Week 1 The Picture Book A Day Challenge

 I am doing it again! Inspired by the #bookaday challenge and my love for picture books, I am reading at least one picture book a day for the 2021-2022 school year. I will include student reactions and conversations or comments my students make. Some people have asked in the past if I have any other activities I do with the book. For the most part, I do not. I read these books for the sake of reading them. 

Day 1 -- I use Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse as a way of calming everyone's nerves on the first day of school. Lilly is hilarious and all my students relate to her story.  We talked about good days, bad days, and in-between days. We also talked a lot about managing our emotions. It is okay to be mad. How do we handle anger at school? 

Day 2 --  I am going to try to do more with poetry this year. I want my kids to learn to love language and wordplay. Raven Howell's A Cheer For The Year is well written and has playful rhymes related to the year throughout. hey loved that the author included 4th of July. That was talked about at length. One student asked me to reread this collection. I did so happily and think I will revisit this book throughout the year. 

 

Day 3 -- Back to School With Big Foot is a class favorite. This idea is genius. As soon as I read it, students started making text-to-self comments. "Hey, I got a haircut." "I hate shopping for shoes."

Day 4 --I made a mistake. I started reading The Invisible Boy thinking it was the first book I was supposed to read in our curriculum (we use EL).  Oops. It turned up being a great mistake. My class loved this book. If you haven't read it, you should. The story is about a little boy that doesn't feel seen at school. The illustrator does an incredible job of showing this. This book was a great opportunity to talk to my class about the power of illustration. One boy said "I am never going to look at books the same again."

The Invisible Boy also brought up the topic of being left out and how to help someone who is feeling left out. I love using books like this to talk to kids about doing the right thing, rather than just telling them to do the right thing. I ask questions like "What makes you feel Invisible?" "How do you help others so that they don't feel Invisible?" Then, I use this conversation later in the school year to help kids make those connections.