Read Aloud Lessons

Read aloud has always been one of my favorite parts of teaching. When I was in college, it is what I imagined doing most of my day. Sitting in a rocking chair, reading a classroom favorite, while my students stare back at me, completely enamored by the characters and plot of a story. My ideal world, right?! 

From time to time, that was a real scene. Typically it was after lunch and my students needed to "wind down" before we could begin learning. I would always ask questions throughout when they popped up, but a few years into teaching I wanted to make this time a bit more purposeful.

I had collected mentor texts... books with depth... stories that my students learned to love and wanted to read over and over. Some days I would write post-its where I saw great questions or talking points, but after the years I would lose the post-its.

It wasn't until I had a set time period for an interactive read aloud, that I knew I wanted to make an organized scope and sequence for my lessons. All the questions I had come up with over the past years, I wanted easily accessible. 

In my own words an interactive read aloud is a planned and purposeful read aloud that encourages both deeper thinking and respectful discussion. 

I spent the past 5 months going through my current book collection, checking out book after book at the library, and ordering plenty of new paperbacks off Amazon until I could find a selection of books I thought were good enough for the skills I wanted to be sure I covered throughout the year. Then, I went through each book - hundreds of time (or so it felt) - to find my favorite stopping points and comprehension questions that really help my students focus on the skill at hand.

I have listed out the scope and sequence along with books I use below:

There are 64 books total and each one-page lesson is set up them same:

If you want to take a look and try a free read aloud lesson for the story, Officer Buckle and Gloria, just click on any of the images below and download the preview!

The scope and sequence was really to help ME plan - so feel free to help yourself and use the lessons and books however you see fit! I know a few teachers who have loved them for subs!

I really hope these can help in your planning!

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Stone Soup: A Literacy & Community Unit

Do your students read Stone Soup around Thanksgiving?!

I have done this unit 4 of the 5 years I taught first grade and both my students and I L-O-V-E it!

I always complete this literacy unit the week before Thanksgiving and we tie in the relation between the holiday of giving thanks and the importance of community and helping one another. I find that these books exemplify the thoughts of coming together and helping one another. Many students can also relate the feasts shown in this book to the feasts they have themselves on Thanksgiving!

There are so many versions of the Stone Soup folk tale, but the four I choose to compare, contrast, and dive into are by the following authors:

Marcia Brown

Ann Mcgovern

Jon J Muth

Jess Stockham

They are each a little different, but share the same sentiments of sharing, caring, and working together for a greater good!

For each book, I included some story responses, writing prompts and read aloud lessons that we have discussed over the past few years.

The story responses touch on sequencing, inferring, vocabulary development, comparing/contrasting, and story elements. While the writing prompts are a mix of opinion and contrasting stories!

There are also a few crafts included as well a recipe and parent notes in case you want to re-create the stone soup experience for your students!

You can grab everything you need for a stone soup mini-unit by clicking the image below:

Download the preview to see a closer look at what's included in this unit!

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Text-to-Self Connections! and little freebie

Monday funday!

We started off our day making some text-to-self connections and I must brag for a minute, my kids did an amazing job. First, we reviewed what a text-to-self connection was and made a quick little anchor chart. Then, we read Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco (click below for the book). During the read aloud, I did change the name to "Falk(N)er" for obvious reasons, but this sweet book is about a little girl who struggles learning how to read. It isn't until 5th grade when she gets the help of her teacher, Mr. Falker, that she learns how to read. This story is jam-packed with themes for my kiddos to relate to: death of a family member, overcoming struggles, bullying, and more!

After we read the story aloud, we brainstormed and shared some of connections with our friends using this quick little freebie:

 Just click above to download!

 At the end, we each chose one connection to add to our anchor chart. We connected them all and the kids thought it was pretty darn cool that we could all relate to the same story in so many different ways! :)

Close up:

Some fabulous 1st grade connections:

"I feel safe wen I am with my techr."

"I hav a hrd time rding"

"I feel bad when I cant do something everybdy els can"

"My mommy pasd awy and it wuz sad for me to go to school to."

(^^breaks heart^^)

Pretty darn good, right?!?!? Sometimes, I just love my littles!

Stop by later in the week to see some F-U-N holiday activities!

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Tacky the Penguin!

We dove into character traits this week and what better guy to do that with than Tacky?!?!

My kids love this odd little penguin!

After reading the book, I recorded what my little ones had to say:

Then we used Lindsey (The Teacher Wife)'s character page from her Reading Comprehension Pack.

I have both her packs and they are seriously fabbb-ulous!

I must say, I thought Tacky was going to be a shoe-in for the class favorite, but many picked the other penguins because they were "polite" and "neat" and "knew how to dive" lol!

 

So stinkin' cute!!

Things are underway in room 41B and we are FINALLY getting into the swing of things!

Happy hump day!

BTW - Did anyone else watch the Bachelor Pad finale - THOUGHTS!?!?

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Enemy Pie for a Friday Freebie!

TGIF everybody!!!!!

I am heading out for *date* night with the boy, but before I go I thought I would link up and share a Friday Freebie with you!

I am using the book Enemy Pie by Derek Munson next week for a shared reading lesson.
 

This book is one of my absolute favorites to read-aloud to my class. It teaches such a great lesson about how to treat one another and my class needs a big ole' healthy dose of enemy pie this year!

 
Since we have been focusing on setting and characters, I made this quick little worksheet to go with our read aloud. Just click on the image to download it from Googledocs.

I also made a generic one that can be used for any story.
 

We are also focusing on comparing contrasting so I made a little Venn Diagram to compare a friend and an enemy after reading the story:

Last but not least, I thought I would share my nightly reading log. This is sent home each night (Mon.-Thurs.) with a leveled book in my students' reading folder. Parents and students complete it together for the first few months. After Christmas, I try to have the students fill in the log by themselves(OWNERSHIP!) and just get it initialed by their parents.

 {again, just click to download}

That's all folks!

Have a fantastic weekend and GO PATS :)

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Must Have Picture Books!

Lindsey, over at The Teacher Wife, has a FANNNtastic linky party I just had to join!

It's all about your....

 

This is perfect because now I can compile a list of alllllll the new books I obviously NEED for the upcoming year!

1. My Mouth is a Volcano! By Julia Cook
I recently posted about this one {here}, but I just LOVE this book. Julia Cook is amazing and this book starts the discussion of interrupting and blurting out! It puts my little chatty-kathys to a rest... at least for a bit :)


2. Mean Jean The Recess Queen! By Alexis O'Neill
This book is about mean ole' Jean and her being a bully on the playground. She gets whatever she wants, when she wants it and no one stands up for themselves! Well.. that is until a new girl comes to school. She doesn't take any of Jean's bullying and... you'll have to read it to see what happens.


3. Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler. By Margery Cuyler
I always read this one at the beginning of the year. This book emphasizes all the kind things we can do for others both inside AND outside of school. In the book, Mrs. Ruler and her class make a bulletin board highlighting all their kind deeds as they try to reach 100 of them! So obbbbviously, my class makes a bulletin board too! :)


4. The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes, by Mark Pett and Gary Rubinstein
Okay, I never heard of this book until last year when a colleague recommended it. I had a little lady in my class who was a PERFECTIONIST to the max! She was super smart, super creative, super everything.... and one time in front of the class she made a silly mistake when solving a math problem... ya know because she's human. Dear goodness, this little lady had a near meltdown. She couldn't get passed her mistake. Well this book helped BIG time and it is one of my absolute new faves!


5. When Sophie Gets Angry- Really, Really, Angry... By Molly Bang
 I love the pictures in this book and I think it teaches a great lesson about what to do when you're really, really angry. I know it has mixed reviews because some think it only teaches students to walk away when angry and doesn't give other options, but hellloooo that opens the door for a FANTASTIC class discussion! And the rule in my class is if you're too angry and about to explode you need to get out and go for a "walk" (aka get a drink) to collect yourself before calmly discussing the issue with me or another student!

Hmmm... so we've had...
interrupting
 bullying
being kind
 making mistakes
and how to act when you are angry...
looks like we've got it covered! HA!

These books are my favorite because these issues come up ALL the time in class and my kids make connections to each story. Throughout the year we revisit each story numerous times based upon the needs of our classroom situation.

Now, GO!
Link up with {Lindsey} so I can see your books :)

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I had a Dream...Craftivity!

I am linking up with Denise, over at Sunny Days in Second Grade, for Show and Tell Tuesday!!

The topic today is MLK Jr.! 

I was at work last night "cutsifying" (real word?) an MLK Jr. packet I had started and used back in January. I even added...wait for it... a CRAFTIVITY! I think I am getting better at them... practice, practice, practice!

What do you think?!

That MLK was a cutie, huh?!

UPDATE: See it in my classroom HERE

Anyways, he is just one of the fun activities I added to my lil packet. 

My fave, fave, fave book to read aloud is Martin's BIG Words by Doreen Rappaport. The last two years my kids even teared up at the end... which causes me to tear up, and we have a sweet little cry fest and talk about how great MLK Jr. really was! It always amazes me the depth of understanding those little 6 year olds have. 

LOVE!

After we read the book aloud and have many in-depth discussions, we create our own book of BIG words. Well, I "cutsified" that too. {Thanks, Nikki from Melonheadz}!

 

They come out pretty adorable last year, but thanks to the makeover, they will be a lot cuter this year.

If you want to check out my packet & craftivity, click HERE or HERE.... or HERE!

(They're all the same link... just didn't want you to miss it) 

;)

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My Mouth is a VOLCANO!!!

 

My Mouth is a Volcano is one my favorite books to read at the beginning of the year to help curb the interrupting and blurting out!

This year I made a cute little craftivity to extend our learning after this read-aloud. We always talk about why it is important not to interrupt others and what we can do if we feel like we might EXPLODEEEE with words while someone else is speaking. Since I love to chatchatchat, this concept is very familiar to me and I see little Susan Moran's all over my classroom at the beginning of the year! Our words are very important to us you know!!!

I recently uploaded my "First Week Fun" packet on TpT with some cute activities for the first week of school and my little Volcano craftivity is in that packet!

Here are some of the other activities in my first week packet:

 

 You can see a closer preview at my {TpT store}!

Susan

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