This was a short week at school (we only had Weds-Fri), so our list is a little smaller than other weeks. But believe me it is no less amazing! (Oh, and by the way, I realized that picture looks like we’re a little closer to filling up our door than we actually are….still a couple more weeks away. 🙂 ).
Here’s the close up of the week (which I realized I don’t usually share):
This week we started with another Mo Willems title we hadn’t read, as well as a Kate Klise book that kiddos read last year before she came to visit. On Thursday we were lucky to have Mrs. Sisul swing by with her brand-spanking new copy of Hotel Bruce, which she had promised to read to us when she came with Mother Bruce earlier this year. She had a great story about how she had gotten her copy from her favorite local bookstore and had also celebrated Bruce’s book birthday last Tuesday. We read two Pigeon books for our punctuation study, and The Reader for the Global Read Aloud this week. Two of our books were recommendations from our friend Rachel, and then lastly we were lucky to have a familiar 4th grade friend come and read to us on Friday. Remember when Allie came to read Naked to us? Well, during that visit they had asked if Riley could come, too, and Friday he finally came! His grade was having a whole day reading celebration and so he spent some of his time reading Mustache Baby Meets His Match to us. We LOVED it!
Another successful reading week! Our count is up to 161 so far, which is SO AMAZING! Can’t wait to see what this coming week holds! 🙂
It’s the end of the 1st Quarter, and I am SO GLAD I decided to keep track of our books like this! I know that it has helped us in loads of ways, and has changed some of my thinking as well.
First of all, while it is not hard data, I can tell that the kiddos in my room have gotten more interested in both reading and writing because of the presence of so many great books! The first few days of school, I remember saying sadly to my friends, “This class doesn’t like to read! They don’t like books! What is up with that!?” Honestly, I remembered the sounds of disgust and the moans that emerged from many first grade bodies when I’d announce that we would meet on the rug to share a story, and the mention of having THEM read was like asking them to drink vinegar! I was seriously worried that we’d be fighting all year about how amazing reading and writing are and how you should do them every day. To look at them now, you’d never know that was where we had started. I can say that everyone in my class is a willing reader, and many choose to do so whenever they get a chance to make a free choice. It has also upped the excitement about writing, as well, since Rm. 202 kiddos understand the connection between reading a great book and where it came from. They have, on many occasions written their own versions of great stories we’ve read–mainly Elephant and Piggie, but also other Mo Willems books (yep, we’re still HUGE FANS!). They are then super excited to be able to read those books to the class; this is a new phenomenon in my primary classes–I’ve never had kiddos so eager to read to their friends! You will notice many of these kid-published titles on our door. 🙂
Secondly, I’d have to say that our excitement with #classroombookaday has changed my intention, purpose and selection of read alouds in our class. Read aloud has also been a big deal in my classroom, and I completely believe that it is a crucial piece of the puzzle to creating strong readers and writers–and thinkers! In the past, however, my read alouds have been primarily chapter books. Even in 1st grade, my book choices were longer texts (often series or other stories) that I know and love that I want to expose my kiddos to so they can love them, too! First grade read alouds last time included graphic novel series like Lunch Lady and Babymouse, which most kiddos hadn’t yet heard of. We also enjoyed many authors that wrote a variety of different kinds of books, like Kate DiCamillo. We have read the Mercy Watson series, the Leroy Ninker series, as well as The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. While I do believe I will eventually get around to reading longer texts and starting our Read Aloud Timeline (another core part of my literacy instruction), I think this will probably not happen now until after the new year. Because of my focus on the #classroombookaday challenge, I’ve become more interested and aware of great picture books and picture book authors that I didn’t really know before (it’s weird I know, I am a first grade teacher and I didn’t really read picture books). This has lead to some new friends and new favorite books and new people to connection with on Twitter with my class. This whole process has also increased the amount of books that kiddos bring me from home or from the library that we “HAVE TO READ.” I love that they are being more discriminate about what their friends might like or what a “good” book sounds like. Win/win for everyone, wouldn’t you say?
Ok, so here’s our new door picture, up to date from last Friday. We’re up to 152 now–which blows my mind! And we still stop to look at the beautiful book covers (as does almost everyone else who walks by!) every time we’re in the hall. Check it out!
This week we read many less books than previous weeks. I’d say it was probably because it was the last week of the quarter and so worked much more on finished up assessments and such instead of gathering together on the rug for a lesson (which is when most of our read alouds happen). We have 3 kid-written books on our door this week, as well as a Curious George book, a wordless book by Tomie dePaola (which is a new author to us), another Ashlyn Anstee book that also has an Emily Arrow songEmily Arrow song, a Pigeon book we hadn’t read, a Pete the Cat math book and the second book from the Global Read Aloud schedule. Whew! Even with less titles, we were busy and engrossed in REALLY GOOD BOOKS!
I do have a couple more pictures to share before I go…
Mara, Kaiden and Aadish are three kiddos that have been most interested in writing their own texts for our class to read. This week we had one from each of them, but I’m sorry to say I only have a picture of Kaiden’s book–not of him actually reading it. Sorry buddy!
Ok, one more. 🙂 Ms. Turken’s class is also on the #classroombookaday journey, and their board looks like this:
Don’t all those books just make you happy?! Thanks for reading! As always, if you have a book or author suggestion, please leave us a comment and we’ll definitely try it out! 🙂
Another week, another list of great read alouds! For some reason we only read 12 (instead of the almost 20 from most weeks so far), but boy were they good ones and man did we have fun! Here’s what our door looks like as of Friday:
Let me tell you about a few of the highlights from this week:
We added 3 Piggie and Elephant titles to our door, which we LOVE!!
We read another Peter Brown book ( well, 2 of them actually), and we’re becoming fans of another great author. We loved My Teacher is a Monster and noticed lots of great things happening in the illustrations. Then we shared The Curious Garden and LOVED it! And we found The Curious Garden because we’d seen the amazingly beautiful song by Emily Arrow on her YouTube channel. What a great partnership between music and literature!And speaking of The Curious Garden, we had great conversations about grit and growth mindset from that little city garden and the boy who helped it grow!
We added some Olivier Dunrea titles to our list, too, which we found after we first read Ollie the Stomper for shared reading early in the year. Since the first one, we’ve met Gideon, his octopus buddy Otto and a perfect pair of friends named Jasper and Joop. This coming week there’s more on the list to explore!
Another Ame Dyckman title was enjoyed this week– Wolfie the Bunny!
We read our first title for the Global Read Aloud this week and interacted with Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo. We drew and wrote about how we could be brave in our capes. We’re excited for next week’s book–The Troublemaker!
Lastly, we had a really special mystery reader come to our class and share a funny book with us called Naked by Michael Ian Black–Allison Bearden! Do you recognize that name? It’s my cutie-pie kindergarten daughter! She had been reading and rereading Naked, practicing sounding like a storyteller, and I asked her if she wanted to read it to my first graders. She was excited about that idea, and when she showed up, my kiddos were, too!
They were great listeners, Allie was a great reader and Rm. 202 kids were impressed that she could read the words in that book! The next request was that Riley Bearden come down from 4th grade and share a book with them. He’s ready to take on that challenge, so maybe he’ll be here next week on the 20somethingkids blog!
Another great week of reading, inspiring, thinking and book-loving in Rm. 202! Thanks for reading! Do you have a suggestion of a book we could read? We LOVE recommendations from other readers!
Wow–I feel like every week I say “I can’t believe it’s been this long already!” but again, I say I can’t believe it’s been SIX WEEKS of the bookaday challenge. But even more, I can’t believe we’re already at 124 books!! I love that some said today, “I wonder if we’ll get to 1000 soon!” Ok, so maybe it means I need to do some more place value work, but I also think it speaks to the love of reading and books that is growing in Rm. 202. And I love it!
Beyond just sharing the “door picture” like I’ve been doing every week, I want to highlight a little about what has happened with some of the books we read this week, as well as some wonderings that have come up this week as we’ve been reading.
First our latest picture:
I feel like I say this every week now, too, but looking at this just makes me happy!
We started the week reading a book recommended by Mrs. Sisul when she was in our room last time–Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers. We’re already fans of Stuck and Lost and Found, and had wanted to try some others (I have a couple of others in the TBR basket right now actually!). We were supposed to take a vote after we read it and let Mrs. Sisul know if she should share that one with the rest of Robinson, too, and we voted YES!
A quick favorite this week was Are We There, Yeti? by Ashton Anstee, which we actually learned about because of our love of all things Emily Arrow. Oh, come on, you know her–the Dot Day song lady. Well…since we’re subscribed to her YouTube Channel, we know there are loads of other great book/song combinations she’s created, and this was one of them. I’m posting the song below, but beware, it’s very catchy!! I’m planning on using the lyrics to this song as our shared reading text next week, which I think will be really cool.
We added two more Elephant and Piggie books this week (how you can not LOVE those?): I Will Fly Today and Can I Play Too? Both were great, but we laughed especially loud at the joke in CIPT: the friend who wants to play is a snake, and Elephant and Piggie are trying to play ball. Lots of craziness ensues, but the end is a happy one where the snake thanks them for playing “with” their friend. Yep–they throw him! We definitely LOL’d when we saw that one. 🙂 And speaking of Elephant and Piggie (thanks Mo Willems for writing these amazing little gems!), we ended the week with a box from Amazon that had two new books in it!! Thanks Raebers! We’re excited to read I Love New Toy on Monday. 🙂
Kaiden brought in a big pile of books from home this week (I love that kids are starting to do that regularly and share their favorite titles with the rest of us!), and we shared two of them so far: Zoo Looking by Mem Fox and Please, Mr. Panda by Steve Antony.
We have a Mem Fox author box in our library, so Kaiden thought this would be a good one to read to introduce our class to her writing. He brought Please, Mr. Panda because we’ve been working so hard on using kind words and being respectful. That one hdd a great lesson about how it feels when people are rude to you as opposed to how it feels when others use manners. We liked them both and learned form them, too!
I found a great one–The Best Book to Read–at the library on my last visit and was excited to finally share it with my kiddos on Thursday. We had a great conversation about what the “best” book to read would be, and how that means something different to everyone. Mara suggested that every book is the best book to read. She ended up being right! This book also started some great conversations about libraries, and what special places they are, as well as an important discussion about library cards and what amazing treasures those can be! It started a plan for a walking field trip soon! We are so excited!
Lastly, Mrs. Sisul came back again (isn’t it amazing that our principal reads to us!?) to read Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev.
It was on her list during the first rotation of Principal Read Alouds, but I had her save it for a later time. Her visit today was purposely tied to our conversations lately about including everyone, being kind to others, and the fact that I had found an Emily Arrow song about it! Perfect, right?? I know, eventually I might stop gushing about her amazingness, but for now I’ll just share another song. 🙂
I feel like I should be sure to say thanks to Jillian Heise for the fabulousness that is #classroombookaday on Twitter. And I am so truly sorry if I ever seemed like I created it–I think I just started using it in my title so I didn’t have to retype it when I tweeted out my posts. Anyhow, what a great thing this has done (and is doing) in my classroom (and so many others!) to promote literacy, introduce readers to new books and to create so many great memories between me and my students.
Ok…this marks Week 5 since we started tracking our reading, and something very special happened–we hit 100 books!! I haven’t done it yet, but I feel like I should mark that book with a star or something (it was the Light and Sound book just for the record!), and also begin more seriously planning what in the world we’ll do when we fill up our door. The way the math is working, that will happen in about 6 weeks! That’s not even the halfway point of the year yet!
I’ve shared a couple of versions of the Recipe for a Good Book lesson I’ve taught in the past. As far as I can remember, I hadn’t yet taught this whole deal with first graders. I’m thinking it’s because the focus for so long has been on the definition of “just-right” books being focused on the level of the book (and less on the reader, I’d say). I do agree that being in a book that you can read is important, but I would propose that being in a book at all–and a book that you LOVE–sets the stage as importantly as kiddos start their reading journey.
So this year, I’ve decided that the first lesson I taught would NOT be on “just-right” books in terms of knowing the words and understanding the story (but again, don’t hear me saying those things aren’t important, just not first), but would instead be on understanding and identifying what we like as readers. And since we’re 105 books into #classroombookaday and have shared so many great texts together, I thought it would be a great place to start to zoom in on authors.
I started our conversation telling my kiddos about my past recipe lessons (and about recipes in general so they had a context), and then about my librarian pal Ms. Cobb who even dressed up as a chef to teach it to her 4th and 5th graders! They were impressed, and I think a little sad that I didn’t have a costume. LOL
Then I asked a question: Why is it important to know an author’s name? They had some great ideas and already came with a lot of knowledge of writers from kindergarten. They were able to name some great ones (from this year’s books, from books previous teachers had read, and also some from their at-home reading) like Jeff Kinney, Dav Pilkey, our favorite right now Mo Willems, and Ame Dyckman (another new favorite!). I added in another important reason, too, related to just respecting the writer for the hard work it is to write a book!
After our initial talk, I got kids thinking about the kinds of books they like to read and told them an unbelievable story about someone I know who went to the library and didn’t have any idea what they were looking for, and about someone else who didn’t know the author’s name and asked the library for “a green book with a dog on the front that’s about this big.” Crazy, right? Well, yes, of course, some first graders (and much older students, too!) book shop like that, and I think it my duty to help change that (both for their “now” reading lives and their future selves).
Next step was to create a visual that they could use to remind themselves once they were in a shopping situation (in our classroom library, our school library, and heck, even Barnes and Noble!) of what they were looking for, rather than just roam around aimlessly or worse yet, get themselves into trouble because they didn’t know what to do.
I used the format of the Recipe for a Good Book as I had with previous classes, but instead of making it into a bookmark (which works best for kiddos that are primarily shopping for and reading chapter books), we made ours with pictures and words on full sheets of paper.
Kiddos could write or draw anything they knew they liked about books, including authors, titles, genres (if they knew this info) and even topics. And since we had already read over 100 great titles together, kiddos were able to use our display to help them with their visuals. I’m amazed every day about what a great idea that door display of our reading continues to be. We keep finding different ways to use it!
Kids were very engaged, excited about what they put on their lists and spent the whole time talking about books! We’re excited to take our new recipes to the library with us to help us with our choices tomorrow. I am sure we’ll be glad we have them there! 🙂
I cannot believe how much fun we’re having with #classroombookaday, nor how many books we’ve already read! For all I know, we usually read this many books in 1st grade together (I’ve never officially kept track), but regardless it’s SO GREAT to watch the pictures get added and begin to fill up the door!
This week I think we added almost 20 books and I’m not sure we can pick a favorite!
I do have to give a huge shoutout to Keira’s mom (loyal blog reader!) who left us some GREAT suggestions when she was at school for Read With Your Roadrunner today that she thought we would love. And BOY was she right! I had never seen Red: A Crayon’s Story or Clancy the Courageous Cow before today but they will definitely be added to my classroom collection! Both fit in perfectly (like she said they would!) with our conversations about valuing everyone for their uniqueness and celebrating how everyone can do something really well (even if that thing ends up being a surprise!). Thanks for the suggestions! Feel free to share your books with us anytime you want! (That request goes for anyone, by the way!) 🙂
We are SUPER lucky to have a literary principal at Robinson School. Is that the right word for a book-lovin’, read-aloud-givin’, kid-supportin’ administrator who visits to share GREAT NEW BOOKS with students? Whatever you call it, we’re very blessed. I know some of it has to do with her past life as a teacher, but she’s also a mom, and a veracious reader herself. And she wants to share that with us! LOVE IT!
So…thus far she’s been in 3 times (which is pretty great since we’ve only been in school for 3 weeks!), and shared some great titles with us.
For her first visit she brought Excellent Ed, and helped us think about what we’re already great at, then make goals for things we’re still working on. This fit in perfectly with our butterflies. 🙂
Then she came back to read Stuck to us and teach us to “try one more time!” That lesson has come into play loads of times already, even just right afterwards when Nicholas was telling the story about how he learned to tie his shoes when his dad gave him one more demonstration. 🙂
And THEN she came back again today and read us a funny story that we can all pick up when we head to our Book Fair starting tomorrow (great timing, huh??), Mother Bruce. This was a great one, but on the first read I wonder if Mrs. Sisul and I thought it was funnier than Rm. 202 kids did. Oh well–the adults were entertained! LOL
Oh, and I must mention one more thing about this whole principal read aloud thing…I love Mrs. Sisul’s excitement for literacy and books and how she inspires my kiddos to be readers when she comes so jazzed up about books (and yes, that is definitely the right word for it!), but what I love even more is that she takes her time to show Robinson kids they matter by doing this, too. Goodness knows principals have tens of thousands of things to do in a day (all of which are important), but I appreciate that she makes time for kids first. My Rm. 202 friends know Mrs. Sisul as a friend, a reader, an adult with a connection, a lover of humor, someone with grit and most of all a person. She’s not just a disciplinarian or a stranger in the office that no one ever sees–she’s a part of our community and we LOVE to have her visit. 🙂
Ok, Mrs. Sisul–what will you bring us next?? (Please don’t make us wait until November for the next Mother Bruce book!! 🙂 )
Today was kind of tricky. I have an unfortunate beginning-of-the-year-my-kids-got-me-sick cold, and it’s taken my voice. 😦 Luckily my throat doesn’t hurt (no, I don’t have strep–don’t worry, friends!), but it’s hard to not talk when you’re a teacher. LOL The hardest thing–especially when we’re in the midst of a #classroombookaday challenge–is the read alouds. I couldn’t NOT read aloud today (especially when there are texts that go with subjects as well as the ones just for fun), so I figured we’d “read” them on YouTube instead. I know it’s not really rocket science, but it’s the first time I’d done it, so I was kind of excited about it.
Today was a 3-book day, and two of them were videos. We started the day with How Full is Your Bucket? for Kids, which is one that kiddos know from kindergarten. It’s a great story, and is a super book to use with kids anyway, but this one was chosen also because we’ve been having some empty buckets at the end of the day lately. 😦 Everyone needed a reminder. 🙂
Check it out, in case you haven’t ever read it (or even if you have!):
Another one we “read” like this was The Night of the Veggie Monster which is a mentor text for our Small Moments writing unit we’re starting. It’s so funny and is a story every kid can relate to personally.
Kiddos were so excited about this kind of read aloud that I might start to incorporate it more frequently just as a change of pace. 🙂
I’m wondering…
Kids: What did you like best about these stories today?
Parents: What did your learner tell you about our #classroombookaday choices today?
Teachers: How do you use videos for read aloud? What suggestions do you have?
I feel like I say this every week now, too, but looking at this just makes me happy!
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 