We did it! Yay Scholastic!!!

Woohoo!  I am on my way out the door for one of my bestie's birthdays, but I had to share this:

 

Wow, do I love Scholastic!  By combining my January and February book orders, I managed to spend just enough to earn what seems like a million bonus points! My class and I made a wish list of some books we wanted to add to our library for the kids to bookshop from.  I have the best problem this year- lots of high readers and a class full of kids who LOVE to read!  If you read my previous post from last week on the subject, I'm looking to expand my library so that there are more higher level nonfiction and picture books, not just chapter books.  We're working on writing about our reading and reading with our buddies, and chapter books make that a little difficult in first grade.

So between the amazing parents and a little shopping for my niece's birthday to push us over the edge, we did it... 5,030 bonus points earned on this order and 5,340 spent (had some in the bank amazingly)!  I'm excited to put some of the kids' favorite picture books in their personal shopping library.  They adore Piggie and Elephant books, but I didn't have many in the library- problem solved!  I also added a Pigeon pack, which I can already see kids fighting over!  It also excites me that I have kiddos ready to read Knuffle Bunny all on their own!  It will also be easier for me to read what they write about their reading when they are checking out books I am familiar with and love.

Some other titles my class picked:

Magic School Bus Readers

National Geographic Kids Readers

Daisy Dawson

Roscoe Riley

Black Lagoon

Miss Nelson Pack

LEGO Readers

Flat Stanley

Horrible Harry

Pink-, Purple-, Silver-, and Goldilicious

Froggy

Kevin Henkes Pack

Fly Guy

I have to share this... it's my favorite part of my order because it looks like I got more free than I bought.  Actually, that is probably true with Scholastic being as awesome as it is, but when you look at just this catalog, it really stands out because the purchases came on other catalogs, but I chose a lot of free books from this one:

I am home by myself and doing a happy dance and had to share!  Only teachers would understand how excited I am to be getting so many books for my favorite first grade readers to devour.  They are going to be so excited when I show them the order!!!!

Well, I'm off to shop for myself now.  I honestly don't know if I could possibly have more fun than I just did.  Ha!  Enjoy your weekend everyone!!!!

Report cards and the Book Wizard. Mostly I mean Scholastic, but I'm a book wizard, too!

I have been such a bad blogger, but it has been a whirlwind since getting back from break!  First we had mClass assessments, which I loved, but took me 3 days, then finishing assessments and grading for report cards, then the actual report card process!!  I have missed my little blog!

So as if report cards weren't enough this week, I have undertaken the project of adding to my book shopping library.  My kiddos are really so impressive this year when it comes to their reading skills- and they really LOVE to read!  The problem is (and it's a good problem to have), that about half of my kids are wanting to check out 6 chapter books a week.  That's quite the undertaking to read 6 chapter books in 7 days as a first grader!!!  When I first started teaching, I never thought I would have that problem- I'm so proud of them!

Anyway, this isn't very conducive to partner reading or writing about their reading in Daily 5, so I've been working with my AMAZING parent volunteers to remedy this.  I've been trying to supplement with some picture books from levels J-P so that the kiddos are still challenged, but can continue to work on skills with their partners.  It's so hard to teach beginning readers how to summarize with a chapter book when they haven't yet mastered the skill in smaller books!  Of course that isn't to say that I don't want them reading chapter books- I really do!  How do you feel about this?  What are your kids reading?

Back in the day, I used a lot of my bonus points from Scholastic to buy Magic Tree House, Geronimo Stilton, A-Z Mysteries, Ready Freddy, etc., because they really inspired my kiddos to read.  They couldn't wait to get into the chapter books and once they found a series they liked, I couldn't get them to put their books down!  Now I'm going back and looking for popular characters in picture book series.  So far, I've got Piggie and Elephant, Skippyjon Jones, Pete the Cat, Pigeon, Froggy, Arthur, Franklin, and Berenstain Bears.  Oh, and Magic Schoolbus!  The boys are really excited for those to come in!  As one said, "It's fiction because there are characters, but nonfiction because it has facts."  You had to hear the enthusiasm in his voice when he said it!

After my report cards were printed, I went to work on a stack of books that were sitting in my basement, begging to be leveled.  24 hours later, I had leveled 160 books!  Some of these were books from garage sales, some from book orders, and some donated from wonderful families... tons of great books that I know the kids will love!  I will admit that I let them browse through the books on Friday before I was done leveling them so that they are all pumped about book shopping on Monday.

Here's my handiwork:

Sorry if you have to turn your head, but the picture is facing the right way on my computer till I upload it!  Anyway, that's 160 books, even if it doesn't look like it!  I was so proud after working till 7 on a Friday night, that I had to take a picture of it!

I have to say that I love Scholastic.  Not only do they provide some great deals on all of my favorite books, but the Book Wizard is awesome!  They've really expanded their leveled book database and I used books they had leveled to help me with some of mine that weren't listed.  If you haven't tried it before, you really should!

You can search by title (which is how I leveled), or you can search for books similar to a book your kids like.  What really helped me when looking for picture books at particular levels was searching by just that- reading level!  They make it so easy! 

Now I'm going back through book orders and searching for books to add to our collection.  If I can drum up $250 in sales, I can get 2500 additional bonus points!!!!  I noticed this before I sent in January's order, so now I'm sending it in along with February's- wish me luck!  Is it bad that I'm sending home December's book order again?  It had such a great selection and I want the kids to help me pick the books they want me to order!  Plus, December's book orders had the reading levels underneath to help parents and the February book order does not.

Is anyone else as crazy as I am when it comes to ordering books and using up every last bonus point?  How do you get books for your classroom?

I hope I didn't ramble too much!  It's good to be back!