Category Archives: Reading

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of October 1, 2018

Remember when I shared the smart story about Jonah’s thinking and how we flip-flopped the display wall?  It’s been great to see how kids have differently interacted with it throughout this past week since the change.  I even had a kiddo put up book covers! Something else exciting happened this week, too. Can you see what it is?

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You do?  YES!!  We made it to 100 books this week!  Well, officially we’ve read 105, but it was a great feeling to watch those 5 rows get put up and know that we’re well on our way to filling it up and sharing SO MANY GREAT BOOKS with this year’s group of amazing first graders!

Here’s what we read this week:

So many good ones–about so many topics! Can you tell what we’re learning about right now?  What titles do you suggest we read this next week? 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of September 24, 2018

This week seemed to be extra busy with reading! We were able to add 17 books to our display, and we’re SO CLOSE to 100!!  Hoping to hit it this upcoming week and share the good news with you on the blog next time.

But for now, here’s what our wall looks like:

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We added lots of different titles:

I think my favorite story from the week actually comes from a first grader, not a book.  It’s a story of perspective, and taught me something about how adults see things differently than 6-7yos.  Let me explain…

On Wednesday, I was excitedly adding a big load of pics to the wall, and telling the students around me about how we were almost at 100.  Jonah, a friend from Rm. 112, commented on how he didn’t realize we had read that many books, and that he didn’t know how many pictures were actually up there.  Incredulously I asked him, “Don’t you ever look at our display?  How have you not seen all those books out there??”  He looked at me very matter-of-factly and said, “Well I do, but I look at the WALL, not the PICTURES!”  At first it seemed a little funny, but then I realized that, yes, indeed, the thing at eye-level for first graders is a big. blank. wall.  I know I should look up there at all those pretty book covers, and kiddos do too–if I tell them to, but yep, most kids who look at our display probably just see a wall.

It really made me start thinking about who that display is for, and how I can make it more kid-friendly.  While there are LOADS of ways that we interact with it on a daily and weekly basis, and I can point out how the space is filling up and how we’re close to 100, there is probably a better way to do it.  Starting with putting the pictures at the BOTTOM of the wall instead of the top.  That’s where kiddos are anyway, right?  It would probably makes more sense to them that the wall is FILLING up anyway, if they could see it reach up to the top and ACTUALLY FILLING up, rather than coming down the wall.

I know it’s a small tweak, and obviously one I hadn’t thought of, but I was SO GLAD we had had that little conversation, because it got me thinking about how many other things I do that maybe I think are kid-centered, kid-led or kid-friendly, but that are instead geared toward me.

So I’m fixing the wall. I’m flipping it all upside-down and we will indeed watch the wall FILL UP as we go through this year.  Can’t wait to share the changes with you next week!!

In the meantime, have you ever had a kiddo tell you something that flipped your thinking upside-down? I’d love to hear about it! 🙂

#WDYDAA: Phonemic Awareness Revisited

I started a series a couple of weeks ago to help families (and any other blog readers!) know what happens in Rm. 111 all day.  We started by sharing Phonemic Awareness, for which we use Heggerty’s program.

Since my last post, we have done some really important work in regards to what our phonemic awareness time is supposed to look like and sound like.  We have watched our videos and reflected on what we are seeing that are “pluses” and “deltas.”  After we had recorded and reviewed three different sessions, I gave Rm. 111 friends a challenge to see if they could have a “perfect” session of our Heggerty lesson.

Take 1 and Take 2 of our Heggerty Reflections

As you can see, these two sessions don’t look that much different.  I have to admit that part of the problem here was my fault–we recorded with my iPad in selfie mode, so many friends were super distracted by seeing themselves on the screen and could not focus on our learning.  Oops.  One super easy way we decided to fix it for our third take was to simply turn the iPad around.  Sometimes it’s so simple it’s funny. 🙂

Before our next lesson, we reviewed what the expectations were for them as learners (we reviewed both our listening rules as well as both sides of our charts), and got ready to show how amazing we were.  Additionally, a friend suggested that we invite Mrs. Wessel to come back to see us in action since we’d worked on our learning behaviors, since she had been there for our first session.  It was a great idea, and thankfully she was free!  It was also great that she could come, because she also served as our videographer again (which was much less distracting than my iPad on the table LOL).

So…I’m writing this post to show you what our Heggerty lessons look like now–to both highlight our learning but also how smart we are and how we have such growth mindsets!  We were determined to get it right, to show what we know, to help everyone learn and to follow all of our listening rules (which are to have eyes watching, ears listening, voice quiet and a still body).

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Listening rules (and our Zones of Regulation chart, which I will share about later!)

I’m really proud of my Rm. 111 learners and how they’ve grown!  Celebrate this chart and this video with us, please. 🙂

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Our third Heggerty reflection chart.  Beckett asked to make this chart for us, and made the plus and delta that way because he knew that we’d have LOADS of good things and a small amount of deltas.  LOVE IT!

We’d love to hear what you think! Kids LOVE when they know people see their smart work and want to give them a shout out for it!  What questions do you have about our phonemic awareness lessons? I KNOW my friends would love to tell you about what we do everyday–and WHY we do it! 🙂

 

#FDOFG2018: Readers Gonna Read

We have been reading ALOT in first grade, and much of it has been reading aloud together.  But not all of it. 🙂

We have also been working very hard to learn the habits of good readers, to read both independently and with our partners and also to choose the right books for us.  I’ve been so proud with how quickly our Rm. 111 readers have gotten into a groove and begun to build their stamina.

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We’ve learned some BAD HABITS to drop and some GOOD HABITS to pick up.  Readers thought it was really funny when I acted out the bad habits during our lesson.  Ask your reader to show you what those bad habits look and sound like, then to show you what we should do INSTEAD. 🙂

Each week we have a learning partner, with whom we turn-and-talk on the rug, and also partner read.  We use these partners in other ways, too, through out the week as they are quick to find.  Some of our work time during Readers’ Workshop is read-to-self and some if read-to-someone, so we sit right next to our partners so we can quickly move from one job to the next.  Check out some pictures of us being our best reader selves, back-to-back in read-to-self and side-by-side doing read-to-someone. 🙂

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Lots and lots of read-to-someone!  We’ve learned that we need to read ONE book at a time, and also that we can do partner reading in 3 ways: popcorn reading, choral reading or I read, you read.  We LOVE this time of day!

What Do You Do All Day Anyway? : Phonemic Awareness

At the beginning of every year, I have the unrealistic lofty goal of documenting everything that happens inside the walls of Rm. 111 ( and often Rm. 112), and then fail miserably, realizing that there is just not time to do that. There’s just TOO much that happens at the beginning of the school year that I want to tell you about! It’s all new and so it all seems important. :).

This time I am resigning my self to the fact that telling you something, even if it’s not everything is better than nothing! So, I’m going to be ok with not telling you about everything that has gone on in the last 16 days, and will roll on, focusing on what is happening now, and maybe finding time to add in some fun from our first days. 🙂

As we’ve been learning through these first few weeks, I’ve been thinking about how many things we seem to pack into one school day! It’s made me want to write a blog series ( that I’m starting with this post!) to highlight what we really do all day. I mean I can share the schedule, or your kiddo could tell you they had Reading Workshop, but unless you’re there, it’s really hard to fully understand what that looks like for a first grader.

That being said, I’m starting by showing something we do every day (usually right after lunch, at 11:45, just to be precise 🙂 ), where we work on listening to sounds and hearing parts of words and using those parts to make new words. Officially we use a program called Phonemic Awareness: The Skills That They Need to Help Them Succeed! By Michael Heggerty. On our schedule, it’s simply called Heggerty, or more often we refer to this time as “the yellow book,” because I usually hold the ginormous yellow book on my lap while we go through the lesson. :). Regardless of what we call it, at least everyone knows what to expect!

In short, phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken word is made up of individual sounds, called phonemes. During our lessons–which are done totally through the auditory mode (no words, text or visuals), we practice isolating sounds, manipulating sounds, blending and segmenting them, as well as deleting sounds to figure out what is left. We talk about letters, analyze rhymes and identify how many words are in a sentence. It’s focused, intentional and quick, and they’ve picked up on the routines of these lessons pretty quickly. There are movements that go along with most parts of our lesson, and kids especially love when we use our “choppers” to break apart words into syllables.

With the help of my instructional coach, Amy, we recorded a lesson to help you see what happens. We went back and forth about which angle to use to help you best see what’s going on (as you can hear the whole lesson either way), but eventually thought it would be best for you to see what the KIDS are doing during a lesson, rather than just what I am doing from my teacher chair. Who wants to see the teacher for 10 minutes when you can see the kids doing super smart work with words? 🙂

So, in answer to that question about what we do all day, one thing is we work on Phonemic Awareness, which will help us as both readers and writers. Here’s a peek into this word work time in our classroom!

In case you missed it, in just those 10 short minutes we increased language awareness, worked on rhyming, identified onsets (beginning sounds), blended syllables, identified final phonemes (ending sounds), segmented words, substituted phonemes, added phonemes, deleted phonemes and worked on letter names and sounds.  Whew!  Action packed for sure!

After we finished, Sam said, “Let’s watch our video!” Without knowing so, he was reading my mind, and that was my plan for our next steps anyway! I asked him why he thought we should, and he just said he wanted to know how it went (and what kid doesn’t like to see themselves on the big screen?!), but I also wanted to have a discussion about what went well and how we could improve for next time. I prepped them to choose to just focus on themselves, to focus on the whole class, or to even choose to watch what I did and think about what went well (which we call pluses), and what we might change for our next try (which we mark as deltas).

As we talked, we recorded our noticings, being sure to share names when we were highlighting pluses and making sure to just say “I saw someone…” when we were mentioning things we could change. When we were finished, our chart looked like this:

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This reflective protocol is something that we do often, and it is very helpful in kids’ recognizing their role in making our classroom a safe, kind place to learn, and to make sure they are putting their best foot forward. I’m excited to see what happens when we review our chart before Heggerty on Monday and focus on changing some of those things we listed on the right side of the chart.  Using this reflective protocol over the next weeks and months, in various situations is also an idea that is brewing with my teammates as a way to help grow kiddos’ capacity to reflect on their engagement and ultimately take responsibility for their learning.  I’m so excited (and will be sure to share more as it comes!!)!

As you think about phonemic awareness in the first grade classroom, what do you wonder? What do you notice? If you’re a parent, ask your kiddo what they like most about doing Heggerty in our classroom. Ask them to tell you about how this helps them in other parts of our day. Ask them to tell you what they would change about learning about letters and sounds. If you’re a teacher, how to you address phonemic awareness in your classroom? How do you see it affecting your students are readers and writers? What is your go-to resource or what other things do you use to support kiddos in this learning?

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’d love to hear from you! The conversation makes this whole thing even better! 🙂

It’s Summer–What Are You Reading? 2018 edition

If you’ve been around the block on EduTwitter, or even if you’ve been around for a while on this blog (when I used to post regularly!), you probably know about #IMWAYR–It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?  I have written about with highlights from my classroom , and also many times with my own reading.  This usually happens during the summer (which seems to be the only time I have time to both read and write!).  So here we are again, and I have a big ‘ole list of good ones to share. 🙂

It’s summer, and here’s what I’ve been reading!

Sprinkle Sundays, Mia’s Boiling Point and Smart Cookie:  I think I’ve written before on this blog about how I have a strange love of the intersection of cupcakes and books, and I started by summer reading headed down that road.  These all focus on middle-school girls and the first two also include their “tribes,” as well as at least one “mean girl.”  That whole structure is predictable, and as a 40-year-old mom/teacher it was a little silly (although I’m sure I acted exactly the same way when I was 12!), but I enjoyed them nonetheless.  I loved the way the girls were empowered to do their own thing, to become entrepreneurs, and also how they showed how cooking/baking can provide a powerful avenue for stress-relief and creativity.  Each of these stories has a strong family element, and show complicated relationships and problem-solving.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for a sweet book, but these did not disappoint. 🙂

Masterminds Trilogy by Gordon Korman: Without giving too much away (in case you haven’t read these yet but want to!), this trilogy tells the story about a special group of teenagers who discover just how special they are and then work (against most of the adults in their lives) to find answers to the questions that arise.  These books are all page-turners and I breezed through them!  They are the first that I have read by Korman, but I am interested in the countless others he’s written now. 🙂 . Thanks, Rachael, for the recommendation!

IMG_4274-min Epidemic by Reid Wilson:  So far this is the only non-fiction book I’ve read this summer.  I am a big fan of the NPR show The 1A, hosted by Joshua Johnson, and recently heard Reid Wilson, the author of this book, talking about the Ebola outbreak of 2014.  Unlike when I was a hypochondriac child (and would have been surely convinced I HAD ebola), I was interested in this topic and grabbed the book recently at the library.  It’s definitely science-heavy and also filled with way too many acronyms (which he thankfully explains), but was both interestingly written and informative.

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Who Stole New Year’s Eve? by Martha Freeman: I have read many other of the mysterious adventures of Alex Parakeet and Yasmeen Popp on Chickadee Ct, and Who’s Stealing the 12 Days of Christmas? is one of my favorites.  I have read it so many times on my own, and also to my students.  This one followed the same structure and involves most of the same familiar characters.  Loved it, too!

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 Rosetown by Cynthia Rylant: This one represents an old, favorite author I haven’t read in a long time, and who I really know mostly as a picture book author.  I have long been a fan of Cynthia Rylant, and so when I saw this on in the NEW section at the library, I snagged it.  Might add it to my class read aloud list for this year.

 

IMG_4269-minMoo by Sharon Creech:  I had to admit my hesitation of this book to Sharon Creech when I started reading it.  For some (dumb) reason, the fact that it was written in verse scared me.

I know–that makes NO SENSE, but it did. Can’t explain it.  But, as I told her, I should have trusted that EVERYTHING by Sharon Creech is amazing, and that since some of my favorite books were written by her, this would be a quick favorite, too.  And indeed it was.  Who knew I liked cows so much?

IMG_4709-minOne Hundred Spaghetti Strings by Jen Nails: See how I mentioned that I love books about food?  This one was definitely a “judge-a-book-by-its-cover” moment and I picked it just because it looked like it would be a story about a girl who cooks.  And it was.  I loved the way the character used food to figure out problems in her real life; this reminds me of how my husband uses cooking as his outlet, and also how I sometimes bake when I am in need of some “me” time to think things through.   I liked how all the recipes she made in the story were included in the back of the book.  Didn’t try any of them, but they looked tasty and like they might actually work!

The last four I’m going to mention were not the ones I read last, but I am mentioning them last because of the impact they had on me.  They are from authors I already love–Kate Messner and Katherine Applegate–but were titles that were new to me and that were about topics that were timely and hit on “big” ideas.  It’s one of the things I love about middle-grade fiction–helping kids work through important ideas and hard topics in the midst of a good story.  I am excited to try at least of these with my class this year; even first graders can handle deep conversations about big things.

IMG_4273-minWishtree by Katherine Applegate:  I know Katherine Applegate because of Ivan, and had heard the buzz about this book a few years ago but hadn’t yet read it.  And in full disclosure I didn’t actually “read” this book either–it was an audio book in my car on our recent family vacation.  (On a side note, this is one of our favorite things about traveling–sharing great stores together as a family.  Last summer it was Roald Dahl themed, previous years we devoured all of Christopher Paul Curtis’ books (we are HUGE Mighty Miss Malone fans), some years its just a mishmash of different ones none of us have heard.  Regardless of the author or the book, everyone loves this routine!).  So…the first big surprise was that the book is told by the tree.  Ha!!  I would NEVER have thought of that as a storyteller, but of course it makes perfect sense.  This one had some important things to say about being different, accepting others (specifically refugees/immigrants) and standing up for what’s right.  It’s a new favorite for sure!

IMG_4268-minThe Seventh Wish by Kate Messner: Here’s another title that I was SUPER late to the game on.  Sometimes teaching primary means I don’t always get to novels I want to read because I live in picture book world for much of the school year.  Sorry to have waited so long, but this one was TOTALLY WORTH THE WAIT!  I knew that this book dealt with the topic of addiction, and it did not disappoint with the reality of the story.  I have not personally been affected by drugs, but I can see how easily and quickly it can happen–even in “good” families with “good” kids raised by parents who did everything right.  No one is immune and I liked how through a sweet family story I got a peek into that world.  At first I wasn’t sure about the magic fish part, but now I’ve convinced that somehow that fantasy element balanced out the depth of the “hard” parts of the text.  I am SO glad I got to this one, and would recommend it to anyone. Ok, everyone, really! 🙂

fullsizeoutput_4b7-minHome of the Brave by Katherine Applegate: Oh my goodness.  Kek may be my new favorite character.  And remember how I was afraid of Moo written in poetry? This one was too, and was also had cows.  I LOVED the insights into immigrant life we got in this one, too, and how the story was told in such a real way.  Being able to see Kek’s bravery and spunk in the story was heartwarming and I love the way the story really dug into the definition of what home is, and where you find it when it seems so far away from where you are.

 

fullsizeoutput_4b6-minExact Location of Home by Kate Messner:  I found this book (which I had never heard about previously) after I read The Seventh Wish and decided I needed to check out all the rest of her books.  I loved the geocaching element of this story, as it’s an activity I learned about a couple of years ago in an after-school club I lead with a friend (plus there just aren’t many geocaching stories around I’d say!).  The “big” topic is in this book is homelessness, and the reality of how 1) quickly it can happen to those who least expect it, 2) it can happen to anyone, and that we probably know someone who is homeless (or as in this story living in a shelter) and might not even know it, and 3) homeless people are not crazy, weird, wrong, dangerous–often it happens because of things out of their control and they deserve the same respect as EVERYONE else.  People are people.  As I read this one, and connected it with the “home” theme in Home of the Brave, it got me thinking about a possible theme for my classroom this year….I’m excited to explore that topic with my students: what does it mean to them, how can we create stronger connections between home-school, and how can I make our classroom an extension of home.  I might try this as a read aloud this year, too, because like I mentioned in the last one, even little kids can tackle big topics.

And…right now I’m reading two more.  I feel a little funny putting them together in a picture here because of how completely opposite they are (one about Hurricane Katrina and the other about middle school girls who take a cooking class–ha!), but hey–variety is the spice of life, right?

I’ll share more when I finish. 🙂 . Come back to check it out, will you?

So I’m wondering a couple of things…

  1. What are you reading or have you read this summer (or whenever!) that I should check out?
  2. What topics/themes do you like to read about?

PLEASE leave a comment and let’s chat about books!!  There’s still a lot of summer left and I can’t wait to hear about what you’re reading!

 

 

Can’t Pick Just One

I have always had a hard time labeling my “favorite” of something.  For some reason I have an enormously hard time narrowing things down to 1.  I can’t choose just one amazing ice cream flavor; my favorite concrete has Oreos, Heath bars AND pecans.  How in the world do you choose ONE favorite song from your 40 years of life?  Favorite movie? No way!  There are too many good ones.  And don’t even get me started on my favorite book.  Can’t do that either.

Somehow it seems unfair to me.  Or just too hard to spend my time on it.  Also, every movie, book, song, food, etc. is so different from every other one there’s NO WAY to decide.  Apples and oranges here, people!  (Oh, wait!  There you go.  My favorite fruit is apples.  Organic fuji apples, thank you. 🙂 And they are the ONLY fruit that can be cooked or baked into another food).

So I already mentioned not having a favorite book, and it seems that as a teacher, that’s teh one that I most often get asked to identify.  “Hey, Mrs. Bearden!  Let me take a picture of you and your favorite for this library display!” Mrs. Meihaus so kindly asked me a year or so ago.  Nope. Couldn’t do it. I had to at least include two in my picture.  ‘Cause really ALL THE BOOKS are my favorites.  Because they’re books.  And there are just too many.

But while I cannot nail down ONE definite favorite book, I have always been able to identify a short list of titles, as well as a short list of admired authors.  And not surprisingly, the two lists often have similarities.  I can even remember a time when I mentioned many of them in an old blog post I wrote about reading.  And as I reread it, I did designate a book and an author, but I think I said it was “one of my favorites.”  There.  See, still hard people. 🙂

But here’s the thing.  It wasn’t until recently that I really could nail down what it is about why I am drawn to certain authors and why I read all of their books.  I think at one point I would have said that it was the characters.  For example, Fig Pudding has the most realistic characters ever (maybe because they are based on actual people!), and I love the way I feel when I read about a big, loving family and all of their crazy antics.  That is NOT the family I live in and it’s fun to see how the other side lives.  Walk Two Moons was another great story about a real character, and became even more “real” after I had babies.  The tears that streamed on the second read were much more intense.  And that’s another thing: I seem to be drawn to stories that bring forth strong emotions.   Guess I’m a sucker for a good cry (gotta give Fig Pudding another point in that category!).  For some unknown reason I also seem to LOVE to read books that involve baked goods. 🙂 . You put pie, cupcakes, cookies, a restaurant or a recipe in a story and it’s for me.  And man–the WHOLE series that Giada DeLaurentiis put out where the kids travel  around the world and experience the food and culture–genius (I really enjoyed the one about Paris).

And so it wasn’t until just these last few books I’ve read–with my first graders in our classroom–that I was able to see exactly what it was that make my favorites my favorites….

Because I’ve been eye-deep in the #classroombookaday challenge for the last few years, that has meant that I’ve read many less chapter books with my kiddos than I have in years past.  And also differently than previous years, I gave kids more control in choosing what those chapter books would be.  I did give them a list to choose from, rather than just having them go all willy-nilly, but ultimately they were in charge.

Screenshot 2018-05-09 21.21.31They chose Roscoe Riley Rules #1–Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs as their first book.  I put it in the pile (along with books like Clementine, My Father’s Dragon and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane) because it was a new series to me–one that I had bought for my son (who is a RILEY!) but that he had never read.  I was pretty sure it was good, since I knew the author (which I will say more about later).  We soon grew to love Roscoe and his antics, and especially were drawn to the way he talked right to us.  He tells the whole story from timeout! Not to give anything away…the major idea of the book series is that Roscoe tries to be helpful but then accidentally breaks a rule and goes to timeout, tells you the story and then is out of timeout in the last chapter.  He’s a kid, he goes to school, he has a funny family and he gets in trouble–perfect first grade fodder!

Screenshot 2018-05-09 21.21.58Our second choice–probably because the first one was HILARIOUS–was Roscoe Riley Rule #2–Never Swipe a Bully’s Bear.  We read this one in about two school days because we just couldn’t put it down.  It follows the same routine, which makes it predictable enough for kiddos that haven’t heard lots of chapter books before (makes it easier to hold all the info and characters in their head!), but told about a new rule that Roscoe had broken.  Kids connected with the “bully” theme in this one, as well as the “lovey” that the kid wanted to bring to school.

So fast-forward to our current read aloud, which is NOT a Roscoe Riley book, but is related to it because it’s written by the same amazing author–The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  I fell in love with this book when it first came out (I was teaching 5th grade at that time) and I have read it to every class I’ve taught since then–in 1st grade, 2nd grade and 5th grade.  And I think I read it to my own kids at home at least 3 times.  Yep, because it’s that good.

And as we’ve been getting further into this book, I’ve been noticing more about what makes all these books I’ve mentioned (and the ones I listed earlier) similar: voice.  They are written in the character’s first-person voice.  They use funny ways to describe things.  The words they say are real, and I can imagine myself actually saying some of them.  The sentences don’t follow all the rules–which I LOVE–because it’s how I write, too.  The characters who tell the stories also have a little bit of a sarcastic streak in them. Which I also have.  And particularly with Ivan, there are strong emotions involved.  Because of the way Applegate tells the story, you want to (you HAVE to, really) care about what happens to the characters.

So…here’s a list of MANY of my favorite books (and their authors are also my favorites), most of which are written with a strong lead voice and probably make me either sob like a baby or laugh out loud hysterically.  Or maybe both. 🙂

1.) Walk Two Moons, Granny Torelli Makes Soup, Pleasing the Ghost and The Unexpected Angel by Sharon Creech

2.) Fig Pudding and Marshfield Dreams by Ralph Fletcher

3.) Crash by Jerry Spinelli

4.) Everything by Joan Bauer.  I’ve read them all. 🙂

5.) Roscoe Riley Rules Series and The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

6.) The Watsons Go to Birmingham and The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis

7.) The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and the Mercy Watson series by Kate Di Camillo

8.) The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

9.) Countless others that I cannot remember right now but that I will think of as soon as I hit PUBLISH. 😉

And of course since there are millions more picture books than chapter books that I’ve read and there are TOO MANY OF THEM TO MENTION THAT ARE MY FAVORITES, I ‘ll save that for another time.  And goodness, that list will be long, too.  Because I love all the books.  Just ask any kid in my class. 🙂

What are YOUR favorite books?  Who are YOUR favorite authors?  Do you know why you love them?  I’d love to hear your thinking, and maybe even get a recommendation for something that could become a NEW favorite book of mine! Please leave a comment!

 

What Do You Do With a Problem?

I am sure you’ve seen this book:

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It’s not a new one, but I just recently read it for the first time to my class.  Ms. Turken, my co-teacher, and I had decided to start our year back after Winter Break with some reminders and reteaching about problem-solving.  We started with this book, as well with a structure for what to do when they encounter a problem.

I was so excited with how much my kiddos loved this book, and as usual, they had SUPER ideas about it and how they could apply the story to themselves.  The LOVED the way the problem got bigger (with the big black swirls) as he put off solving it, and they all agreed the best thing to do with a problem is just to figure out how to tackle it, not ignore it. 🙂

Once we finished the story, Nicholas had a great idea of how we should share what we had learned with others. Then, as is so commonplace (and so great!) with our class, kids kept adding their own thoughts to his original idea and they had birthed a plan where we’d have a whole display/presentation about problems they’d found (and problems they’d had) as well as possible solutions to those problems (which was part of our protocol we’d been learning about).  I told them that I would chew on the idea and talk to Ms. Turken about it over the weekend and get back to them.

As we talked about where we’d go with their grand plans, and it was a PERFECT fit with where we were going in Social Studies–don’t you love it when that happens?? 🙂  We were getting ready to start a history unit, and we decided to go with their excitement about problems/solutions and frame the thinking about how solutions to past problems can help us today.  We’d done that in a past year as we highlighted important people and it seemed like a great continuation and honoring of what kids were already interested in!  Again, love it when that happens–student voice is honored and our goals/standards are met at the same time!

So…our plan was to start with read alouds that show how people from the past (which was a word we had to spend a couple of days investigating because we couldn’t agree on the definition!) solved problems, having kiddos chew on this question as they listen and learn:

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We chose to read the same books to each of our classes, building on what one group of thinkers came up with and sharing it with the other group.   We have chosen books about smart and creative people, both men and women, some black and some white.  The focus has been the same, and kiddos are getting pretty good at finding the themes.  So far we’ve read these books:

I was tickled today, too, as our friend Addy heard someone say, “Take a picture of me!” and she said, “James VanDerZee!”, remembering one of the first books Ms. Turken read to us last week.  She reminded me of what the book was about and told me all about how it’s been one of her favorites. 🙂

Hear the rest (of this part) of the story here:

I’d love you to leave your comments below, and suggest some books you’d read in a history unit about problem solving!  We’re SO open to hearing about great new books!

#classroombookaday: Happy New Year!

Oh, you poor, neglected blog.  Been a whole month since I’ve written.  And more importantly, poor, neglected blog READERS–I’m sorry!!  For some reason, the last year it has been so hard for me to keep a regular posting routine.  I need to get back in the game!

I figured the easiest way to do that was to start with books.  I had grand plans of sharing our last pic of the year, and update you on our goal of hitting 300 before 2018.  Well…we didn’t quite make it, but we did get to 300, but we made it to 287, which is great!!  And like I say all the time, look how pretty that wall is!! 🙂

More than halfway to the floor!!

Then…we returned and I wanted to tell you all about it, but did you know that the beginning of the year is busy?  I know–all the parts of the year are busy. 🙂  So when we came back, we got to 295!

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Then….

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See that new red arrow?!  We hit 300 books!!  As of Jan 12 we were at 308!

And FINALLY the latest update, from this past Friday, January 19:

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321 🙂

I LOVE how this is still going, and how students, teachers and parents alike in our school are still commenting on it!  Hope I never leave the hallway we’re in, because it’s the PERFECT space to share our #classroombookaday story!

Speaking of story…there is lots to tell about the books we’ve added to that magnificent wall, but I’ll save those for another time and another blog post.  Thanks for hanging in there, blog friends, and I hope to be nicer to you in 2018! 🙂

#classroombookaday 2017 UPDATE: Week 16

Wow–what a great week we had in first grade!  I’m excited about both the number of books we were able to read as well as the titles that we were able to experience and learn from together. 🙂

Here’s our wall as of December 1, 2017:

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We’ve read 242 books!!

The books we shared this week were on a variety of topics, as we are studying many things and also adding in some extra topics of interest.  So this week, we added these 18 books:

Can you tell what we were learning about?  I love how when you see the covers all together, you can really tell the intentionality with which they were chosen.  The topics and stories were used to help kiddos make connections to what they are learning (and doing), as well as to get them thinking about older topics in new ways.

I haven’t measured, so this is just a guess, but I’d say we’re halfway down that big wall!  What amazing work, first grade!  Wonder how many we’ll end up with, and even bigger, I wonder how many words we’ve read together in all of those books!?