Pocket Tales Blog

Creating Books Huge Motivator For Reading

pockettales — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:31:02 -0400

There was a great article in The Guardian, the other day, where a Kindergarten student had been motivated to read through the creation of her own book she had written. While she was helped by her teacher, the pictures and story were from her own imagination. The teacher, Anatol Young, explains that

My action plan from 2011 was to promote literacy among my students and the community at large. I feel that if [students] can read they can do anything else. Reading is key. So when I heard little Hunae telling her story during story time I was intrigued by her twist on the classical ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ tale. I knew I had to encourage her, so her teacher and I got together to make it into a book. It was a great project and Hunae has a sense of pride that will motivate her even more I feel.

In my own class, I have seen the powerful motivation that creating an actual physical book can make for a child. As the teacher states,

Caesar said providing a means for students to see their work physically was an incentive for students to continue to excel. She hoped that Hunae keeps her book for life and is able to look back at it and see what she accomplished at such a young age, and be proud of it.

In my own class, each year we have had the students creating books as part of our Poetry Unit. As the students work through the unit, they create poems on a variety of topics. At the end of the unit, students pick their three favorite poems to be included in a class book. At that point, the books are typed into a word document, we add pictures and upload it through the site, Lulu.com. Lulu takes our digital document and creates a book which they then send back to us. We get to choose the cover and style of the book which is a lot of fun. Students got to vote on which cover they wanted and the title for the book. Each student got to have their own book with extra copies ordered to sell to help offset the cost of the books. We also put a copy of the book in the library for others to see. What I noticed however was that the books were a huge motivator for students. They loved to read their writing and the fact that it looked so professional was very impressive to the children. They also were hugely motivated to write for something they knew were going to have a larger, peer based audience.

While the focus was writing, there were huge benefits for the reading side. Students read more poetry for ideas and style, they talked more about poetry concepts and the poems they read and students took the concepts and used them in their writing. The books were very successful and they were great momentos of their year in Grade 3. I still have students talking about it and the books in the library are still signed out long after they were completed. While the cost can be high (especially with shipping), having something that was well made and looked professional really gave the students to motivation to succeed in their reading and writing.

If you are looking for some ways to get started, check out these sites!

Lulu.com - This is the site I have used before. The site guides you through the whole process of building your book, gives you lots of choices and is easy to use. It may be a little more expensive with shipping but the books look great at the end.
StudentTreasures.com - This site has several programs available for schools and classes wanting to create books. The site has lots of ideas, lesson plans and resources for teachers to use as well. The site describes their books as

Our 8.5” x 11” full-color book is hardbound under tough lamination and is available in both landscape and portrait format. All pages are of a quality long-life paper. Each book has the author’s name and book title on the spine and features a dedication and title page. We stand by our product 100% and know the quality is unmatched. These beautiful books make favorite reading selections because students love to read books created by their peers. You’ll improve reading skills and promote a life-long love of books. Parents are always impressed with the books their children create through Nationwide Learning student publishing programs. The books make a perfect enhancement to Parents’ night, open house, and parent/teacher conferences. Or celebrate with an Author’s Tea and book signing.

Storybird.com - This is one of my favorite sites to use. The site uses professionally created illustrations to help motivate students and create ideas for stories. The stories can be used online and embedded on blogs and sites to view online or they can, for a cost be created as actual keepsake books. The site has programs available to create books for fundraisers and a wonderful backend to the site that makes it easy for teachers to work through the writing process and keep track of student process.

Whatever you decide, using writing as a motivator for increasing the desire for reading can be very powerful for students. Check out these sites and ideas to get going on your own programs!

Empowering Students to Improve Reading Fluency

pockettales — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:58:01 -0400

Teaching reading fluency can be a difficult thing for students to understand. As you probably know, reading fluency is the combination of speed and expression in the reading of a book, passage or other reading material. The faster or more fluently a student reads the better comprehension a student usually has. Their brain as gained the capacity to recognize words quickly, allowing it to focus more attention on the meaning behind the words, phrases, action, etc. A student with poor reading fluency tends to read very choppily and spends a lot of their time and attention on deciphering the words they encounter. By the time they have reached the end of the reading text, the students rarely remembers what they have read in terms of the meaning.

Now, it’s one thing to say that a student reads to slowly and with a great deal of choppiness. It’s another thing to help students understand what that means.

Keith, over at the Ed Tech Ideas blog, has a great idea and resources to help with this. He suggests having students use Audacity to record their reading. Using a hand-out, students then listen to themselves and fill in a self-reflection page to help them evaluate their reading. As Keith did this activity, the students began to understand their reading in a variety of ways as he states below:

Some things the students found out about their reading fluency from this activity were:

Pace – some found they read too fast or too slow

Expression – hearing themselves enabled them to decide whether or not their expression conveyed meaning

Punctuation Signals – a lot of students forget to pause at comas and periods

Voice Inflection – when reading narration or dialogue, it’s often difficult for students to change their voice. When they hear themselves reading, they really pick up on this.

It’s a great post, and he even includes the materials he uses including the worksheet and the tutorials for using Audacity.

Though he mentions that you can use any variety of personal recorders to record the voices besides Audacity, which can be a bit cumbersome, I would suggest using Vocaroo.

Vocaroo is a very simple, easy to use website which does records your voice. The interface is so simple, any student can use it. Once the voice is recorded, you have the option to save it, email it or embed it. Students can even do the assignment from home and email it to you! I would suggest this before trying something like Audacity just to keep the technical aspects from hindering lesson.

5 Resources for the Poetry Teacher

pockettales — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:40:47 -0400

I love to read and do poetry with my students. It is so easy to adapt to any level and so many things that you can do with it. I like to do my poetry unit in March with the NBA tournament in full swing. We have our own mock tournament, where students pick poems to practice and read to the class. The class gets to vote on the poems and we display the winners on our own tournament bracket on the bulletin board. We also create our own poetry books, which we then publish through lulu.com. It makes an amazing keepsake for the students. We also donate one to the school library and the students love to sign them out year after year.

Anyway, I thought I would share some of the resources I have collected for poetry. Here are 5 of my poetry resources I use:

1) Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk: This is more a reminder of a good idea than an actual useful site. The site describes a contest where students find pieces of sidewalk and write about them using the text stamped on the sidewalk, details on the sidewalk or the location of that particular sidewalk. There are examples of past winners and the winners got to have their poems stamped onto pieces of sidewalk. I like this idea and have adapted it to just have students take pieces of poetry they have written, go out on a nice sunny day and write their poetry on a piece of sidewalk. We like to make a bit of a walk out of it and go down to one of our busier streets and just have some adding some creativity to an otherwise drab sidewalk.

2) Ode to Poetry: This site has lots of great resources for integrating poetry with technology. There are tons of resources with templates for writing poems, magnetic poetry, poetry generators and more.

3) Giggle Poetry: A great resource for elementary teachers, this site has tons of great poems, resources and ideas for writing poems that tickle the funny bone. It also has lots of great choral poetry resources. This site, A Poem For Three Voices, also has a really neat example of a poem for three voices which we have done to great effect.

4) Teachers Domain: Teachers Domain is a fantastic resource for lots of things but they also have a great poetry section with videos, lessons and resources spanning a variety of poetic styles. The site is free to register and pulls in clips from PBS to augment the resources available.

5) Creating Poems with Animoto: I love Animoto. It is a great resource for creating easy but amazing looking videos using still photos and music. The Animoto tool does all the rest of the work for you with the editing and blending of images and music together. This site illustrates and explains a way to write poetry using Animoto to make it more powerful and dynamic.

These are just a few of the resources I have used and collected over time that I enjoy using and adapting for my group. If there are any great resources you use for poetry, we would love to hear about them.

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Death Comes Knocking....

pockettales — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:53:08 -0400

As you may know (unless you are living under a rock) the first book of The Hunger Games trilogy is being released this weekend. Having read the books about a year ago, I am excited to see what the movie brings to the storytelling and, from what I have read already, I don’t think I will be disappointed.

However, today I had a strange confluence of things happen. At the same time as I was reading a review of The Hunger Games, I happened to also read an article about the anniversary of the Titanic.

Now, I am sure you are wondering what brings those diaparate things together. The interesting thing is that they both talked about the same topic; how we deal with and teach on the topic of death today, whether it is at school or at home.

To provide some context, the author of the article reviewing The Hunger Games stated the usual critiques about camera angles, actors, etc. They captured the usual events in their critic’s eye But the reviewer then stepped outside the usual confines of the format and formed a thought that I hoped made other readers take pause, namely that,

“The audience at Monday’s packed preview of The Hunger Games came out juiced and happy, ready to spread the good word, while all I could think was, They’ve just seen a movie in which twenty-plus kids are murdered. Why aren’t they devastated? If the filmmakers had done their job with any courage, the audience would have been both juiced and devastated.”

At the same time, the article dealing with the anniversary of the Titanic asked, how do we balance “potentially scary details with more palatable, inspirational fare”?

How do we deal with the death aspect with children? We have two very real depictions of death; one fictionalized but very, very real and one historical and fascinating in it’s own gruesome way.

Before going further, I have to say that I loved the books in The Hunger Games Trilogy. They were so well written and, despite the content, evoked a very real desire to see the outcome. You were mentally a part of the action, cheering for Katniss and Peeta, sad when other likeable characters died but realizing that that meant one less person fighting for a spot. You were drawn in to the situations and characters in a way that hasn’t happened since the Harry Potter series. But in those books, you knew that the people dying were either the bad guys or people dying to destroy evil. The Hunger Games does not really have that. While there are some more unlikable characters in the Games themselves, many of the contestants are not inherently good or evil. They are there, like the others, because of the circumstance.

I also had a huge interest in the Titanic, from the time I discovered that my birthday shared the same anniversary as the actual sinking. I read books, found images, built models and this was all before the actual site of the sinking and wreckage was found. I knew all about the bodies floating in the water slowly dying of hyperthermia (I mean, I lived next to the Atlantic. Ever tried swimming there?).

However, being a teacher now, this question of how to approach this topic, makes me take pause. It’s a question that every teacher has to answer. In fact, my teaching partner and I had this very conversation when reading “The Series of Unfortunate Events” series to the students. The students loved it but my partner had concerns over the cavalier nature of death and murder in the stories while I thought that students were already well acclimatized and saw much worse.

Which brings us to the crux of the problem: Do we gloss over death in literature, hiding the reality of it, in the hopes that we protect our children from harsh realities or do we bring it out in the open, hoping that as teachers we can bring a more rounded perspective to the depictions of death in literature?

The thing is, death has always been a part of the lives of children. In the past, children were constantly surrounded by the horrors of death, whether it was with the farm animals or the diseases we take for granted today but had such horrific effects on the people with no access to our modern scientific knowledge. People constantly got hurt in minor ways but ended up dying from infections treatable today. Diseases like tuberculosis, smallpox or whooping cough caught even the most healthy in it’s clutches. Death was not something hidden or uncommon for children.

Neither to the children of today though, in many ways, it is more deceptive and alarming in how it is presented to children. The modern child is exposed to probably more gruesome death like caricatures than ever in previous generations. While highly fictionalized, it is still very real and in it’s fictionalization, maybe made too real in it’s attempt to sensationalize death. Coming alongside that, is the appearance, from the first days of video games, of the un-death death. No matter how many times, Mario walks into that turtle, he always comes back to life. The shoot-em up, shoot everything in sight stylings of Grand Theft Auto has left our youth with a very distorted view of death as something that is not really real. They have become acclimatized to it in way that has deadened their senses to the true emotions and realities surrounding death and it’s actual effects to the people surrounding that death.

As the movie reviewer bemoans,

“But where is the pervasive, lingering sense of loss? Where is the horror? Maybe the true horror is how easily the movie goes down.”

So, what do we as teachers do?

As I look at the kids in my class this year and their smirking attitudes towards someone being hurt and hear their misunderstanding of the full impact of what death actually means with their understated cries of, “That’s harsh”, it makes me sadly realize that what the youth of today may really need is more connection to death. That is, an arena where the concepts and situations involving death are brought out and discussed in the context of teaching life lessons. Maybe the classroom is the only place where these real discussions will happen. Maybe the bodies floating in the frigid waters of the Atlantic are important images. Maybe the atrocities of the Holocaust are important ideas that our students need to bring a truer understanding of the sacrifices, the pain and the mistakes our human race have made in the pursuit of knowledge, power, greed, and misunderstanding. How can we hide the things that have been so painfully gained? Do we continue to let movies, tv shows and video games teach our students about death?

Maybe Grade 1 is too young to bring full light to these concepts but certainly, I don’t think that we do our students any service in glossing over things so we don’t make them cry.

Two things brought this to light for me. First was our Annual Terry Fox Day Run. Terry Fox, for those who don’t know him, fought cancer twice to run across Canada raising money and awareness for Cancer research and those suffering and dying from cancer including young children. As is usual, most students don’t have a clue as to who Terry Fox is and why we are spending part of the day running around the track in his name. They usually see it as some free time to run around. However, the last couple of years, I have shown a really honest, emotionally compelling video on the life of Terry Fox. And I usually have children, including this past year, who are crying at the end (much like their teacher). Before you state how awful that is, making children cry, let me state that since I have shown that video prior to running, the students get it. They understand why this is important, they understand the sacrifice he made and the pain he went through to help others. They emphasize and they run with a different spirit than the other students.

The other thing is our annual Remembrance Day, which is particularly important since the passing of my Grandfather. My grandfather fought in WWII as an airplane mechanic. He never killed anyone or actually participated in the actual fighting, but, despite all my questions and queries, he still never told me a word about what it was like. When pressed, all he would tell me was that it was too sad for me and he didn’t want me to hear those sad details. To think what it was like for an airplane mechanic in England to not want to talk about the war because it was still too painful for him. How do we get our children to understand that type of pain, loss and desire to still sacrifice to protect countries and lives if we gloss over these types of remembrances.

If we do that, all our children have to pin their experiences with death to are Grand Theft Auto and C.S.I.

What do you think? How do you deal with the topic of death in literature or otherwise in your class?

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Five Questions for . . . Oliver Jeffers

pockettales — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:36:00 -0400

Pockettales had the opportunity recently to catch up with renowned children’s author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers and ask him some questions about his writing process.

Oliver Jeffers has written a number of children’s books including Lost and Found, Up and Down, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, Heart and the Bottle, How to Catch a Star and The Great Paper Caper. His story, Lost and Found was recently adapted as an animated film in 2008 winning the BAFTA award for short film. His most recent book, Stuck in a Tree, tells the story of a boy who loses his kite in a tree and goes through incredible lengths to get it out of the tree.

We asked Mr. Jeffers five questions about his writing, illustrations and his favorite books.

Pockettales: What led you to become a children’s book author?

Jeffers: I always enjoyed drawing and writing, and I have collected children’s books my whole life, so at university it occurred to me I could pair what I loved doing to make my own picture books.

Pockettales: What inspires you as you look for new ideas for your stories?

Jeffers: Everything and everyone around me, real life events, people and places. I always carry my sketchbook to be sure I remember any ideas I have.

My recent book ‘Stuck’ was inspired by a true story.

Pockettales: What is easiest/hardest part of the creation process for you?

Jeffers: I’d say the easiest part is when I get to knock off early and go out and its also the hardest part, disciplining myself and being my own boss.

Pockettales: Do you create the pictures for your books first or do you write the story out?

Jeffers: They happen at the same time, and I don’t mean I have a pencil in both hands! I mean I think visually and make the words and pictures as I go.

Pockettales: Who is your favorite children’s lit author?

Jeffers: Tomi Ungerer, Roald Dahl, Eric Carle and Maurice Sendak but to name a few.

Fun Read-Aloud Resource

pockettales — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:03:48 -0500

With Oscar buzz in the air, I thought it would be fun to highlight a really neat resource I have used in the classroom in the past but had forgotten about. As I was searching through my resources, I stumbled across this gem of a site.

Storyline Online is an effort by the ScreenActor’s guild where well known artists and actors read children’s stories. Choosing one of the stories will provide students with a video of the actor reading the story with closeups of the book illustrations intersperse. The videos are well done with background music. As they are mostly actors, the stories are read with great expression. While there are not a whole lot of stories, the stories chosen are very good choices and the selection of stories are being added to with Betty White the most recent of contributors.

All in all, it’s a fun site with several well know actors (maybe more recognizable to adults with the exception of Haylie Duff perhaps) and well done. The site also supports teachers with lesson plans and support materials to go with each story.

Visit Storyline Online!

Should Children Be Forced to Read the Classics?

pockettales — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:04:50 -0500

I love Anne of Green Gables. The book is a classic and always brings a smile to my face listening to Anne ramble and tears to my eyes when the end draws near. My wife and I were watching the movie version and, afterwards, my wife turned to me and said that I should read the book to the class. Which made me think,

Is this a book that I would read to my class in today’s day and age? Would they actually be interested?

Should we force children to read/listen/work through classic literature as part of the school day, whether as a read-aloud or book study?

So, first of all, I guess the first part of this would be to ask what we mean by the classics?

For children’s literature, my idea of the classics include books like The Secret Garden, Treasure Island, Anne of Green Gables, The Phantom Tollbooth and others along those veins published 20 years ago and prior. Wikipedia has a good list of books from the 18th, 19th and 20th century, which lists books that are still used in schools. I myself have read Little House in the Big Woods to my class, usually at the beginning of the year or for a pioneer. And while I love the book, I find that I have to do a lot of editing as the students start to lose focus in the longer, more drawn out detailed parts.

So do we continue to try and read this books to children?

The one side of the issue would say, “Yes”. That children need to be exposed to books that are considered high-quality narratives that have defined literature; that these books give them access to words that people don’t use in everyday speech, exposes them to proper sentence structure and correct grammer. The writing is more detailed and strengthens reading comprehension, stimulates thinkings, evokes ideas, creates mental images and engages the emotions. They would also say classic literature has endured over time for a good reason, has universal meaning and explores the human condition in ways that Spongebob Squarepants does not. In fact, they would point out the proliferation of books sold by groups like Scholastics which seem to focus on selling brands and series to the detriment of good literature, as speaking to their argument. These days kids are so immersed in videos and flashes of information that unless you are reading longer, more descriptive passages, they are going to have a much harder time understanding what they read and hear in school.

The other side would say that a lot of these classics perpetuate values and ideas that are outdated. These books contain too much detail and outdated verbiage that drive kids away because they don’t understand or get lost in the expansive illustrative details. How do we maintain a child’s interest in a story that has no relevance to the 21st century child? More modern books speak more to the angst and lives of the modern child with situations they are more likely to relate to. In speaking about a modern day authors effect on students, one teacher writes, in discussing the works of Walter Dean Myers, “Of course they loved Meyers - at night, they heard the gunshots he wrote about. They told me so when I asked about homework. On weekends, some of them visited brothers or cousins on Rikers. Doritos were breakfast. And, often dinner.”

These modern day situations are what students relate to. It is part of their world now and not unattached from their realities like the classics tend to be. Afterall, proponents for not having children forced to read the classics would say, shouldn’t we encourage children to read what excites and interests them? Shouldn’t we foster a love for reading? We should be pushing young readers to try new genres, to explore a variety of authors. To use their imaginations to build worlds in their minds. Not stunting their comfort in reading through literary texts that might not be relatable to them yet. Do we chance having children driven away from a love of reading because we force on them books that we think are good for them?

I would say that I am in the second camp in many ways. I believe that we need to find the modern day classics and bring those to our children and students. We need to have literature available that will excite, captivate and encourage children to want to explore more. And in those explorations, if they come across “The Hobbit”, they may discover that they love the language and the ideas that come through. I would say good for them. Given a choice between reading “Treasure Island” or “Holes”, however, I know that my students are going to enjoy “Holes” more. While “Treasure Island” may be a classic and written as a boy’s adventure book, “Holes” brings in situations and characters that children can relate to and understand. I am not saying that children should never read the classics but maybe, as a lot of adults do, they will discover them later in life and be more rewarded through a better understanding of life and the context these great classics live in.

So, while we may long to have the literature we grew up and loved brought to another generation, maybe those are longings from behind rose-tinted glasses. Teaching has always been a balance between what we want to do and what is good for our children. While I would love to draw them away from, and often tear my hair out at the books I find for sale in the Scholastics Book Club forms, the fact is, these books get my kids reading. It is what interests them. It is what they pick up. Choosing books for my class needs to take this into consideration. So I will continue to hunt for those modern classics to use in the class for book studies and read-alouds that are engaging and relevant but also make students realize that there are more things out there than the Captain Underpants/Squarebob genre of books that are placed prominently in front of children’s eyes.

What do you think? Are there Classic books that you have found kids love? How do you make it engaging for them?

Reading for Life: Video Resources for Parents on Raising Readers

pockettales — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:05:00 -0500

As the Pockettales team continues building out cool new features and improvements in our website (btw, more new cool features are on the way!), we occasionally, come across some interesting resources for parents and educators.

Reading is probably one of the toughest areas to teach and definitely something that parents struggle with at home in knowing how to support their children. While parents and teachers can usually force children to read, what we want is for our children to have a love for reading; that with all the distractions in the world around us, our children will discover the joy, thrill and fulfillment that a beautiful and well written book brings to them. The other area of difficulty for parents is navigating the world of language terms they often hear when meeting with their child’s teacher. As the teacher explains the development of the language skills their child is gaining or having difficulty with attaining, parents can often get lost in all the terminology along with what to do with that information once they get home.

That’s why this free video series we discovered in our travels through cyberspace, is a nice introduction and resource for parents. Created by the Literacy Center at the Northern Illinois University, the videos include helpful information on topics including developing a love of reading, building reading habits, comprehension of fiction and non-fiction texts, phonemic awareness, and comprehension strategies. You can check out the video below and click on the link to view the other resources on their Youtube channel.

The link to the rest of the videos can be found here.

How do you encourage reading at home? Share your tips and ideas here!

Enhanced Books for the Ipad Kid

pockettales — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:40:45 -0500

More and more, kids are using digital platforms like the ipad for reading. With recent studies showing that kids prefer digital e-books with enhanced content over regular paper editions and comprehension levels remaining similar for both digital and print copies, enhanced books are going to become increasingly popular. While some critics state that,

the level of recall actually was less when comparing an enhanced ebook to a standard digital edition” and that “the culprit seemed to be too much focus on enjoying what the screen could do rather than the material itself

there is no doubt that enhanced books are engaging and fun forms of literature that take advantage of new technologies and new ways to bring stories to life (For more on the debate, check out the articles, “Digital Media Brings the Reader into the Book” and “Are Children’s E-books Really Terrible For Your Children”).

My own children, ages 3 and 1, both love the Dr. Seuss books available on the ipad. Not only can they have the books read to them and follow along but they can also touch objects on the screen and have the app say what those objects are. The text is highlighted as it is read so children and see and hear the words and they are both very engaged. Of course, we don’t use the apps exclusively and we provide tons of great print books for our children which they also love. We believe it is always about moderation and allowing them to enjoy the fun of the apps but also knowing that the act of reading print books to our children is also an important bonding experience that an app just cannot give.

Regardless, there are some great apps out there. The blog, Digital Media Diet, has a great post on 25 Essential Children’s Book Apps, where the author has,

whittled down my favorites to just 25 apps I would recommend for a well-rounded collection. This list represents just 10% of the 250 books reviewed on our site (and includes insights from previewing over 1000 book apps overall).

Our Top 25 Children’s Book Apps:

Essential Fairy Tales & Nursery Rhymes:

The Three Little Pigs - Nosy Crow Interactive Storybook

Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime

Cinderella - A PicPocket Book

Extra Special ‘Wow’ Factor:

Teddy’s Day

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

The Penelope Rose

Great Enhanced Storytelling:

Fierce Grey Mouse

Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really BIG Adventure

A Fine Musician

Digital Classics:

The Cat and The Hat – Dr. Seuss

PopOut! The Tale of Peter Rabbit

The Monster at the end of this Book

For the Very Young:

Scruffy Kitty

The Going to Bed Book

Pat the Bunny

A Present for Milo

For Older Kids:

Treasure Kai and the lost gold of shark island

Be Confident in who you are: a middle school confidential graphic novel

Trans-Media Chart Toppers:

Toy Story Read-Along

Angelina Ballerina’s New Ballet Teacher

Bedtime Favorites:

The Wrong Side of the Bed

Nighty Night!

Too Unique to Miss:

Bartleby’s Book of Buttons Vol. 1: The Far Away Island

The Strange & Wonderful World of Ants

Lazy Larry Lizard

Another great site to find Digital E-books is Digital Storytime. The site lists e-books that are available on the ipad and reviews them so you can get a good idea of what the story is about and about how the interactive elements work.

Whatever you decide about digital e-books, there is no doubt that there are going to be more and more published as publishers jump on the digital bandwagon.

What do you think about digital e-books for children? What are some of your favorites?

New Student Profile Page = More New Features Coming!

pockettales — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:35:26 -0500

As we continue to build out new features for Pockettales, we want to share with you some of the great changes and additions we have in development.

A few posts ago, we shared a new feature we are working on that we’re really excited about. We know that the teacher dashboard is going to be a great addition for teachers in helping them make better decisions for their reading programs.

Today we want to share with you another exciting part of the teacher dashboard; the Student Profile page. Below is a picture showing details on what that will look like.

The Student Profile page is a fantastic way for teachers to get a closer look at an individual student and what they are accomplishing. Unlike the main teacher dashboard page, which gives you a larger overview of everything happening, the Student Profile page will allow you to zoom in and focus on an individual student and what is happening as they use the tools within Pockettales.

Just as our education systems are beginning to change their philosophy from whole class instruction to more individualized programs, we think that both the teacher dashboard and the new Student Profile area will help teachers to better individualize their students reading program. Teachers can see exactly what reading is happening and tailer their programs to fit the needs of all their students.

Choosing "Just Right" Books

pockettales — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:04:54 -0500

One of the more difficult things in supporting and encouraging your child’s reading, is knowing the right kinds of books to purchase or borrow that fit with your child’s current reading level.

There are many things that can make it difficult or that you need to think about when choosing appropriate books for your child. These can include:

Finding a book that matches or engages your child’s ever changing interests;
Finding a book that is at their level (more about this in a minute)
Finding a book that appropriate, in that it fits within the context and values of your family

I wanted to expand on the second point as that can be a tricky area for parents. As we choose books for children, we of course want to allow children to have choice as that gives them ownership. However, we also want to ensure that children are reading books at their appropriate level to build reading skills and growth. A student in Grade 6 reading at a Grade 6 level but choosing books that are more intended for a grade 3 students because they are easier, is not providing enough of a challenge. Children also need to be reading books that are at or even slightly ahead of them to build vocabulary, as well as strength in comprehension and reading fluency. I am not saying that everything has to be chosen to challenge them. I myself like to read some YA materials, not only to keep up to date but also for enjoyment. However, if children are always reading books below their level, they are not building the skills they need as they move up through the grades.

I recently came across a couple of resources that I thought would be great for parents and maybe even teachers as they look at supporting their children as readers. The first is an article from the Royal Gazette Online. The author, Darnell Wynn, states that,

Parents want their children to read well and independently for enjoyment. Research has shown that children who read generously develop more expansive vocabularies and achieve higher levels of reading and writing development. Reading daily at home is beneficial for children to learn new vocabulary and information, increase speed and fluency, improve comprehension, experience different authors’ writing styles and ultimately develop a greater interest and love of reading and writing.

How can parents choose ‘just right’ books for their children to support reading and writing development?
‘Just right’ books means your child:
l Is interested in the book
l Can read and figure out almost all of the words
l Understands what he or she is reading and can tell you about the story
l Can read fairly smoothly

Noted educator and author Regie Routman recommends the five-finger rule in selecting the ‘just right’ book for your child. She suggests as your child reads, have him or her count on one hand any unknown words. If there are five or more different unknown words on a full page, the book is too hard for your child to read alone. However, you could read the book aloud to your child. Older children can read several pages before deciding whether a book is too hard. Ms Routman notes that sometimes a book that may initially seem too hard is ‘just right’ once the child has read enough for meaning to ‘kick’ in.

Ultimately, parents should make reading fun for their children. In addition to selecting ‘just right’ books, parents should never tie their opinion of their child to his reading ability by communicating that through attitudes and behaviours. Parents should not push their child to read at higher levels at the sacrifice of understanding. The best way to make reading fun is through conversation about what is being read.

Options for parents looking for ways to support a child’s reading can include scanning stories ahead for difficult or unusual vocabulary and going over these words in advance. Allow your child to read through a story silently before reading aloud (especially if your child is self-conscious about reading aloud). Alternatively, a parent can first read the story aloud and discuss the story content. Parents can add variety to the reading sessions by taking turns with the reading by sharing lines or pages. Read story beginnings aloud to your child to hook interest then let your child finish the story independently. If a story includes dialogue, assume the role of one of the characters and read using different voices, accents and inflections.
When helping your child to understand and respond to stories, think about ways to get your child involved. For example, if the story takes place in an unfamiliar place, use an atlas to locate the place and share as much as you can to generate interest and knowledge about the location of the story.
After reading the first few pages or chapters, stop and talk about the main character in the story and discuss possible events and endings that might occur. Connect the character to your life.

While the reading is progressing, check in to see how the character’s situation is progressing and how your child is reacting to the developments in the story. Have your child read sections aloud that she finds particularly interesting or confusing. You can give your child sticky notes to mark special pages for further discussion.

After the reading, discuss personal reactions to the story with your child. What was liked or disliked and were there any lessons learned?
There may be an opportunity for a follow-up to the story and this can be done in art form, writing, drama or reading another book by the same author or similar genre. The possibilities are there to explore.
Choosing ‘just right’ books and knowing how to engage with your child as a reader and as a supporter of reading is the best way to instill a love of reading and life-long desire to read. Our children learn to value reading when it is a shared and supportive home activity with adults who actively engage with books.

Link

The Reading Rocket site has another way to think about helping your child choose the appropriate books for their level: How can parents help their children find books that are not “too hard” and not “too easy” but instead are “just right”? Here’s some advice.

Five finger rule

Choose a book that you think you will enjoy.
Read the second page.
Hold up a finger for each word you are not sure of, or do not know.
If there are five or more words you did not know, you should choose an easier book.

Still think it may not be too difficult? Use the five finger rule on two more pages.

Choose a book that is a good fit for you!

Read two or three pages and ask yourself these questions:

Will it be an easy, fun book to read?

Do I understand what I am reading?
Do I know almost every word?
When I read it aloud, can I read it smoothly?
Do I think the topic will interest me?

If most of your answers were “yes”, this will be an easy book to read independently by yourself.

Will this book be too hard for me?

Are there five or more words on a page that I don’t know, or am unsure of?
Is this book confusing and hard to understand by myself?
When I read it aloud, does it sound choppy and slow?

If most of your answers were “yes,” this book is too hard. You should wait awhile before you read this book. Give the book another try later, or ask an adult to read the book to you.

Tips on reading with your child

When they can’t read the word, say…

Can you sound it out?
Fingertap it.
Can you think of the word or movement that helps you remember that vowel sound?
What is the first and last sound? What word would make sense?
Does it have a pattern that you have seen in other words? (ex-an, ack)
How does the word begin?
You said_______. Does that make sense?
What word would make sense that would start with these sounds?
Put your finger under the word as you say it.

When they want to read a book that is too hard, say…

Let’s read it together.
This is a book you will enjoy more if you save it until you are older — or later in the year.
[Be honest!] When people read books that are too hard for them, they often skip important parts. You will have more fun with this book if you wait until you can read it easily.

I hope that that gives some good guides to helping you with choosing good books. Your child’s teacher or your local community librarian can also give you some good suggestions on books to share with your child. They have had many years of guiding students to good books and are excellent resources.

Coming Feature Announcement: Teacher Dashboards

pockettales — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:35:05 -0500

As hinted at, Pockettales has been thinking up some great additions to the Pockettales site to include more functionality and tools for teachers. As you can see below, we are putting the finishing touches on a new teacher’s dashboard.

While our vision is to make Pockettales a great way for students to share and be introduced to great books, we also feel that there is a great opportunity to get real-time data into the hands of teachers to help them make better decisions in planning, maintaining and adjusting their reading programs to be more individualized to the needs of their students.

On the dashboard, you can see several areas to allow teachers to manage what is happening as students use Pockettales. You can use the dashboard to

track daily, weekly, all time usage and statistics,
see daily newsfeeds of what is happening as your students use the site,
see the reading levels of books your students are reading either individually or as a class.
quickly see the most popular books being read
Quickly filter data
And much more!

This is a really exciting part of the Pockettales site and one that we think will be very popular with teachers.

What do you think? What do you like about the new teacher dashboard? Is there anything you would like to see?

Happy New Years From Pockettales

pockettales — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:05 -0500

Everyone here at Pockettales would like to wish you and your loved ones a Happy and Safe New Years!

We’re looking forward to big things in the New Year so keep coming back and tell your friends about us!

Above all, keep reading and sharing great books!

We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. - B. F. Skinner

Weekend Fun: Cooking with Children's Literature

pockettales — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:00:06 -0500

So, I was organizing my kitchen cupboard to make room for the three new Jamie Oliver books I received for Christmas (and boy, does he have a lot of cookbooks), when I came across this delightful book by Liz Franklin called Cooking Italian with Kids.

While it’s a little old for my children, it got me wondering if there was a way to combine favorite children’s literature books with some great cooking experiences in the kitchen. Combining books with food is always fun. Getting to make the food is even more fun (Though it can get messy. Our apologies in advance!).

Some of the books have some very obvious food elements that you can do as a snack to go along with the book. You can either read the story first, point out the foods that are mentioned, then make the snack or make the snack as an introductory activity, then eat it as you read the book. So taking a look around Google, I came up with some great ways to combine children’s literature with some cooking ideas:

1. Chocolate Chip cookies with If You Give A Mouse A Cookie: this is a great series of books with a progressive story line which circles back to the beginning by the end of thestory. Kids love the silly things that the animals do and the illustrations are very nicely done. There are a few books in the series that involve food but chocolate chip cookies are lots of fun for kids to make and taste great.

2. Pancakes with Curious George Makes Pancakes: While Curious George oftentimes elicit expressions of disbelief (and why exactly does the Man with the Yellow Hat keeping leaving that monkey by himself?), children love how Georgegets to do all the things that they don’t get to do but wish they could. In this case, they can make pancakes. The nice thing is that they are not difficult to make. If you want to be even more experimental, try sticking bamboo skewers or popsicle sticks in them as they are cooking to make pancakes on a stick.

3. Strawberry Shortcake with Cook-A-Doodle-Do: a favorite dessert of mine (being a good Nova Scotian boy!), this is a fun story to read. Rooster—rebuffed by Dog, Cat, and Goose just like his Granny was—finds companionship in the kitchen with Turtle, Iguana, and Potbellied Pig. As Turtle reads the recipe aloud, Iguana continuously confuses the instructions to great comedic effect. Scattered through the story are sidebars with cooking tips that offer information on the ingredients, measurements, and techniques mentioned in the text.

4. Blueberry Muffins with Blueberries for Sal: This classic story by Robert McCloskey,has a little girl and her mother setting off in search of blueberries for the winter at the same time as a mother bear and her cub. A quiet comedy of errors ensues when the young ones wander off and absentmindedly trail the wrong mothers.

5. Soup with Stone Soup: Two hungry travelers, denied food by the inhabitants of a mountain village, publicly declare that they can make soup from a stone. Only they need a carrot… and a potato… and a few more ingredients to make it taste really good. Everyone in the town contributes something, pronounces the soup delicious and learns the magic behind it: sharing. Their are several versions of the story but the version retold by Heather Forest includes a recipe for Stone Soup though any simple recipe for soup would work.

6. Popcorn with The Popcorn Book: This is a nice “night lunch” book. Make some popcorn and eat it while reading this fun book by Tomie De Paola just before bedtime.

Some other books you can use include:

In the Night Kitchen
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Bread and Jam for Francis
The Pie and the Patty Pan by Beatrix Potter
Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto
The Little House Series
Four Famished Foxes and Fosdyke
Pineapple Poet and the Curse of the Smoothie Man
Green Eggs and Ham
The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog
My Mom Loves Me More than Sushi

Happy Cooking and Reading!

Do you have any favorite books that could be used as a cooking experience with children? Let us know in the comments!

From Classic Books to Screen (Or the new Hobbit trailer)

pockettales — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:09:00 -0500

Quick question …

What’s even better than reading a classic book for the hundredth time; a book that you could probably recite from memory?

Seeing your favorite book come to life on the big screen.

Now, I know what you are saying. So many times, you look forward to the movie adaptation only to be so disappointed that you come out of the theater weeping like the Mock Turtle in Alice Wonderland (I’m looking at you, directors of The Shipping News and The Series of Unfortunate Events! Why, oh, why?). I remember one of my absolute favorite books, which I still read every year at about this time, being made into a movie a couple of years ago. It was the film adaptation of The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, and I couldn’t wait for it to come out. What I hadn’t anticipated was that the director and screenwriters would change just about every aspect of it that made it such a classic book. From the setting to the ending; nothing was sacred. In short, it was a horrible movie and never did well.

That is why I am so looking forward to the film adaptation of The Hobbit. Having seen “The Lord of the Rings” many, many times and loved it’s dedication to the source material, I know that The Hobbit will be beautiful, exciting and faithful to what made “The Hobbit” one of the most important books of the 20th century. If it can even elicit a bit of the feeling I had opening the illustrated version of the Hobbit I was introduced to when I was in Grade 3, it will be wonderful.

You’ve probably seen it but here is the first trailer for “The Hobbit” coming out next year.

Do you have a favorite book that has been made into a movie? Did you like the movie? Let us know in the comments!

Wintry Books to Celebrate the Season!

pockettales — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:32:56 -0500

I don’t know about you but it’s getting cold here. While it’s not the coldest I have ever experienced (you don’t know cold until you are walking in -30 degree weather with a windchill that makes it -42 degrees to the school which is still open even when buses don’t run!), it is still cold enough to put on the Bing Crosby Christmas album, get some good books and snuggle on the couch with your child.

Winter time is always a great time to bring out those wonderful winter theme books that you have been saving all year. One of the new blogs I have been enjoying, Ohdeedoh.com, has some suggestions for winter books that I think are great. I thought I would share them below plus add some of my own favorites that didn’t make it on their list. These books also make great read alouds.

Snowflake Bentley by Jaqueline Briggs Martin, Illustrated by Mary Azarian

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser

Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, Illustrated by Susan Jeffers

The Snow Day by Komako Sakai

The Mitten by Jan Brett

In My Dreams I Can Fly by Eveline Hasler, Illustrated by Kathi Bhend

I would also add these favorites of mine:

Snow by Uri Shulevitz

A Prairie Boy’s Winter by William Kurelek

Winter’s Gift by Jane Monroe Donovan

And finally, for the Canadians in the crowd (or those Canadian wanabees!), a couple of my new favorites . .

A Porcupine in a Pine Tree by Helaine Becker and Werner Zimmermann

Singing Away the Dark by Caroline Woodward

I also love the TA novel, The Dark Is Rising. While it isn’t for all people, the mix of celtic/Arthurian legend and the winter solstice give a unique look at the winter season.

So grab a good book, a comfy chair, some hot chocolate and enjoy some of these wonderful winter tale’s to drive the cold winter away!

What do you think? What are your favorite wintry books to share? Let us know in the comments!

Join us by adding your comments! If you haven’t already, let us help you sign up for an account to start using Pockettales in your class. Teachers and classes are always welcome! Sign up at Pockettales.com!

Pockettales Founder Featured in News Media

pockettales — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:20:23 -0400

Cruising from one success to the next, Pockettales Founder Yaw Awing was featured in the Nov. 5 edition of the Post-Bulletin Newspaper. Developing the idea from his experiences as a young child, playing math games on the computer, Yaw talks about the early days in creating the popular online reading site. You can read the short excerpt here or if you have access to the print edition, you can read the full article there. Just another reason why Pockettales is so awesome!

10 Reasons Why You Should Read Aloud To Your Child

pockettales — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:58:00 -0400

After having written the blog post on how to choose a good read-aloud, I thought afterwards that I should have perhaps started with the why of reading aloud. In our busy days and schedules, it can be easy to dismiss prioritizing time to read aloud to our children. In his book, “The Read-Aloud Handbook”, Jim Trelease gives several important reasons to read-aloud. Surprisingly, I just came across this book recently and wish I had seen it years earlier. It is a treasure trove of research and resources for both teachers and parents.

Taken from his book, here are 10 reasons why you should read to your child:

1. It’s an accrued skill - It’s a time thing. The more you read, the better you get. Therefore the more time you spend reading to your child the better they are going to be prepared for actual reading. You are embedding those building blocks. Just because they can’t read yet doesn’t mean that they can’t still begin learning and understanding the process. Quite often, you will hear the kindergarten teachers talk about those students who have come into kindergarten not ready. A lot of times it is because families have not spent the time reading to their children right from an early age. The interesting thing is that often Kindergarten teachers can accurately predict how a child is going to do as they continue through to graduation. Some of that prediction comes from how they enter kindergarten.

2. Create life time readers and not just school-time readers. A lot of times I see parents butting their heads against teachers and homework policies. I have had numerous conversations about how school is for school and home is for home. And there is certainly a place for that thinking. Homework for homework sake is not good and is really what the fight over homework is about in my mind. However, this is not a post about homework per se. The point though is that, we want to build children who don’t just read for school. That just creates students who think that reading is just about schoolwork. Reading at home build’s the “want-to” of reading and not the “just-to”.

3.The best source for brain building at the early ages is through the ear. While young children are not yet ready to read with their eyes on their own, reading aloud to them, helps them to hear the words and associate it with what they see. The rich sounds of words help the child make sense of the words they will read later on.

4. To reassure your child - the whole reading with your child reassures them and comforts them. They can snuggle in your arms and feel safe. It is time well spent with your child that will pay huge dividends later on. They know that the time you spend with them is important and thus, they are important.

5. To entertain and bond with your child - The way you speak the text and interact with the book and your child builds reading as something done for fun. Using voices, emphasis, engaging children with the various elements on display brings stories to life as a tv brings live action to life. The important difference is that the stories you read can proceed at your own pace, not a pace dictated by the television. You can stop to explore, talk about what is going on, ask questions. You are an engaged, interactive audience not passively immobile with no control. I still remember my father reading “Danny, the Champion of the World”. It created an indelible memory in me that makes me remember my father every time I read that book. Now that he has passed away, it is nice to have something that I can remember as having been a bond between us.

6. To arouse curiosity and inspire - as with the previous point, as you begin to delve into the story, the pictures and the concepts, you inspire and grow curiosity within your child. And again, they can stop to think about what they are seeing, hearing and reading. They can go back to a previous idea if they need to. A book of poetry with original photographs can inspire your child to look at photographs in new ways or to create their own photograph album. The possibilities are endless with books. You can find and explore books on any concept regardless of the age level. Just because a child can’t read the book themselves does not mean that it can not still be read to them and explore the illustrations. The interesting thing is that children often have a higher level of listening comprehension than reading comprehension meaning that a child at a grade 4 read level can understand a grade 6 reading level if it is read to them. Often the books, I read in my class are of a higher reading level than what my students can actually read. We’ll talk more about this later.

7. Conditions the child to associate reading with pleasure - When you read with your child, it actually triggers pleasure sensations within our brains. And we always want to return to things that bring us pleasure. My daughter associates reading with getting to snuggle with her father. It is our time together and it brings us both happiness. Developing this joy in reading will help create a reading that is “want-to” reader rather than a “just-to” reader. We will always come back to reading because our brains have associated it with a time of happiness.

8. Creates background knowledge - Allowing your child to find and read books based on their interest, helps them to build knowledge that is relevant to them. I remember being fascinated with Napolean when I was in Grade 3 (Yes, I know I was weird). My mother took me to the public library which had a very limited number of books on the subject and none at my level. So, instead of telling me that there was nothing for me, my mother took the time to go through the material with me and help me to understand and read what I could not. Young children can interact with material as their parents engage them with the text, questioning, pointing out elements of the pictures, etc.

9. Builds book vocabulary - Just engaging with books with your child helps to build the vocabulary of using books. Table of contexts, page turning, reading from left to right, front cover, etc, are all things that children begin to understand just by sharing books with parents.

10. Provides a reading role model - Seeing your parents, older siblings, heros reading is hugely important. I just had a conversation with a parent about their child’s reading at our recent report card interviews. She was complaining that her child doesn’t like reading much at home for pleasure. I asked her what the reading was like for the parents. She looked a little sheepish and stated that she didn’t particularly read much for pleasure either and realized on her own that there may be a connection. If you prioritize reading and make it important at home, your children will know it is important and may be more likely to pick it up themselves. Getting them their own library card, bringing books, books, and more books into the home, going to bookstores, sharing what you are reading, having conversations about reading and books; these are all things that show how important it is. Having their role models doing this … it just makes even more of a case for getting into it themselves.

The Read-Aloud handbook is a great resource for parents and teachers. You can probably find it at your local library. If not, you can find quite a bit of good information online at http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/rah-intro.html.

What do you think? What reading traditions have you started with your children to develop a love of reading? Let us know in the comments.

Read-Alouds for Children: Choosing A Good Book

pockettales — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:20:50 -0400

Reading out loud to your children, whether you are a teacher or a parent, is one of the best ways to encourage and share the love of reading to your children. However, some books are better than others for this as I discovered last year when I went to share a great book I had found with my class.

I had just finished reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and was so excited to share it with the students. As I was nearing the end of the book I was reading with my class, I thought it would be the perfect next book to read aloud. It had action, adventure, interesting young characters and humour. Or so I thought.

Once I started reading the book out loud, I realized that the book was far too long with way too much descriptive text. The students quickly tuned out during the long expository moments and got lost in the fine intricacies of the plot as they had failed to pay attention to the other parts. It wan’t a failure. Some students loved. But it was definitely a harder book for them to get into.

So what makes for an exciting and captivating read aloud book?

It tells a rich story in simple language: This was my problem with the “Mysterious Benedict Society. It was a very rich story but the richness of it made it difficult for the students to get into it as a read aloud. A read aloud should move the story forward easily without getting bogged down in too much descriptive language. While descriptive language is important in developing intense, vibrant and complex ideas and literature, it is hard to get that across as a read aloud. Much better to leave that to the children to read on their own. It’s easier to digest that amount of detail when you are reading with your own eyes.
Is enjoyable for the reader too: I have found this to be very true with books my child loves. It is hard to maintain the enjoyment of a book when it has been read over and over again. While repetition is good for young readers, it is hard to get across any excitement when you are not enjoying it. However, if you allow your child to choose a book, then choose one of your own during your reading time (or even hide the book in questions as we have done) you can at least show your child that there are other books to enjoy. If you are a teacher, this job is a little easier. There are lots of good lists out there to help you choose a read-aloud that others have found to be good. A librarian can also be great in helping you choose a good read-aloud. Part of this also comes from experience and trial and error. My experience with the Mysterious Benedict Society showed me that that was not the ideal book. The kids will be gracious though and I just finished anyway and chalked it up to experience. Some of the ones the kids did love though were the Shiloh series and the The Series of Unfortunate Events though I only read the first three. And here is the difference which is important in picking a book you will enjoy reading. The books I have enjoyed reading the most have been the books where I can get into the characters and act them out. There are exceptions to this but this has been the one rule that has helped me. With both the books mentioned above, I have been able to develop the character in front of the kids and act the voice parts of it out in front of them. There are other books that don’t fit this but are still good read alouds but I have noticed that the students really get into the stories if I can bring out the characters in interesting ways. For example, the novel, “Shiloh” takes place in the Southern States so I like to use my form of a southern accent for the characters. It usually surprises the students and brings attention to the characters and setting. But above all it makes it fun for me which the students can see.
Sometimes deals with mature subjects or issues: Read-alouds can be great books to have quick discussions about in the moment. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with my Grade 3’s about compound interest as the read-aloud I was reading involved the young character deciding whether or not to put his money in the bank. There are lots of examples of places that read-alouds can speak to students on difficult subjects. With the teacher or parent reading the books, they can help students to understand the complex issues or plot. One of the books I have read to the students, Holes, is a great contemporary novel. However, it all hinges on a series of plot devices including flash backs. If the students in Grade 3 read the story themselves, they would most likely miss these elements. However, I can certainly help them understand what is going on and they always love the story and the quirks in the plot. Reading books that are more mature than their actual reading level brings in and exposes them to higher level ideas and vocabulary with the help they need to assimilate them into their own world of reading and writing. I also enjoy reading these books to the students as it allows me to help students grapple with interesting and thought provoking ideas and concepts.
Or is very, very, very funny: Some books, no matter what age level they are, are just fun to read to the students. If you have a great book, it doesn’t matter what age level it is actually for, students and children of all ages will love it.

Now, I know what you are thinking, dear readers. What books do I use in my class? Here are some of the books I use in my class though it does sometimes change.

1. Little House on the Prairie/ Farmer Boy: These are timeless classics and they are great to remind students of how much things have changed. While the language can be a little archaic (indians, etc), they can also be great conversation builders especially if you are doing a pioneer unit. They have some great stories in them and students always enjoy them. I usually start my year with either one of those books.

2. Loser: This is a fairly recent book but the short chapters and the

details in it that students will recognize in their own lives make it a lot of fun to read.There are some very humourous moments in it as the book describes the life of a boy growing up. There are also some deeper issues in it about how people view others, what makes people different and how we treat others who don’t always fit in. It’s also a great book to talk about perspective. This is one of my all time favorites!

3. Series of Unfortunate Events: This book has great characters I

enjoy acting out and lots of interesting vocabulary. This isn’t a book for everyone thoughand some may not like the topics in it but the students have always enjoyed them. I only read the first couple though.

4. Shiloh: I love to use my Southern Accent on this book (bad as it is!)
and the students completely side with the main character as he fights to save the life of an animal. Some good discussions on whether it is

good to lie and steal if it is intended for good. Some great action in this book.

5. Holes: A great book to read with great action and plot details. If you take time to explain what is going on throughout the book with the plot
pieces all weaving together the students will enjoy it even more. A good one especially for the higher kids in your class.

6. Because of Winn-Dixie: An easy read but fun. Another book where I get to use my southern accent badly!

7. Stone Fox: A short chapter book, this story will have your students mesmerized. Warning! Very sad ending. I often find myself on the verge of tears reading this book and you are guaranteed to have tears from some of your students.

8. Danny the Champion of the World: This is a sentimental favorite of mine which allows me to add it to this list. My father read this to me and I enjoy it so much as a tale of a father and his son exploring the world together.

Let us know in your comments below!

What books do you enjoy reading to your children? What would you add to the list? Are there other ways you use to separate good books from books that make great read-alouds?