Friendship Lessons For Back to School

Back to school time comes with a lot of anxiety for children and teachers alike.  One of the biggest concerns we have is whether or not people will like us.  We often times take for granted that everyone knows how to make friends, but this simply isn't the case.  If you scroll through the pictures below there are a ton of books with a back to school "friend" themes.  I was hoping I could find enough options that you would have something ready to go in your library.  Once you have a book for a read aloud, consider having a lesson with your class on making friends.  The anchor chart below includes touching points.  This would be a great time to teach the students about think-pair-share. You could have them think about questions, turn to their partner and get to know them.  Administration will be as pleased as punch when you show them you can teach social skills, procedures and tie them all into a standard at one time.  You are that amazing! For additional ideas, watch the video at the end!

Setting Library Procedures

Everyone loves Curious George! He's engaging and reading his book is great way to set expectations for your students or children when it comes to the classroom, home or public library.  In the book George takes a trip to the public library and learns that climbing shelves and riding carts are not the best way to behave in the library.  This picture book can be read before discussion takes place about the "do's and dont's" of the library.  I have provided an anchor chart  with touching points for my classroom library above. It's important for you to keep in mind what and how you want your library to look before you wrap up the lesson and finish up your chart.  One important point that I always make with my students is that they need to explore books that they LOVE.  No boring books allowed! The reason this is so important is because it leads to authentic reading.  If students are taught how to find books they love it's hard to get them to put the book down. Watch my video below for more ideas and standards to tie the lessons into.

Celebrating Diversity with Yoko

Hi everyone! I hope that you have been enjoying my Back To School Blog Series.  If you haven't guessed it by now, including books that represent all of my students in my classroom is very important to me.  Just scroll back through my posts to see examples.  When I'm introducing standards for the first time in class, (which happens naturally during the first 9 weeks), I try to focus on engaging books that have a more simple story line.  This way the students build their foundational knowledge of the standard without confusion or frustration.  Yoko is a great book for looking at how character's react to events and actions in a story.   The story line is relatable to students and carries a theme of empathy which is so vital to our community.  This book lends itself to teaching reading skills while also teaching a social studies or character education lesson.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

Celebrating Diversity with Amazing Grace

It is very important to children that they are represented in the classroom curriculum.  It's also important to represent quality diverse books in class.  These reasons are why Amazing Grace is so perfect for your classroom.  Every year my students fall in love with Grace, she's resilient, smart, creative and relatable.  One of my favorite parts of Amazing Grace is that it is a series that has at least another picture book and chapter book.  This is just perfect for 2nd and 3rd graders! Once the kids are hooked with Amazing Grace they love to read on their own during independent reading.  I love to teach this book with the standard -finding the story's lesson or central message.  Make sure to watch the video below for more information!

Celebrating Our Identity with The Name Jar

As someone who has a last name that no one can pronounce, I feel a deep connection with Unhei from the book "The Name Jar".  The Amazon description reads, "Being the new kid in school is hard enough, but what about when nobody can pronounce your name? Having just moved from Korea, Unhei is anxious that American kids will like her. So instead of introducing herself on the first day of school, she tells the class that she will choose a name by the following week. Her new classmates are fascinated by this no-name girl and decide to help out by filling a glass jar with names for her to pick from. But while Unhei practices being a Suzy, Laura, or Amanda, one of her classmates comes to her neighborhood and discovers her real name and its special meaning. On the day of her name choosing, the name jar has mysteriously disappeared. Encouraged by her new friends, Unhei chooses her own Korean name and helps everyone pronounce it".  This book is a wonderful way to teach children that our differences are to be celebrated and not changed.  It's also a great reminder to teachers that it is our responsibility to learn our student's names and not try to change them.

If you use this book during shared reading it's a wonderful opportunity to teach students to ask questions about key details.  We practice this a lot in the beginning of the year while the kids are mastering their reading stamina and questioning.   It's important to keep the questions simple like seen below until the students are ready to move on. As the year progresses we will add on to the questions and even learn how to ask higher order questions.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

Teamwork with It's Mine

Hi there and welcome back! It's Mine is a wonderful story about teamwork that works great for primary grades.  One lesson that is a must for every reading teacher at the beginning of the year is teaching response to reading. We want students to be able to organize their thoughts in their heads and write them out clearly in response to a particular question.   In order to do this it's important that we start with a simple story with a clear answer.  In this story the characters have a clear change in behavior from the beginning to the end.  This makes it ideal for teaching students how to write proper sentences in response to how character's react to events or change throughout the story.  You will see an example below.

Thank you so much for stopping by today! We hope to see you tomorrow.

Launching STEM with Rosie Revere & The Most Magnificent Thing

Hi and welcome back! Hopefully you have read a few posts prior to this one and are planning to teach your students how to work in cooperative groups.  Once that is established, consider launching inquiry-based science in your classroom.  What better way to launch science then to read Rosie Revere Engineer and The Most Magnificent Thing. There is a little more information about how I use the books in reading below in the video.  I plan on reading the books and comparing and contrasting them during shared reading.  Once the students are excited about engineering we will practice working in a group and creating bug homes.  Read below to see what we have planned.

Research shows us that students perform better overall in school when they take part in inquiry-based science investigations.  Inquiry-based science allows students to explore questions and problems, develop explanations, elaborate on findings and concepts and assess their understanding.  To launch inquiry based science in younger grades consider starting with a simple yet engaging question.  Your question must have a measurable outcome.  For this project consider this question:  Do bugs prefer to live in hard or soft materials?  It's a simple question with a measurable outcome that can spark a number of follow up inquiries.  

You can use whatever materials you have on hand.  Here students have the choice between cups, trays, straws, pom poms, pipe cleaners and plastic tubes.  I also considered using paper tubes, paper egg trays, and strings, but wanted to keep it simple.

Students will work with their group to develop a hypothesis.  Once they have their hypothesis they will create homes with only one variable.  So if they want to put straws in a cup for hard materials, then they would put a soft material like pom poms in a cup. Once they build the homes they put them outside in a safe place.

You will then decide how long the investigation will last.  One suggestion would be to do this investigation on two Mondays, but record data every day in between during transitions.  Students will observe the homes at predetermined days and record their findings in their science logs.  When the investigation is over they will make a conclusion and then you can determine if they will come up with another investigation based on the first or if you will move on to another topic.  Before you move on, make sure students have plenty of opportunities to explain the findings of the investigation.