Reading

Ideas are all around

Book Talk Tuesday: Ideas are All Around by Philip C. Stead

It’s Book Talk Tuesday! My favorite day of the week!Today I want to talk to you about:   Ideas are All Around by Philip C. Stead!   My kiddos loved this book!  They thought that the combination of illustrations and photographs was really neat!  They loved the cloud pics! The main character is an author who has to write a story, but is out of ideas, so he goes for a walk with his dog Wednesday.  They have some fun adventures, conversations, and thoughts on their walk through their neighborhood. It is a great book for talking about where ideas

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Alphabet Book Read Aloud

Once Upon an Alphabet! Another Book Talk Tuesday (with a freebie of course!)

Welcome back to another Book Talk Tuesday! This week, I am talking about an Alphabet book! Once Upon an Alphabet by Oliver Jeffers!This book is a fun way to get your kiddo writing their own alphabet stories!   I LOVE this book!  It has a short story for each letter of the alphabet! They are fun, silly, and sure to spark the interest of your students!   I have to say, I am so excited about finding book trailers on You Tube!  Isn’t that awesome? Book trailers! (Maybe I am seriously behind the times, but I love them!)   As

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Mentor Text for Making Inferences

Book Talk Tuesday: Making Inferences with Du Iz Tak by Carson Ellis

We are working on Making Inferences this week in second grade.  Making Inferences can be tough for second graders, so we practice a lot! This week we are Making Inferences with Carson Ellis’ Du Iz Tak! This beautifully illustrated book is sure to be LOVED by your class. A series of bugs (speaking bug no less) find a sprout and are curious to see what it is all about. They decide to put it to use but have to contend with a spider, a bird, and a flower.  All the while there is a caterpillar who is going through metamorphosis

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Snappsy the Alligator

Mentor Text for List Writing

This week I am talking about Snappsy the Alligator!  (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book!) by Julie Falatko. Mentor Text for List Writing Book Talk Tuesday: Snappsy the Alligator book with fun, list writing reading response! Check it out! My kiddos LOVED this book!  Poor Snappsy didn’t want to be in this book, yet and annoying narrator is following him around describing his every step!  My kiddos LOVED this book!  Poor Snappsy didn’t want to be in this book, yet an annoying narrator is following him around describing his every step! I love it that you can find some

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Read Aloud: Shy with Free Reading Response

Book Talk Tuesday: Shy with a Free Reading Response

Welcome to another Book Talk Tuesday!  I am so glad that you stopped by! This week I want to talk about Shy by Deborah Freedman.  I found this book in a list of the best books of last year by the Nerdy Book Club!   You can find their post about this lovely book HERE. So, without further ado: Oh my goodness!  This is an absolutely beautiful book!  The illustrations are gorgeous. This is a book about Shy, who is, as you can probably guess…shy. He prefers to live between the pages of a book.  His favorite books are the

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They All Saw A Cat Activity

Book Talk Tuesday: They all Saw a Cat

They All Saw A Cat Book Talk Tuesday Today I want to talk about a wonderful book called: They All Saw Cat by Brendan Wenzel.  Hang in there!  I have a little freebie for you at the end! 🙂     This lovely little book is all about perspective.  As you go through the pages, the cat doesn’t change, you just get to see the cat from the eyes of the other characters in the story. This book is a wonderful way to introduce the concept of perspective to your students.  Each character in the story who sees the cat

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Book Talk Tuesday (on Wednesday): A Unicorn Named Sparkle!

Hello again!  Today I have a fun new book to share!  A Unicorn Named Sparkle by Amy Young.  I also have a freebie Story Map to go along with the story at the end of the post! Unicorn books are very popular now a days!  This is an adorable little book about a little girl who sends off a quarter to get a unicorn that she plans to name Sparkle When her unicorn shows up, it isn’t exactly what she had in mind, but she grows to love her less than perfect unicorn friend!   This book has a lot

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read aloud for character traits

Fun Read Aloud for Character Traits

Welcome back for another Book Talk Tuesday!  This week I want to share with you an adorable book by Kate Beaton: The Princess and the Pony!       Fun Read Aloud for Character Traits! If you have not yet discovered The Princess and the Pony by Kate Beaton, you need to go out and get it RIGHT NOW!  Don’t worry…I’ll wait.   This book has it ALL!  Warriors, battle, intrigue (new square balls), cozy sweaters, and the cutest, roundest, pony (who has a bit of a farting problem).  What more could one want in a book? This is such

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Fun Christmas Read-Aloud!

I LOVE reading Christmas stories to my students!  Especiall so with this fun Christmas Read-Aloud by Jan Brett: The Animals’ Santa! Fun Christmas Read-Aloud: The Animal’s Santa! The Animals’ Santa is beautifully illustrated Christmas Story just like all of Jan Brett’s books! It is a story of Little Snow and his brother discussing the Animals’ Santa. Little Snow is not sure that he believes that there is an Animals’ Santa who brings all of the animals gifts at Christmas. My kiddos really enjoyed this story!  When we finished reading, we did a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the Animals’ Santa with

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Christmas Read Aloud: Rock Star Santa!

Christmas Read Aloud

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  So, it is time to talk about a fun Christmas Read Aloud! Book Talk Tuesday today is about a great Christmas read aloud: Rock Star Santa by Gayle C. Krause.   This is a fun rhyming book about one kid’s dream about a-rockin’ Christmas Eve concert starring Santa and his Rockin’ Reindeer!   This is a great book to talk about making predictions, endings, and even a little letter writing! I have made a fun bookmark reading response to go with this gem.  On the front, your students can create their own

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Pumpkin Math

Pumpkin Math Fun: How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

It’s that time of year again! Pumpkin Math time! This super engaging, hands-on, inquiry-based math activity is one of our favorites! I have a great book suggestion and a freebie for you! We start by doing estimates with our pumpkins:  How much does it weight?  What is its circumference?  How long is the pumpkin’s stem?  How many seeds do you think are inside? We record these on our sheets with a thin marker or crayon before we start. This helps with changing our estimates when we learn the real answer. 😉 Then, we start our pumpkin math investigations working on

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Increase Reading Engagement with Book Picnics!

I have a problem.   I am addicted to children’s books!  I love children’s books.   I believe that I have a pretty good classroom library (it wraps most of the way around my classroom).  But, with so many books, some of the best ones sometimes get put away and never get read because they aren’t as easy to get to, or not as visible as others.  So, how do I get those great books out and noticed?  Of course, I read aloud, every day, several times a day (I have a blog post about how I distribute those books

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