Our Favorite Read Alouds for the Week

This week, I wrote a bit about two things I wanted to try in my classroom.

One was the read aloud for the sake of loving reading.  I have some time carved out for teaching strategies through read aloud, but this time is just for reading and enjoying stories.  What I noticed this week was it came back to if they enjoyed the book or not.  I also noticed that students were able to have meaningful discussions, because they had the skills from our strategy work.  (Thanks new reading materials!)

Here's what we read, and some thoughts from first graders.

I was gone when this book was read.  When I pulled it out the next day, immediately the children sighed and cheered regarding how much they love this book.  

The students were familiar with this book.  We had great conversation about the illustrations in this book.  

This book was donated to our classroom.  We've been working on social skills and friendship this year in our morning meeting.  This book is all about perceptions and how to overcome them.  It was a wonderful book with great conversation!  

I can't rotate the picture!  But today we read this book.  I had more great conversations with friends that don't usually participate in read aloud discussions.  I also had a friend who did some writing after this book.  He hasn't really written anything willingly all year.  

So our first week of a refocus on read alouds has been a success!  Lots of great conversations and I think we might be starting to have a true love of reading as a class!  (Yay!)

Joy!
Kendra