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!

Reading A-Z

Reading A-Z: This is by far one of my favorite sites!  I am lucky enough that our school has a subscription for each of us.  You can project or print leveled books on just about any topic, along with a comprehension quiz, discussion cards, grammar/reading skills sheets, and more!  This week I am using leveled books to help me integrate science into my 90 minute reading block.  We are studying animals in science, and there are TONS of leveled animal books on the site.  This is such a great way to get more nonfiction books in the kids' hands!

The Motivation Factor
All the kids love these books, but it has really, really been beneficial to my struggling boys lately.  They can't get enough of these books and I almost cried this week at the effort they put into reading their book.  It's quite the sight to see a group of first graders huddled at a table discussing sharks, with their highlighters out to highlight new vocab, facts they learned, etc.  One of my girls brought in pages and pages of information she printed after we read a book about marsupials.

Finding Time to Fit it All in- Integration of Science and Language Arts
This is a constant struggle for me because there is just so much we want/need to do every day!  With these books, however, I am meeting science and reading goals and we are having fun doing it.  Some of the books even have writing prompts.  When reading the discussion cards, I also thought that these would be perfect not only for guided reading group discussions, but also for writing about reading during Daily 5.  It makes like so much easier and learning so much more meaningful when you can tie it all together, but sometimes finding the materials to allow you to do it is hard... not this week!!!

The Materials

Here is one of the Level B books I will be using this week.  It is below most of my kids' independent reading levels at this point in the year, but the content matches our science lesson perfectly.  It matches more closely how many of my students write at this point and could be awesome inspiration for writing a nonfiction book to go along with our science lesson!



 
This book is my favorite because it is available in levels E, H, and K, so all of my readers can be reading the same information at their own level!  It also has comprehension quizzes and discussion questions at each level.  Finally, there is a readers' theater script that has parts at all three reading levels!  So we can work on decoding, comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, and science content all at the same time. :)  My life just got so much easier!

We also belong to the RAZ-kids site, which has many of these books in e-reader format for the kids!  They can listen to a book or read the book themselves, earning points for each.  They also earn points for taking a quiz.  All can be redeemed for fun things at the Raz-rocket store, which honestly I don't pay much attention to.  I haven't even turned this on for my kids yet because they are just motivated to answer questions correctly and move up levels... you gotta love that!

So my plan for reading this week is to work on main idea and details in nonfiction books, as well as studying nonfiction features such as the table of contents, heading, glossary, index, etc.  Our big question in science is "How are animals alike and different?"  Reading books about which animals have stripes or spots, animal tails, animal feet, animal babies, and more will provide students with knowledge to be able to compare and contrast many different animals and sort them into groups based on similarities.  This provides students with background knowledge that they may not all have come in with, and expands it for those who started with some knowledge of animals.

Extension to Writing
There are so many possibilities for writing, from the discussion questions, writing our own books following the patterns provided in the mentor texts, using the writing prompts, and more.  One of my favorites that I did last year adapted a Kristina Smekens lesson.  We were working on stretching out words, so I used the sound box paper from one of her lessons (I don't know where that is right now) and stuck an animal sticker on each students' page.  They had to stretch out the name of the animal in the boxes, then write a description of that animal (like a riddle) for other students to guess.  This worked on the traits of ideas and word choice and the kiddos loved it!  My kids this year will have so much more background knowledge that will make their descriptions even better, not to mention how accurate they will be due to the science content!  I was also thinking that students could answer "Would you rather?" prompts, such as, "Would you rather have a tongue like a snake, or a tongue like a frog?" after reading Animal Tongues, or, "Would you rather be a giraffe or a snow leopard?"  This would provide an opportunity for some persuasive writing.

So now that I've saved time integrating subject areas, my new problem is that I need more time again since there are just so many ideas!!!!  That's a good problem to have I guess!

I am so excited about these lessons and really recommend that you check out Reading A-Z and Raz-Kids if you are not already familiar with these wonderful teaching tools.