The Picture Book a Day Challenge

One of my students smashed his reading goal last week. At the beginning of the year, reading intervention with him was difficult. He would get dejected, act out, and cry. He knew he couldn't read as well as the other children in class and was the kind of kid who would do whatever he could to control his own situation--even if it meant being disruptive. Yet, when I read whole group, he sat on my shoes and hung on my every word. I realized that he loved books--the funnier the better. A few months into the school year, I decided that during intervention, I would follow his lead. We echo-read his favorite read-alouds.  We reread these stories for hours. And guess what? It worked. His growth took off. Last Friday, on testing day, he started reading and I knew he was going to nail it. His fluency, expression and word attack skills all seemed to gel. When the timer went off, he looked up at me and said, "I did it. I beat my goal." My eyes filled with tears and I hugged him...

This story is clever and laugh-out-loud funny.  My students loved it and spent recess pretending to be at Villain School.

I am a huge Mem Fox fan (I have been since Tough Borris ). This story is great. It is about a mother duck who gets separated from her ducklings. It can easily be used to teach Math to youngsters (ideally before they even get to school). My students loved the simple text and picked up on the Math lesson on their own. The illustrations are adorable and add to the fun of the story.  This is a great book for schools and an even better pick for families with young children at home.

I have loved this book since forever. The simple yet powerful message of this story makes it a great pick for your classroom. 

I absolutely loved Salamander Sky and so did my students. This story is about a little girl's efforts to help baby salamanders migrate across busy streets into the safety of a pond. I love this story on so many levels. The illustrations are beautiful and the text is lyrical. My students were captivated by the story. After reading it, my students had to know if the spotted salamander lived in Michigan. So we researched and discovered that indeed, it did. (How did I ever teach before Google?) We then got into a discussion about how people can help or hurt animals.  This is so exciting because we have been writing opinion papers in class and after weeks on end of giving opinion prompts, I run a little dry on ideas. Salamander Sky inspired a whole list of issues my students were ready to write and happy to write about. We are also beginning our animal report unit soon. One of the concepts we cover is the threats animals face and how do humans impact each animal. This was ...