence starters like, "I wonder.." I notice...", "Why do...", "I just discovered..."

What Are The Benefits Of Using

An Observation Calendar?

• This may not sound like a big deal in terms of length, but it seriously builds writing fluency. I tell my students writing should become second nature. It's a habit like brushing your teeth. Whether you do it a little or a lot each day, it becomes more comfortable.
• Watch and see how a young writer's stamina begins to grow. Challenged writers need to build up stamina, and strength to sustain when having to write at longer stretches.
• Because it is such a small space, young writers are training themselves to determine what's essential and what isn't when they write. The box is very small and you only get one a day!
• Writing in short bursts with small activities like the observation calendar help build discipline for the exercise and process of writing 
• These daily observations become seeds for journal entries, published stories, poems, blog entries, and even research projects!

This works very well during the school year as a quick warm-up, reflection or daily writing exercise too. Try it as a reader's response or a reading log instead. The key here, which I must point out, is to make this fun and engaging. A word of caution to the teacher that observes a calendar being rushed through just for the sake of being done. Take a few minutes each day or once a week to discuss the observations. Do not let wonderings just sit in the calendar. Guide children to lift an observation off the calendar and turn it into a journal entry, story, blog post, or research report.

Does this sound like something you will try with your budding writers? I'd love to hear about it! Feel free to comment below.
Thank you so much for visiting Literacy Land today!

Click here for free observation calendars for June, July and August, 2014!

*Before you go...My fans only freebie is still available for you at the Adventures in Literacy Land Facebook page until 6/30/11.  Just click the fan freebie tab to open. (Be sure to like the page first.) Enjoy!

Linking Student Learning with Genre Connections

Comprehension Connections and Genre Connections by Tanny McGregor are two books every teacher needs to purchase, read, and keep for reference later.  Both of these books are filled with lesson ideas to help your students become active thinkers in the reading process. Many kids just scratch the surface as they read often missing the subtleties that authors weave into their texts.

Today's post by Carla at Comprehension Connection will explain how these books can be used and add spark to your teaching and your students' learning experience. Read on to get more information...

When Adventures in Literacy Land kicked off, my co-bloggers, Emily at Curious Firsties and Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars, wrote up posts related to Tanny McGregor's book, Comprehension Connections.  They talked about lesson ideas they'd used from her book.  I loved them, and decided I had to have my own copy of the book.  I am really glad to have discovered it as Tanny's hands-on approach and higher level thinking skills help students who need just a little more in depth explanation of skills get what they need.  

The premise with Tanny's lessons is to take a big concept and introduce it with concrete objects. By using concrete objects, students have a visual image to attach to their learning. Simple things like a glass jar, a magnifying glass, or a broken necklace chain can inspire thinking as students try to figure out how they relate to the lesson.

Another important concept from Comprehension Connections is using a launching sequence similar to the gradual release model.  The added benefit of the launching sequence is that it includes the use of various sensory stimuli such as music, wordless picture books, and art to scaffold the important points of the lesson and to reach those learners who prefer a hands-on approach. I particularly love Tanny’s ideas because we need our students to think critically about their reading, and as the launching sequence is implemented, students analyze, question, and connect.  

In Comprehension Connections, the chapters each focus on a different comprehension skill. This is very helpful as teachers can quickly skim each chapter for a quick idea or to spark one of their own.  Certainly, all of the ideas can be applied to different books and learning levels, and in fact, we know multiple opportunities for students to practice a skill is essential for students to transfer that learning into independent practice. Therefore, multiple lessons are required for mastery.

Now, before I transition to Genre Connections, I have a question for our readers.  

I find that my students (who are typically below level) grab onto key words or bits of a concept and want to apply it to the wrong genre or every genre.  For example, I may work with my students on plot development, and several days later as new guided reading books of a different genre are introduced, they may not connect that different comprehension skills may be required to grasp the big ideas of the book well. This is why I think using the ideas shared in Genre Connections may provide my students with a firmer understanding of when to use comprehension skills we've learned.


Like the launching sequence in Comprehension Connections, students begin these lessons with a concrete object.  The concrete objects are chosen to help the student realize purpose for the learning and categorize information to more firmly differentiate genres. Tanny calls this process, “Noticing and Naming the Genre.” She uses simple objects that are readily available such as clothespins, prisms (in your science kits), mirrors, and one of my favorites, seed packets. 

In the section about informational text, she uses seed packets to get students to notice information we can learn from small bits of text if we're observant. Just look for a minute at this image and think about all the information you can gather...price, what vegetable will look like, name of the produce, how and when to plant it (notice the headings), who produced the seeds, and even the year the seeds were made for. We need our students to read informational text like a gardener reads seed packets.  We need them to realize that informational text includes certain features not found in other genres.  

The launching sequence then moves on to the sensory exercises.  With informational text, you might include a Schoolhouse Rocks video from Youtube like this one about electricity and discuss how informational text is organized.

Another option is to use artwork that explains such as the examples in this Prezi file.

Once students have explored various sensory media and inferred how we read informational text and what features we expect to find, then an anchor chart similar to this one would provide students with the opportunity to think how reading the seed packet relates to future reading of informational text. I also loved [this handout] from Dana Herzog which would be very helpful for interactive notebooks or future mini lessons.

Now, it's your turn.  What concrete objects would you choose to launch genre studies or improve reading comprehension?

Please share what's worked well for you.

Guided Reading Binder {Freebie}

Hi!  It's Jennie from JD's Rockin' Readers!

I hope everyone (that is on summer break) is enjoying your time off!  Since school has been out, I have serious been in DO NOTHING mode.  I will be taking a vacation soon and am hoping that I will get back to "work".  I have so many summer to do's and I really need to get busy...

  I thought I would share a freebie with you that I use to help me organize my Guided Reading Groups.   

This is what I use to help me stay organized.

I have my leveled groups.  I use kindergarten benchmarks to get an idea of their reading level at the beginning of the school year.  I'm sure I will be doing some moving around of my groups early on.

I have my supplies ready to go (whiteboards, markers, erasers, sound boxes, wikki sticks, highlighter tape, word windows, magnetic letters) along with my Ultimate Guided Reading Toolkit with Guided Reading Lesson Plans.  These help me stay on track of what I need to teach.

Here is a FREEBIE for you to help you get organized too!

I use velcro dots so that I can change my guided reading groups easily!  Just take off the name and move it to another group when needed.

Motivating Our Littlest Readers: 10 Tips for Parents

Happy Summer to my Literacy Land friends! It's Lauren here today from Teacher Mom of 3  to discuss motivating and encouraging lifelong readers This is a two part series for teachers and parents. Part One will discuss our littlest readers and next month we will discuss intermediate elementary through young adults. 

Part One:  Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Primary Readers

When parents of young children approach me concerned that their child is not showing an interest in reading, my advice is always the same:  do lots of lap reading, read-alouds, and don't force the issue.  Motivating children ages birth to kindergarten is, in my experience, much easier than motivating older readers who may have already lost interest for one reason or another. For teachers of pre-k and kindergarten students, my advice is similar: read aloud, keep it simple, and show sincere, authentic passion for reading.

Ten Tips for Motivating Young Children to Read

1.  The number one goal of reading is to instill a love of reading and to create life-long readers. We need to show kids that reading is fun and enjoyable.  I remember when my youngest son (who is now 7), would not sit still for lap reading until he was almost 3.5 years old.  I grew concerned and worried, as my two older sons had loved to be read to from birth.  I had done nothing differently with my youngest.  So, I relaxed and read to him for as long as he could concentrate and sit still.  Had I forced him, he may not be the little bookworm that he is today.

2.  Immersion- Surround your environment, whether the classroom or home, with a variety of kid-appealing reading materials.  I display books on the buffet in the dining room, have books and magazines (both fiction and nonfiction) on the coffee table (which we call the "reading table") in the living room, reading materials are in the car, in the playroom, and in the bedrooms. 

3.  Limit screen time- Just like in the classroom, motivating kids to read is all about balance.  My sons have book shelves in their bedrooms.  No TV. No video games. No computers.  Do they play video games?  Absolutely.  But they also read a lot at home, ask to be read to, and share book suggestions with me and with each other.

4.  Your local library- It is never too early to take a child to the library.  When my sons were toddlers, they loved to visit the library to play with the toys, especially the train table. I would sit on the floor or in a chair reading a stack of picture books, which would intrigue them enough to come over to me and explore the books.    They associated the library as a place that was enjoyable.

5.  Gadgets- When my oldest was little, he had an electronic, plastic book mark that had a timer on it. This allowed him to keep track of his required reading minutes for school independently.  My two youngest love their book lamps that clip to their books and make reading at bedtime fun.  Sometimes they use flashlights too!

6.  Interests- As the quote above from the book Readicide supports, find out what your children or students are interested in reading.  To develop lifelong readers, we need to match them with books that interest them and that are meaningful.  For me personally, this is much more important than matching a reader to a leveled text.  If we do not motivate first, learning and growth will not prosper.

7.  Digital- Encourage and allow time for reading digital texts whether it is from Starfall, on the tablet, or the Kindle.  Some kids prefer reading digitally, others do not. The audio and interactive components (such as with Scholastic's Storia) are a great way to "hook" readers.  However, I would suggest to balance reading with hard copies and digital ones.

8. Intrinsic Motivation- Our goal in encouraging kids to read is to create a lifelong reader, which is most likely to occur with intrinsic motivation.  Personally, I am not a fan of contests that reward those who read the most minutes, earn the most points, etc.  We want kids to read for pleasure and to be able to read to learn, not to earn prizes.  As for reading logs, most kids do not enjoy completing them, but they are important as they get older.  See below for a free log I designed for my boys when they were in preschool and kindergarten. If young readers fuss, encourage the parent to complete the log themselves and then show their child how many books they have read and celebrate their accomplishments.

9.  Acknowledgement- The "2 Sisters", Gail Boushey and Joan Moser (authors of The Daily 5), teach their students three ways to read a book.  For our youngest readers, reading the pictures of a book is reading as is a toddler or preschooler that flips through a picture book and retells the story that was read aloud by a parent or teacher.  In addition, acknowledge and praise children who read environmental print, maps, pamphlets, video game instructions, recipes, etc.  Reading is so much more than reading picture and chapter books!

10.  No quick fix- I see our job as parents and educators to sow the seeds of passionate reading and learning.  Over time, we water and nurture the seedlings, and wait patiently for our little readers to bloom. One way that I do this at home is not only reading to my children before nap time or bedtime, but by also having Books for Breakfast and Supper Stories. This is a time when I read aloud at the dining room table as my family enjoys a meal.

See below for some of the resources mentioned in this post

                 

Reading Interest Inventories

• From Laura Candler
• Part of the appendix in the book Reading in the Wild by Donalyn Miller
• See here for a post from Em that includes a free interest survey that is perfect for kindergarten and first graders.

Click the picture below to download a fun, FREE, interactive reader's log!

How do you motivate little readers?  Please share your ideas, as we collaborate together to help as many children as possible to catch "the reading bug"!

Reflecting on the year

Hello there!  It is great to be back with you, here at Adventures in Literacy Land. I have come to share with you some of my favorite reflections for the end of the school year!

It is the end of the year and a time of reflection.  For first grade teachers, especially, it is amazing to see the difference between beginning of the year firsties and end of the year firsties.  These kids have gone from non readers to fluent readers.  They have gone from exploring the pictures in books to discovering the words.  They have become lovers of stories.

This time of year I am simply amazed by the amount of growth my littles have made.  It makes me reflect on what we did to get to this point.  What are the things did we do to make such a difference?

I think that I could go on and on with the multitude of things that make a difference.  I think that we can all agree that it takes a little of everything.

Here are my top 3 things that I did differently this year to make a difference:

1. Fluency Folders - I did a previous post on fluency folders for the littles if you want to go back and check it out.  I think that this gave my students even more practice with reading aloud texts on their level and we all know that PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!!

2. More concentration on phonemic awareness - This one really improved my students' writing as well as their reading.  We practiced daily but even more than that, we did extensive lessons on this.  I created phoneme segmentation packs that we worked on throughout the year.  We practiced segmenting sounds and syllables to spell out larger words.  We even played games to help us segment words!
We played head, shoulders, knees, and toes (one of our favorites).

We played hopscotch, where every hop was a new phoneme.

We even played a game in the hallway that I completely made up!  You can check it out here!

3. Decoding Strategies!  I have always done decoding strategies but this year I upped my game.  I created more centers to provide more opportunities for direct practice with these strategies.  Kids definitely need direct instruction in these strategies so that they can better understand them.

Here are the strategies that I teach: Chunky Monkey, Stretchy the Snake, Lips the Fish, Skippy the Frog, Flip the Dolphin, and Tryin Lion.  Last year, I added my Skippy the Frog, Flip the Dolphin, and a Chunky Monkey centers.  This year, I added Stretchy the Snake and some Chunky Monkey Flip Flaps.  These two new ones are my favorites!  Do you want to give them a try?  Here are some free samples!

 

What did you do differently this year that worked?  What are your top 3?

Creating Stories with StoryKit

Hello, all!  It's Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars!  I have a fun app to share with all of you today.  Hopefully you can play with it over the summer and use with your kids next year.  Or maybe you need a time filler for the end of the year!

I love a good professional development, and last Friday was one of those great days!  I spent the day learning all about different computer programs and apps. You can find about those apps in this {post}.

Of all the apps I checked out, StoryKit proved to be the easiest and most useful.  I could see where kids could really enjoy using it and creating their own stories or even reports.

The app was created by the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) to help children use technology with reading and writing.  In this day and age, it is becoming more paramount to embrace technology while reading and writing.

I wish I had a chance to let students use this and show you how it works, but I was able to make some fun stories myself.  Here is one I made in just a couple of minutes tonight.  Click on the {here} or on the picture below to take you to it.

As you can see the app is super simple to use.  This was done on my iPhone while the kids played outside.

Some of the teachers were using it to create notes for the students.  The students could even use it when they finish a unit and get pictures off the Internet to use in their stories and tell their facts.  This would be a great alternative to the dreaded research paper or other writing prompt.

The stories can then be shared and shown to everyone through email.  There is no account to set up, and privacy is key.

I really think students will enjoy using this app and have lots of fun with it!  I keep thinking of more ways to use this app.  The possibilities are endless!

How could you use this app in your classroom? 

Reflecting and Changing

The end of a school year has come but with it comes reflection, change, and more work.  All three can be hard.  All three can be positive.  And it is a good thing we have some summer time to get it all done!

I love this time of the year.  Not because it is summer and my days are tad bit more carefree.  I love this time of year because it brings about new ideas.  It is rejuvenating.  It allows me to create, change, and get excited for the upcoming year.  In what other profession do you get to start fresh each year?  In what other profession do you get to hit the "restart" button and try out some new techniques.  I love teaching.

As I was saying, the end of a school year has come for me but I have not been laying at the pool or enjoying a good book....yet.  Instead my days have looked like this:

And this:

But after three days (and weeks of research), we have tweaked and added to our writing units for the year, analyzed and planned our mini-lessons, and ordered many needed books!  I love the format we used this year to plan it all out.  If you need a writing planning sheet, you can check it out here.

When it came to our reading curriculum, my team was pretty happy.  We have been tweaking our guided reading format to fit our kids' needs each year.  My teammate and I added a lot of work around fluency this year through nursery rhymes, fractured nursery rhymes, phrases, and leveled passages.  But I did feel like I wanted to start off my year by getting to know my young first graders a little better as readers.  Many times I have found that my little 6 year olds will answer "yes" to almost all my interest questions.  I wanted an interest survey that forced them to pick between two items.  You are welcome to use it!  Just click on the picture below.

 My summer brings a long to-do list for the upcoming year.  It includes books I want to read, activities I want to make, and apps I need to learn to use.

What reflections do you have from your school year?  What changes do you want to make?  What do you need to work on?