Tag Archives: literacy

#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: 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:

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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! 🙂

#classroombookaday Update

Wanted to share our door one week since we started our #classroombookaday challenge started.  I am SO inspired when I see it, and am loving the comments that people are giving us as they walk by and look at it.  It also just makes me smile. 🙂  We have added  13 books this week! IMG_3785

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If you’ve been around here for a while, you probably know that I like a challenge.  I’ve written about a 40 Book Challenge, a blogging challenge, kid’s cup stacking, marshmallow and design challenges, and I’m not sure if I wrote about it, but I took on a half-marathon training program as a personal challenge last fall.  And so when another book challenge presented itself recently, of course I was game.  It’s just kind of how I roll. 🙂

The #classroombookaday hashtag is one I’ve seen before, and have thought about trying out, but most of the time I’ve caught it too late in the game to get started (I’m kind of an all-or-nothing person, so unless it’s the beginning of the year/month/quarter, etc., it’s hard for me to do).  This time around I had already been thinking about it before school anyway, and had been informally keeping track of our read alouds as we got into the first days of first grade.  Then, my friend Ms. Turken (@im4students@im4students) and our principal, Mrs. Sisul (@GRRprincipal), both got involved and I knew it was on.  There are bulletin boards and tons of books being read and lots of fabulous stories being shared and laughs being laughed.  I am pretty sure, too, that it’s a friendly challenge, with each of us cheering the other one on, rather than declaring a winner or counting who’s got the most (right, friends??).  I’m super excited about how it’s going already, and am interested to see what kinds of conversations come out of this kind of data collection.  I can already see TONS of math in the images I have of our door (which is where we’re tracking our books), and there are many discussions about predictions in our future, too.

Here’s our #classroombookaday data up to this afternoon; we’ve been reading since August 16, so today was day 11.

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That picture makes me so happy, and I am interested to see how quickly we fill up the door.  There’s really not that much room left!  At this rate, we’ve only got about another month or so of space!  Then where will we go?? Excited to see. 🙂

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What math do you see in our pictures?  Have you ever taken on a challenge?  How did it go?  What book suggestions can you make for us?  Please leave us a comment and let’s chat about it! 🙂