Tag Archives: #classroombookaday

#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!

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?!

#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. 🙂 )

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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:

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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!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of February 19-22, 2019

Hi and welcome back to the blog!  I’m so glad you keep coming back to check up on what’s going on–because we’re excited to share it with you!

The wall display is up to 360 and looks so amazing!

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Every day that goes by brings more and more interested onlookers to our display!  I think they might be wondering how long will we fill up the wall!  Or maybe where will it go when that happens.  We do have some ideas for where it will go (spoiler–look up!).

This week we added these new titles to the wall:

You’ll see some of our sweet stories from Kindness Week last week, and also a Mo Willems favorite we hadn’t read yet.  My favorites were the two that included diverse characters–Big Hair, Don’t Care and Whoosh! And the best part, those two were probably the kiddos’ favorites, too!

What should we read this week? 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of February 11, 2019

I gave a little sneak peek of the newest books last time I updated but here are the titles up close.  We’re up to 349 and are as excited as the first day–maybe more since we’re getting closer to the top of the wall every day! 🙂

IMG_7037(Btw, yes, I know there’s a book missing.  I hung the wrong one there last week.  Oops. 🙂 )

So this week we added these new books to our display:

Ok, so there are some of our newest favorites on this list, books that are new to us this year.  Everywhere Wonder was a great reminder that if you look at the world in the right way, there is wonder–and a story–everywhere! I loved this one as a writer, and will use it next year as we launch Writer’s Workshop.  Crankenstein was super funny, and we already knew we loved the illustrations from Dan Santat (um, hello, Rodzilla?  Genius!).  Grammy Lamby might just be the sweetest story ever about a secret handshake, and Whistle for Willie is a just plain classic. 🙂 . We continued our reading about important people (as well as enjoying another book illustrated by an author we know, Don Tate!) with She Loved Baseball, and read about another important person we recognized with Mae Among the Stars.  This one was written about Mae Jemison as a child, which is a take on her story that I’ve never seen before. The pictures were beautiful and the story was so real.  Kids could absolutely understand how THEY could become an astronaut when they grow up.  Oh, and see that Toy Story book?  That’s the one we got from the library when we won BINGO on World Read Aloud Day–Makhi and Hailey picked a favorite for us to keep in our classroom. 🙂

As I always ask, what did you read this week?  What should WE read next week?  Share your title suggestions in a comment down below! 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: See What Happened There??

Did you see it?  Let me post the latest picture and see if you see what I see. 🙂

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We made it to 300 books!!

I finally got around to adding the numbers to the side the other day (yeah..200 was there for a bit and I’ll fix it soon…long story), and kids of all ages are interacting with the wall  in a new way.  Seems like first graders (who have read all these books) weren’t really able to fathom that there were that many–the wall is just filling up and they know they’ve read a lot, but didn’t know just how many.  “Big” kids were suddenly amazed that “little” kids had read so many books!  Funny how just having something to relate to make you see things in a new way.

And, as you can see, we’ve actually read MORE than 300 books!  We added 36 from World Read Aloud Day, and then finished the row with some from last week (plus a few that I haven’t had a chance to get up there yet).  It’s been fun to make plans for what we will do when we fill up the wall (right now the plan is to go up and over the ceiling!). 🙂

Since I just posted all the additions from WRAD, the list from this week is small, but they were good ones nonetheless:

The books we added this week are all so different, but all so great!  I remember first reading Yard Sale during the Global Read Aloud in 2016 when Lauren Castillo was the featured illustrator and LOVING it, and this class did, too.  Such a simple story with such deep ideas.  The Rescue of Winks in one in a series of books that are written about real animals from the Second Chance Ranch (and we even Skyped with the author the other day and got to meet lots of her animals friends!).

Trombone Shorty was a toe-tapping addition during our library visit on Tuesday,  and I Don’t Want to Be a Frog is a fun read-aloud with lots of voices and funny lines. :). I have a few more, but they’ll be included for next week since they’re not on the wall yet.

What did you read this week?  Leave us a comment and share your favorites! 🙂

 

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of January 21-25, 2019

Hi!  How are things where you are?  It’s COLD in Missouri, and we’re enjoying a day at home. 🙂 . I realized I didn’t update you on last week’s books, so here’s what the wall looked like last Friday, after another great week!  We are up to 291! 🙂

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We had a short week this week, so only added 10 titles.  They are all good ones though (Man, I say that every week don’t I?  I guess they’re ALL good titles!):

A couple of cool things happened this week with our books.  First of all, we read another SUPER book by Peter Reynolds, and it sparked ANOTHER super project (which I’ll share in the next few days! Stay tuned!), and also, Mrs. Fry brought out some really great big books!  I have been in first grade for almost a decade altogether, but somehow I forget about those!  And goodness–I should bring them out more often–what fun it was to read together and also hear a new story!  Plus everyone can see so easily!  We read a new David book this week (Thanks, David Shannon!  Those are always a hit!), and also enjoyed a new story about the Hindu holiday, Holi.  It was BEAUTIFUL and we all wanted to read it again. :).  I did not get this title on the wall until after this picture, but we also celebrated Children’s Multicultural Book Day on Friday and Mrs. Davis read Outside My Window to us, sharing the importance of seeing the world outside ourselves and reading texts that show the whole world!

What did you read this week?  What do you suggest for us? 🙂 . Stay warm and happy reading!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of January 14, 2019

Another SUPER week in our first grade reading world!  We’re up to 281 (woohoo!–more than halfway to the top!) and read some good ones this week.  First check out the updated display:

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Here’s what we added this week:

You will notice some more fraction titles, and a couple of Cinderella books I somehow forgot to post until now.  What?  I am so obsessed over this wall display I usually get the pics up the MINUTE we are done with them. LOL. Better late than never, I guess. :). We added a ShowMe nominee book–Seven and a Half Tons of Steel–during our library visit on Tuesday, and it was a great one.  I had NO idea there was a ship made out of the Twin Towers!  Art & Max delighted us with great illustrations (as David Wiesner books often do!), and since it was snowy recently, we read some great winter snow books, too.  One of our favorites was Rodzilla (which I think kids love EVERY year!) and also a reread of The Invisible Boy.  We’re excited to add more books about problem solvers to the wall for next week, so stay tuned for some great books about great people! 🙂

It’s not on the wall yet, but I hope to share the book Kate suggested in the comments from a few weeks ago, too–My Hair is a Garden.  It was beautiful! Have a great reading week, friends, and don’t forget to leave us some suggestions for what we should add in our upcoming choices!

#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!

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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. 🙂