Category: Read Alouds (Primary)

Book of the Week: Er-lang and the Suns

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

Er-lang and the Suns, Retold by Tony Guo and Euphine Cheung

Er-lang and the Suns: A Tale from China is a text from the SFA Roots program. There should be one master copy of the Roots lesson plans in the bookroom. There are check for understanding questions on post-its throughout at least one of the three teacher copies.

This is an origin story covering how the Earth finally got reprieve from its seven suns that shone nonstop. There are plenty of other origin stories to compare and contrast with. As always, pre-read these texts before sharing them with students, as they are appropriate for different ages.

The end of the book contains a brief history of China and the Han people.

As mentioned earlier, there are three copies of this book if you want to use them as a grade-level team mentor text.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

  • Make a picture or mental image. At the end of the book, there’s a brief passage that talks about how the illustrations were designed to match the tone of the story. Ask students to pick and sketch 5-7 of the most important images that they think are critical to telling the story. To take this a step further, then have them write a brief caption for each picture. Huzzah! They’ve now also used the strategy of…
  • Retell the story. See above.
  • Compare and contrast within and between text. See above for plenty of other origin stories. Perhaps students could select their favorite and document the similarities and differences with Er-lang and the Suns.

 

 

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###

Book of the Week: Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

Red-Eyed Tree Frog, by Joy Cowley

Nic Bishop is a brilliant photographer. Joy Cowley does a nice job of using pretty basic text to create a quick narrative of a tree frog’s day. There aren’t any text features, but there is a “Did You Know?” section in the back.

There’s an !OFFICIAL! FWPS lesson plan around main idea and details included in the bag. It focuses on activating prior knowledge.

I love everything Anita Silvey does, and you should definitely check out her Red-Eyed Tree Frog essay.

If you yearn for the days of scripted minute-by-minute lesson plans, this might be right for you.

Additionally, there’s some extra content available on Houghton Mifflin’s website.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

  • Use main idea and supporting details to determine importance. As mentioned above, there’s a pre-designed FWPS lesson plan for this in the book bag. You might also talk about how nonfiction books are sometimes intended to be read out of linear order — for example, reading the Did You Know section at the end of the book first won’t spoil the story like it would if a fiction book were being read.

  • Cross checking… Do the pictures and/or words look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense? Because the comprehension lesson is about activating prior knowledge, this might be an opportunity to explain a time when cross-checking might NOT work. If a student has never seen or heard the word “katydid,” for example, no matter how many times they look at the text and picture, it won’t magically make sense.
  • Flip the sounds. There’s a point where the frog is stalked by a “hungry boa snake.” If students pronounced the word correctly on the first try, ask how they knew they didn’t need to try flipping the sound first. Explain that as they become better readers with more strategies, the slower, more cumbersome strategies like flipping the sound won’t be as critical for them on a regular basis.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###

Robot Zombie Frankenstein!

We owe our eternal gratitude to Annette Simon, who sent us a super-rad package full of Robot Zombie Frankenstein goodies! Wow! What a huge, fun surprise to come in from recess and have the contents of the envelope spill out onto my lap! That just sounded kind of sarcastic, but I’m never sarcastic in class, so it was honestly really funny. We had glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the floor and my legs.

“Thank you for bringing us the book — it was great to read!” ~Alejandra

“Thank you for the stuff that you gave us that was from the book — like the pirate stuff.” ~Vashti

We looked at all the goodies you sent us before we read the book, so we were kind of unsure what they all meant. But as we read the book, everything started to make sense, and it “fell into place,” as Arianna said.

Arianna asked if Annette Simon had written any other books, and we looked on her website, but the Seattle Public Library doesn’t have any books other than Robot Zombie Frankenstein. We are curious, though, what book will be coming soon and is to be announced.

“I was confused about the Robot Zombie Frankenstein stuff, because there was a cape / apron / dentist bib, and a whatever whatevity-do,” Anthea said.

We are writing this at the end of our school day so we are running out of time, but please know that your thoughtful package and hilarious book was great, awesome, and totally made our day! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

 

Book of the Week: Annie and the Wild Animals

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

Annie and the Wild Animals, by Jan Brett

Before you get started on anything Jan Brett related, you’ve got to stop whatever you’re doing and go straight to visit Mrs. Eltrich or Mrs. Burn. They’ve put together a pretty fabulous Jan Brett author’s study that might be useful.This book has post-its with open-ended questions attached to several pages to use during reading.

This book was originally paired with Caldecott-winning book The Big Snow, but that text hasn’t been added to the mentor text library as of this posting.

You can see Annie and the Wild Animals read aloud here:

I’m pretty impressed with the literature guide here. I honestly don’t know that there’s much I can add beyond that!

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

  • Compare and contrast within and between text. Spoiler alert! Annie’s cat has kittens. In the past, before Bob Barker’s daily reminders to spay and neuter our four-legged friends, this text might have been a great one to make predictions and confirm them at the end. Older students can discuss how the book would be different now that it’s nearly thirty years after it’s been written.
  • Infer and support with evidence. This strategy could be used regardless of whether students predicted Taffy would have kittens or not. If few or no students are familiar with the signs of a cat about to have kittens, it’s a great opportunity for a discussion of how difficult it is to infer if you don’t have much prior knowledge and how important it is to have heightened awareness of the world around us. If students DO pick up on the signs of Taffy’s pending delivery, proceed with a regular inference lesson.

  • Ample easy reading. If students have read this book (perhaps with Mrs. Eltrich or Mrs. Burn! :)), remind them that in a book as complex and detailed as Annie and the Wild Animals, there’s plenty to return to and explore, particularly if they first discovered the book a year or two ago.

  • Ask someone to define the word for you. Mrs. Eltrich has already printed out vocabulary cards for several challenging or uncommon words in the text. Talk with students about how if you know a word is particularly unusual and you don’t anticipate many will know it, you choose to give them the word ahead of time.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###

Book of the Week: The Judge

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

The Judge, by Harve Zemach

Cumulative stories are one of the six main types of predictable books, perfect for early readers. Apparently, “children get comfort from repetition,” although I can’t put my finger on the official research-y studies to back this up. This one offers some insight.

I’ve been thinking a lot about cumulative stories. Why they’re so catchy, why they’re so timeless, and why the Caldcott committees seem to ADORE them (Drummer Hoff, House in the Night). This isn’t limited to just their selections of the Caldecott medal winners, as evidenced by this week’s honor book. The Judge follows a pompous counsel as he rejects the excuses and warnings of a creature whose eyes are scary, tail is hairy, etc. etc.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###

I Want My Hat Back!

We read I Want My Hat Back today, and here were our initial thoughts:

TEAM BEAR

  •  “Bear! Cause I like being tall and strong!” ~Ivy
  • “Bear because I would be mad too. And if I were a bear, I would eat him.” ~Anthea
  • “I vote for the bear because he got mad because the rabbit took his hat.” ~Alejandra
  • “Team bear because bear wants his hat back and maybe the rabbit knew about the hat but he didn’t want to give it back to the bear.” ~Juan
  • “Team bear because they’re awesome!!! And they’re stronger and faster.” ~Vy
  • “I pick team bear because I would be mad if someone took my hat too and I would want it back.” ~Kyle
  • “I go for team bear. Why? Because they all swim to catch fish.” ~Carlos
  • “I pick team bear because the bear just wanted his hat back and because bears have claws.” ~Frankie
  • “I pick team bear because bears are funny and I like bears so much. But in the book it was funny and the rabbit was too.” ~Vashti
  • I vote for bear because he remembered about his red hat that he knew it was his, he said to the rabbit. That’s why I go for bear because he is smart.” ~Kevin
  • “I want to be on team bunny because it was so funny ’cause bunny had a cool hat. He was just standing there.” ~Jeffrey
  • “Team bear because bears are bigger and better.” ~Antonio (here he included a picture of a bear with his toothy mouth open, saying “BEARS ARE BIGGER AND BETTER”)
  • “I vote for rabbit since he could get revenge in his stomach. Also maybe since rabbits have fur, maybe bear is going to get a hairball. Or rabbit could jump out of bear’s mouth when he put him in his mouth to eat him. Also, rabbit could jump out of bear’s claws or paws. I think bear is a big old jerk because he ate the rabbit just because the rabbit took his hat. If I was bear, I would just say, ‘Can I get my hat back?’ So I’m just saying bear is a big jerk.” ~Eduard
  • Team bear because after the bear ate the rabbit the rabbit was not seen on the book.” ~Vincent

TEAM RABBIT

  • “I am team rabbit because he can get revenge in the bear’s stomach. Also he is like me in a way because he is sarcastic like me and funny. He was like, ‘What hat, I haven’t seen a hat, what are you talking about’ and bear is not that bright because he just noticed that the rabbit has his hat.” ~Thessalonia
  • Team rabbit because if the bear ate him he would go to heaven with God.” ~Xochitl
  • Team rabbit because he had the hat but he didn’t know it was bear’s — probably he found it in the floor. I don’t know why bear ate him.” ~Leonel
  • “I vote for team rabbit because he probably did not know whose hat it was and also he was trying not to let the bear know. It was like he was hiding it. I really liked the way he did that.” ~Arianna
  • I pick team rabbit because he did not even know that he was wearing the hat. Well, he did, but he tried to get away with it!” ~Savanah

You can watch the book trailer here:

Book of the Week: The Three Little Pigs

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

The Three Little Pigs, by James Marshall

I’ve had this book traveling back and forth from home and school for weeks now, and I suppose it’s high time I featured a lesson for it. Especially because my David Weisner author study has been receiving a number of hits, and because Marshall was featured multiple times in an excellent post about Brian Selznick’s recommended children’s books.

See a video version here:

If you’re looking to go old-school with your traditional stories, you might want to see the minilessons for The Three Billy Goats Gruff. You might also want to rummage around for the James Marshall version of Cinderella that should be in the SFA mentor text bag for Egyptian Cinderella.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

  • Retell the story. Students might be tempted to retell a story using their own prior knowledge. Talk about the importance of reflecting what the author wrote — yes, prior knowledge is a powerful tool for comprehension, but it’s important in a retell to share what the author wrote using proof from the text.
  • Recognize literary elements (plot). This might be a good book to open a discussion about similar plot patterns found in books. This lesson on The Rule of Three seems pretty rad.
  • Abundant easy reading. Look! It’s a new strategy! Somehow, having this as a menu item seems to validate what reading experts have been saying for a while now: it’s important for kids to read books that are at their instructional level, yes, but the majority of reading should be happening at 98-99% accuracy. Holy cow! Anyway, maybe your students are loathe to give up their favorite stories.  I know my kids can’t be pried away from Geronimo Stilton and Babymouse, and I don’t think it’s my job to do so, as long as they’re also choosing books that do challenge them.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###

Book of the Week: Antarctica

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

Antarctica, by Helen Cowcher

Narrative nonfiction following Emperor penguins and other critters through a year in Antarctica.

In honor of Pedro and Buddy’s temporary separation, I thought you might be interested in using Cowcher’s book on the southernmost continent. (Although Pedro and Buddy are African penguins, like Pierre from Pierre the Penguin, and they would probably be chilly down there without sweaters and such)

Also, there’s And Tango Makes Three.

Mrs. Burm included a pretty comprehensive social studies-link

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

  • Summarize text, include sequence of main events. The small amount of text in this book would fit on one page and could be used as a shared reading. Alternately, you could remove the text, copy all the pages, and have students put the pages in order before or after you read the book.
  • Sad penguin.

    Determine and analyze author’s purpose and support with text. I hadn’t fully pondered the deeper message of this book until I encountered GoodReads reviewer Jackie‘s comment, “The subtle message in Antarctica by Helen Cowcher comes ringing through as penguins are frightened and displaced by human machinery. Kids may not immediately pick up on the environmental message, but with a little discussion its meaning will be evident.”

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###

Book of the Week: Too Much Noise

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

Too Much Noise, by Ann McGovern (illustrated by Simms Taback)

You can take a look at this text on Google Books. A video of it is also available below.

You might recognize Taback’s art from his Caldecott-winning Joseph had a Little Overcoat, and this book would pair nicely with it. Taback seems to gravitate toward cumulative stories (see here and here), which could prompt conversations for a good genre study (I know “cumulative stories” isn’t really a genre, so please help me if you know a better label). If you DO have a cumulative story study, make sure you include class favorite Drummer Hoff!

Oooh! Or even better! You could study this book along with fantastic cumulative story The Mitten! Use any version you prefer. I like the original by Alvin Tresselt or the adaptation by Jan Brett (clicking on the afore-linked link will take you to some rad Brett-designed animal masks so you can perform the book).

Here’s a math lesson with the same title as the book, but it’s actually totally unrelated. It aligns nicely to 2nd grade standards, though, so I figured I’d pass it along.

I wonder what it would be like to use this book at the beginning of the year to prompt a conversation about appropriate levels of noise at different times in the classroom.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

  • Tune in to interesting words. In my vocabulary lessons with my students, we often talk about the idea that “interesting words” don’t necessarily need to be the longest, most unusual words, they can also be short words or any words that are extremely effective. There aren’t any particularly striking words in this text, but the repetition of phrases in the text is important. This might be a good book to connect the strategy of using interesting words to the writing strategy of varying sentence length and structure.
  • Use pictures, illustrations, and diagrams. In a primary or heavily ELL class, discuss how the pictures support students connecting the new word introduced on each page (usually an animal) with an animal addition to the house. I usually use the example of “it’s a lot harder to read the word ‘elephant’ if you’ve never seen an elephant before or heard the word out loud.”

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###

Book of the Week: There’s a Zoo in Room 22

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions. I hope you find this useful, and please leave a comment with any suggestions or additions!

There’s a Zoo in Room 22, by Judy Sierra

By this point in the year, I thought you might be getting close to exhausting your “beginning-of-the-year-school-story” collection, so here’s another one to use. This text has the added benefit of being a book of poetry, so you can spread out the poems throughout the next few weeks, or even the next few months (there are 26 poems — one for each letter of the alphabet). It’s also excellent for teachers helping students build a poetry anthology to use throughout the year.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggested lessons:

Accuracy

  • Use beginning and ending sounds. Many of the words that are the rhyming words in the poems are more than one syllable. Talk about how anticipating the word ending can cut your work in half — now you only need to decode the front part of the word.
  • Trade a word / guess a word that makes sense. This really goes along with using beginning and ending sounds, but it adds an additional challenge because most of the words you’re guessing aren’t simple rhymes, but multi-syllable words.

 

Fluency

  • Reread text. These poems don’t have the quick-hit rhyming scheme of Dr. Seuss, so it may take several readings to get the rhythm right. Include these poems in your students’ reading anthologies so they can continue to refine their oral fluency.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

###