Wow! What a great time I had reading through your blog posts about lesson planners! I bookmarked, pinned and downloaded. I am so thankful for all of the new ideas I am grabbing! Because of the nice comments and questions about my binder, I am in the process of making it editable. In the meantime, I'm throwing two freebies from my binder your way! Click to grab!
Today, we will be sharing something special to my heart- all of our teacher hearts, I'm sure...BOOKS! In the Amazon Carousels above, you will find some of my favorite "go-to" books for starting the school year. Some are old favorites and some are new additions to my library.
The first few weeks of school go by in a flash. I find it's so important to have many great read-alouds on hand; both for lessons/activities as well as just for fun. There's nothing quite like gathering your littles on the carpet for a good book. At this point, I have so many of the books memorized that I can spend time looking out at the kids' little faces as I read. I love when they giggle, look surprised or perplexed- it gets me every time.
Read-alouds early in the year also give me a sense of who is quick to participate, who is shy, whose answers are "right on" and whose comprehension is waving a big red flag at me.
The most important reason for me to choose great read-alouds, however, is to show that I am a lover of books. I love the covers, the illustrations and the words. I show how interested I am in the characters and what is going on in the story. I read with excitement, confusion, sadness, love and whatever other emotions the characters are going through. And I have to admit, in the privacy of my classroom with my door closed, I love reading in character "voices" too - I don't hold back!
These early modeling examples of my "reader-ly life" sets the tone for reading behavior in my classroom. It serves as a spring board for lessons on "Just-Right" and "I PICK" books as well as for lessons on the caring for and keeping of books. It's where I model fluency and expression and show the kiddies how cool it is to read this way!
In my room, we are big on reading responses and throughout the year, my kids keep a Reading Response Journal. It's what they do during our Daily 5 "Work on Writing." I choose to do it there because we do an entirely different Writer's Workshop block. Here's a glimpse at some goodies I am working on to go along with some of my favorite read-alouds. Currently, I am putting the final touches on these three products. They should be available in my stores by the end of the week :)
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