#classroombookaday2022

We are readers in Rm. 204! One of the ways that I encourage and foster a strong love of reading is by doing lots of it myself! Many years ago I learned about #classroombookaday on Twitter and knew it was for me and my students. Check out some past stories I’ve written about it here, here, and here. It’s such a fun and visual way for kids to see all the books that they have enjoyed together as a class, and allows us an easy way to make connections to math and other topics. I LOVE participating in #classroombookaday and after a few hiccups during COVID years, it’s back up and running.

The concept is simple: we read a book and post it on the bulletin board. Then we watch as it fills up! I realized that this picture I’m sharing is even a little bit old now, as the board changes every day! Here’s a picture of it from a week or so ago, in case you haven’t seen it.

Our bulletin board as of September 6. Since then we’ve added at least 11 new titles. We’re up to 31 books–which is more than a book-a-day! So cool!

I purposefully put this display outside of our room, so that anyone who walks by can see it, interact with it and hopefully be inspired to read something new! When I taught 1st grade in past years and had a room downstairs, our display was right in one of the main hallways where EVERYONE at Robinson walked on a daily basis and it was such a great conversation starter. That year we got to 561 books on our display and it was A.MAZ.ING to look at. Who knows if we’ll get to that number this year, but no matter what, we are committed to reading and learning together with a ton of good books in Rm. 204.

Do you have a suggestion for a book we should read? Leave us a comment and we’ll check it out. Maybe you’ll see it in a #classroombookaday update soon!

Can you READ a movie?

We have gotten into some “actual” school things and we did something in particular that I was especially excited about. Based on some learning I did this summer, I am making it a goal to include more of a variety of text types into our reading work. After all, reading is at its core making meaning from a text, with or without words, and no matter what kind of text. So one of our first “read alouds” was a short called “Pip,” an animated short about a dog who goes to guide dog school. Here it is if you want to watch it, too!

As we “read,” I had given kiddos the job of paying attention to what Pip was feeling, as we would be keeping track of his emotions and how they changed throughout the story. There are several stopping points and we recorded words that described his emotions at the time. I added in additional vocabulary that connected with the words they suggested, and we talked about how they were other ways of saying the same thing. We also made predictions of how or whether we thought his feelings would change as we went through the rest of the video.

At the end, I added another teaching point: the difference between emotions and traits. We discussed how emotions were feelings that could and would change, based on the characters circumstances or mood. Traits are words that describe how the character always is; words that describe their personality or how they tend to act most of the time. This second part was a little tricky at this point, but we will definitely come back to it again and again as we go through the year. Here’s the chart we made together:

In addition to making this chart together to revisit with later texts, it also served as a model for something students will be able to use in their own reading, recording their thinking in their reading journals. Here’s an example of the rough draft thinking of it in my journal as I planned:

It’s not fancy, and is something kiddos can easily copy in their own work!

I was really pleased with how this lesson went, as kiddos were really engaged, and had great ideas to share–many of which I had not thought of when I watched the short! The whole thinking behind using a short first is to get everyone on board and with you from the very beginning. With no text to read, and a short story to hold on to, it’s easy for readers of all levels to join in and contribute an idea. They feel included already and can more easily form a mindset that “Reading in this classroom is for me! I can do it!” Isn’t that what we want for every reader every day?

As we go on, I hope to be able to incorporate more shorts like this one, as well as a wide variety of text to help readers see the possibilities! Make sure you’re subscribed to our blog so you don’t miss the next time I tell about it! 🙂

Another Indie Bookstore for the WIN!

Remember that post from San Francisco about all of the beautiful little bookstores I found? Well…I FOUND ONE AT HOME!! I’m so excited to tell you about this amazing little place my hubby found right down the street from us called Little Readers Bookstore.

Little Readers Bookstore on Hampton Ave. in South City

Yesterday’s grand opening meant an air of excitement, brightly frosted cupcakes and lots of money spent on new books to add to my ever-growing collection. I mean, come on—is it possible to have too many books?

The inside of the shop is small, but nicely decorated and clear on who’s important here: the little readers who fill those tiny chairs and spend time finding a new favorite book! There is definitely a South City vibe, which is great. And the best part? I can walk there! (Although I guess that does cause some trouble in that it limits the size of my book haul to whatever I can carry! 😆 Oh well, I’ll figure it out. Maybe a wagon??)

Speaking of “book haul,” let me show you what we bought!

I found two new titles I am excited to share with my kiddos, and one that is an old favorite—but in paperback!

The first two were new to me so had to grab them to share with my new class and to add to our #classroombookaday wall! The Temple Grandin book is an old favorite of mine, but that I didn’t own yet. 😀

Grant chose these goodies. I might have to steal them to read to my class, too!

I hope to be able to visit this little gem of a store for years to come and that they get to grow and grow, putting books into the hands of Little Readers all over town! Visit them, will ya?!

San Fran is for (Book) Lovers ❤️❤️❤️

I know, I know. That’s really a Virginia thing. But yet, I didn’t just take a vacay to Virginia. So San Fran it is. 🙂

If you’ve spent time around here–either as a long-time blog reader or a new reader who’s been getting their feet wet–you have hopefully noticed that I am a reader. Books are kind of a big deal around here: at home and in my classroom. And so, it seems, books are a big deal for me on vacation, too.

We went to lots of fun places on our tour of San Francisco. Some places I can tell you about by the name of the neighborhood, and some I can tell you by the name of the books stores I visited while I was there. 🙂

I think in the end we found three cute little independent book stores, and bought something at all of them! Cuz what’s a better souvenir than a book. Or ten? LOL

The first place we ran into was The Book Passage, in the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. Besides being easy to get to, it had great views of the bay. We went here more than once, just because we could.

If only I’d have thought about how I’d write about this–I’d have taken a better picture! Hopefully you get the idea. 🙂

On one of our dinner adventures, Grant and I were walking around after our visit to Burma Superstar (YUM!) and came upon this little gem:

I could have spent all night here. Seriously.

Besides being lovely and cute and small and independent, they also had a sale bin. :). Found many things I was excited for some good finds, but especially for the book about the Golden Gate Bridge I had seen in other stores at full price. Here it was over 50% off! WIN!!

The last one was so good we visited it twice: Browser Books.

On our first visit we ran into one of those “blind date with a book” sale boxes and bought almost the whole thing!

I am not sure I have ever actually bought anything out of one of these boxes, but they were too good to pass up–$5!! There were so many descriptions that sounded good and we were on vacation with lots of time to read, so why not??

Do you have guesses for what those books might be? Are you dying right now? Should I show you what we ended up with? Oh, ok. :). Here’s what was inside of those packages. Be sure to leave me a comment to let me know if you guessed right. I actually did guess one of them correctly!

Pretty great, right? What a super selection, all books I wouldn’t have picked on my own. How did you do on your guesses? I was right on the Trevor Noah one, in case you were wondering. 😉

I think I mentioned that this was our first trip to this store? On the second trip I found two more great books (not on sale, but sooo great it didn’t matter) that I’m excited to incorporate into my classroom this year.

If you’re going to be a 3rd grader in my class–stay tuned, because you will see these beautiful books again!! 🙂

WHEW! What a great trip with such great little bookstore finds. What a special part of traveling–the bookstores come home in my heart and the books come home in my suitcase!

#classroombookaday 2019–Finally Telling the Story!

Oh my goodness, friends–how have I not written about this yet? (Wow, those words sound soooo familiar. Please don’t go back to last year’s blog to see if I wrote this very thing last year at this time….LOL). I know, it’s so silly since it’s SO EXCITING! Let me start with a picture, because it’s SO BEAUTIFUL! (Sorry, I overuse capitals when I’m excited. Exclamation points, too. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 🙂 )

Am I right? So bright and colorful, and represents SO MANY words, stories and ideas that our first grade friends have already heard. The other great thing about it? While it’s got SO MANY books already, look at how much wall is left! That means we have that much room to read that many more books together this year!

Ok, let me back up. I know that some of you are new to this blog, or new to this whole #classroombookaday thing, so let me explain…

Many years ago, the great Jillian Heise (@heisereads) started a super thing: read a picture book a day and tell someone about it. I am sure that there is a better, more thought out explanation to why she did it than that, but really in some ways it’s that easy. Be committed to reading to kids every day. Find good books. Talk about those books and share them with others. Amazing. She started a hash tag to share her ideas and it’s gone CRAZY places since then.

Fast forward to 2016 and enter me. 🙂 I joined the fun and began my own #classroombookaday journey, posting all of the books my class read on our door. We expanded the next year, and the next, and that brings us to where we are now–all of the first grade teachers in this together. 🙂 The display continues to grow and change, but the intent of the project remains the same: read good books to kids, talk about them and enjoy the reading experience!

This year’s display is a little extra special, though, as we are looping with this group. In past years we’ve had a goal of something over 500 (depending on the previous year’s final numbers!), and we will do so again. But this time, rather than taking down the display to start over–we’re going to keep going! I’m not exactly sure how we’ll do that (don’t worry fire Marshall, we’ll figure out a safe way to make it happen!), but how exciting to see it grow and grow and grow like never before!

I’m not entirely sure that this year’s first graders are entirely clear on what we’re doing here yet, but they are at least familiar with that big book wall in the hall, as they walked by it over and over again as kindergartners last year. Now it’s theirs, and we’ll watch it fill up together! I hope you’ll come along the journey with us this year (and next!). PLEASE suggest books to us that you think we might enjoy! WE LOVE BOOKS!! 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of February 25, 2019

This week we got to 367! February is a weird month–feels like almost every week we’ve had something extra or surprising with our schedule, and this week as no different–we had a surprise ice day on Thursday. But then Friday was a 1/2 day, which includes school-wide programming, so it means less reading time for us in Rm. 111. Anyhow, we did get 7 new titles on our wall, and enjoyed everyone of them!

Here’s our wall currently:

This week we added these new books!

We have happened in to a Dan Santat study, as he has written and illustrated SO MANY amazing books–most of which become our new favorites! This week were two I had never even seen before! Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is an oldie that I had never read, and Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon was a not-so-oldie that I’ve read lots and lots of times and never gets old! Cows Can Moo! Can You? came as a recommendation from a first grade friend, which always makes for a good read aloud. Be Kind is a goodie that you can read over and over and over (and connects to our recent Kindness Week activities as well as the Kindness Quilt our school school is working on), and Little Dragon and the New Baby is a sweet story and loads of first graders can make connections with the way Little Dragon didn’t want to have a baby to share his things with–at first. 🙂

Another great week of read alouds in first grade! Can’t wait to see what this upcoming week brings!

We are WORD COLLECTORS!

Whew! This week was crazy! Besides it being World Read Aloud Day on Friday, we had TWO “it’s-too-cold-to-go-outside-today” days off of school! It was a nice refreshing mid-week break, but definitely made for a week where NO ONE knew what day it was. LOL

So…remember how last week I mentioned a super project that was sparked from another Peter H. Reynolds book we read? Well, I finally have enough of it up and photographed that I can share it!

Last week as one of our read aloud we enjoyed hearing The Word Collector. Basically, in the story, Jerome collects words that he hears and likes–short words, long words, funny words, nice words, you get the idea. Eventually he ends up have a GINORMOUS bag of words on little slips of paper that he drops and they get all spread around, then being shared with the rest of the world!

We decided that as super readers and word-lovers ourselves, we could also collect words! It really only took a quick mention of the idea for first grade readers and writers to be IN and start finding great words all over the place! We “officially” worked on it for one reading/writing time, but I know they literally could have done it all. day. long. I love how Sam and Jaxon, who were working together, said they collected pages and pages of words for 20 or 30 minutes but said, “I think we could do this for 20 or 30 more HOURS!”

Now, when something like this happens, I can’t ever decide if the best part is what happens in our room, or what happens when someone decides we should share the idea with other kids. In this case, it may have been both.

I went ahead and covered the door in blue paper, which was supposed to look like the cover of the book. See?

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Then as a class (well our class and Ms. Turken’s kiddos, too), we decided what we might do to share our work with our school on our doors. We agreed that we should have a picture of Jerome, telling our Robinson friends about our inspiration and the word collecting we began to do.

We decided rock-paper-scissors would be the best way to decide who would create Jerome, and so after many, many games, Makhi, Wyatt and Isaac became our illustrators. They made a most-handsome version of Jerome, and also a word bubble that we added words to together.

Beckett helped add some words to our speech bubble, using interactive writing and his best first grade letters!

One of the best things that happened as we talked about what our speech bubble should say, was when Hailey suggested we invite other Robinson friends to collect words WITH US!? I usually have an idea of what I think the words could say, but it’s generally up to kiddos to decide what they will say. Hailey had the great idea that we should invite the rest of Robinson to collect words WITH US, which I had not even considered.

On Friday we finally had time to get our lists and lists of collected words onto our slips and finish our Jerome and words. We still have to add the pocket that will house the slips, tape, and sharpie for other people to use, but it’s up and it’s FABULOUS! Don’t you agree? I LOVE LOVE LOVE that these kiddos are already learning to pay attention to how words sound and think about the power they have!

What words would you add to our display? Please leave your suggestions in the comments and we’ll put them up for you! Can’t wait to hear what you say and from how far away our words will come! So in addition to your words, please tell us where you live!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of January 7, 2019

Welcome back to school! We are getting back into our routine after a fantastic holiday break and I’m excited to share another great week of reading in first grade! Check out our wall and how fast it is filling up!

As of January 11, we were at 266 books!

Check out the books we’ve added since last week! 🙂

You may or may not be able to tell that we are working on fractions, problem solving, persuasive writing, and also did some learning about penguins. Going Places and I Built a House were included in some design challenges (which I will share soon!) and some were just for fun. :).

I have gotten a couple of suggestions for new reads, please continue to share your ideas for what we should read next! 🙂

**Sidenote: As I was adding the Twitter mentions for this post, I realized how many authors we read this week had written other books we already love! Thank you, Laurie Keller, for writing Potato Pants! Just realized you also wrote Arnie the Doughnut, which we loved form last year. Genius! And of course, I noticed when we read Mae’s First Day of School that it was the same author as Hannah and Sugar (you’re awesome, Kate Berube!), another one we love–which has a song we love from Emily Arrow! It’s worth a share here, since it’s so good. 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: A New Year’s View–January 2019

I am pretty sure I write the same “I’m-so-sorry-that-it’s-been-so-long-since-I’ve-posted” apology every year. So, wait, maybe that’s just how I roll on this blog now and I should stop apologizing for it and instead accept that this is just real life for me now, huh? Whew! That feels all of a sudden so free and clear and we can start a new year on a good foot. Ready? Here we go!

This year has been another amazing one as far as books and literacy and introducing great new stories to our first graders, and we are again watching our wall fill up with BEAUTIFUL pictures of books! Check our what our wall looked like when we left for Winter Break:

We are currently at 243, which is well on our way to the 561 book goal (based on last year’s numbers)! I am amazed at how many books on this wall are NEW and DIFFERENT from the titles on the wall last year. We added so many great stories last year, discovering new authors and new ideas that it’s surprising how many equally great ones we’ve found this year. Can’t wait to get into a regular routine of sharing our wall pics and taking YOU with us on this reading journey! 🙂

As I ask every time…what are some titles YOU have been reading, or ones you suggest we share with our kiddos? We’ve love to add them, and then tell you what we think. :). PLEASE leave a comment with a book idea for us! 🙂

Literary Lanterns: 2018 version

I found this project a few years ago, and have tried it with three first grade classes now. 🙂 Last fall must have been a busy time in my life because the 2017 version of this project did not make it to our blog. 😦 Oh well–here’s another iteration of this awesome project, which is a great combo of fall, pumpkins and books!

As with the last times we’ve done it, we started with the explanation, and this picture:

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We talked about the possibilities for books and characters we’d use and made one really important rule: you can’t do anything in this example. :). As you might be able to tell, these are many of our favorite characters and EVERYONE would want to do them. This challenges them to think “outside the book” so to speak, and not just copy someone else’s idea.

Kids had time to check out our book wall (another GREAT reason to display them low for all to see!), and shared their book choice (either from one we’ve read or one they’ve read or just love).

After their books were chosen, and Ms. Turken and I had given them their assignment (with the idea of trying to make sure all our our lanterns were different), they were to draw their plan, including a list of materials they would need to complete their pumpkin. Learners shared their plans with us (and each other) via Seesaw. Here are some of them:

Once everyone had brought in their pumpkins (plus some extras via some very generous families!), we finally got busy with the decorating!

We were finally ready to share our creations after we’d gotten our displays together–including a picture of our book and a recording of who our character was and why we’d chosen them (can you say “thank you KSD for the fact that we are 1:1 with iPads? WE are able to do SO MANY GREAT THINGS because of that!). Here’s what a few of those looked and sounded like:

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.c8be299e-c721-4fc6-8463-65c4eca4ba4d&share_token=GyCE9SRYRAKGf1h0kJOKyA&mode=embed https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.3c4b043f-18ca-416e-8d76-38939cc30327&share_token=VkxDiFNgSnayOixC9pn_6Q&mode=embed

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.d92c0891-c617-4c89-abeb-a67b080454aa&share_token=JTT4_MXERwWmRIxjVymqzQ&mode=embed

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.b89f8a87-6491-4b20-aa8b-c275c8a876f7&share_token=xTBSuSnSS66U8MNJ_IqduQ&mode=embed

We set up our Literary Lanterns and our iPads so that as kiddos from the other classes came through to see our gallery they could listen and look at our thinking. We also had a chance to go through and view our own class’ creations during the gallery walk. What a great end to a great Friday morning around Robinson school!

Ok, one last little slide show. :). Here’s a closer look at our creations! (It seems now that I’ve missed a few, but I will add them as soon as I get back to school!)

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