Day 41


I have discovered my students need practice rhyming words, so I will be adding poetry to the challenge in the coming weeks. SHIMMER: SONGS OF NIGHT, written by Raven Howell and illustrated by Carina Povarchick, is a beautiful selection I stumbled upon while looking for poetry. 

The collection of poems is all about the time between sundown and sunup.  This time is typically scary to young children but this collection points out the magic and wonder of nighttime. The illustrations add a layer to the poetry I love and find myself getting lost in. The clever word play, kid friendly content and whimsical illustrations make this book one that will be hard to top.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 63

Image
I used WHAT DO YOU THINK, KATIE? (written by Fran Manushkin and illustrations by Tammie Lyon) from the Katie Woo series to introduce opinion writing.  The book begins as a friendship story. Katie and her friends try to decide what to do and get mad at each other.  At first, Katie is very unreasonable but she works her way through the conflict.  Throughout the story, sidebars teach about opinion writing. At one point, I had my students stop and write whether they agreed or disagreed with Katie and support what they thought. Everyone wrote because it was very obvious that she was wrong and all my students knew it. There are many more Katie Woo stories. I am definitely going to look into buying them.
Read more

Thanksgiving thoughts

A few weeks ago I noticed something. The class was choral reading. I dropped off as I normally do and just listened. I realized that my students where raising the tone of their voices at the end of questioning sentences and in some cases, giving their characters separate distinct voices. I pride myself in producing students that do that but that typically begins in March, not November. True, this is a great group of kids but I always like my kids.  Then, at report card time, I tested student fluency. WOW! I have students achieving Spring Benchmark already.  Could it be the challenge? I'm not sure but I kind of think so.  I thought that the interest level in class would drop off but it really hasn't. It's November and I still am getting requests. They love Read Aloud Time and simply won't let me miss it.
Read more

Day 23

Image
I'm Not Reading by Jonathan Allen is about Baby Owl who wants to read his favorite book to Owly. Tiny Chick joins them and brings his cousins. That's where the fun begins. The cousins overwhelm Baby Owl. At one point in the reading, I said, "This reminds of you guys after recess." Several of my students chuckled and agreed. Next year, I am going to read this book as a way to introduce rules and procedures. It does a great job of teaching respect and turn-taking without being too preachy. I also noticed that the author has several other I'm Not... books. I have to find those. My students want to read more from Jonathan Allen.
Read more