Loving Literacy Blog Hop Stop #19

Welcome to...

Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and our little group of reading specialists, coaches and teacher bloggers wanted to share our love of literacy with you, or readers.  Our own love of reading has made us passionate about helping students of all ages learn to to read and to love reading!  We hope you have fun as you hop through our blogs to learn more about each of us and grab a few freebies along the way!

As a young child, my parents read to my brothers and me every day and night.  My favorite book as a child was Winnie the Pooh Meets Gopher.  My mom says I memorized the book, and when my parents were putting an addition onto the house, I quoted the book.

"Danger of a cave in"

"Could take months"

The men working on the house thought it was quite funny.

As I became a reader, I remember reading and never wanting to put books down.  I read Charlotte's Web with the teacher and then three more times.  I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was in second grade and again in fourth grade.  Now I work to instill that same love of reading in my own children by reading to the every chance I get, which is always every night before bed!

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but never imagined I would be a reading specialist.  I went to a private school in Louisiana, and there were no reading specialists.  When I started my job as a long term sub, the teacher I was subbing for returned for a short while.  While he was in what felt like my classroom, I was able to work in the Reading Center with an amazing reading specialist.  She made it look so easy and fun that I knew I would not be in the classroom forever!  For the past three years I have been living my dream of being a reading specialist.  It is the most rewarding job I have ever done, and it is more fun than I ever imagined it to be!  A parent of a former student told me the other day that she can tell that I am doing what I love because I always have a smile on my face.  It is hard to not have a smile on my face when I see students learning to read every single day!

When I was a classroom teacher, I loved to stop and take breaks with books.  Many times the students or I would get to that point where we needed to do something to make it through the rest of the day.  If we were having one of those particularly "bad" days,  I would take out my favorite book to read aloud Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day  by Judith Viorst.



I am sure that many of you have heard or seen this book before, but my kids loved when I read it them because they realized that our days weren't always THAT bad!  Alexander has one of those days where nothing seems to go right:  He has to ride in the middle during carpool.  His teacher doesn't like his "art" picture.  He doesn't get the shoes he wants.  The entire time he says he is moving to Australia.  What fun and kids can relate!

For my freebie, I have included a unit for the book with before, during, after, and writing activities you can use with your students.  These can be used in small group reading or as a read aloud.

Click {here} to head over to my TPT store and grab your copy!
This unit is free through this weekend and will be converted to a paid item in my store when the hop is over.  It is now a paid product in my store. 

Please follow my blog for many more freebies and fun reading ideas.

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Book Talk Thursday ~ Maynard Moose Fun Fairy Tale

It is time for another edition of Book Talk Thursday!

I now have a three year old who thinks she is a princess and LOVES her fairy tales.  I love fairy tales too, and I really enjoy the different versions of them.  But sometimes I really love the silly ones too.  So, on yet another snow day, I found a fun fairy tale that even my nine year old son will love: Rapunzel and the Seven Dwarfs: A Maynard Moose Tale!

In the book, Maynard Moose tells the story of "Punzel" in his own way.  Of course, she still has the long hair and has to let it down to get her food and for the prince to get her.  But, the prince keeps asking her at times when something else happens, and he gets hit with things like a pear and a chair.  Plus, he is too fat to get up the tower.  When she finally gets out of the tower, she meets the seven dwarfs and goes home with them.  Things get crazy at this point.  They end up shaving her hair because it keeps getting caught in the trees.  Then the Snow White story takes over.

Though the book has horrible, horrible grammar, it will make children laugh out loud!  The book would actually be perfect for teaching context clues because Maynard Moose makes up some funny words that the students could figure out the meanings.  There is a Moose glossary in the book, which helps for students to understand the meanings of the words.  If you can get past the horrible grammar, it is the perfect book for making kids laugh and use their context clues.

And don't forget to hop on over tomorrow morning beginning at 8 AM to grab a fun freebie plus many more in the Loving Literacy blog hop.

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Five for Friday ~ January 24, 2014

It is time again for another Five for Friday with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching! 

It has been an interesting week with only two partial days of school!  I am loving the extra sleep!
1.  I spent my Thursday afternoon tutoring the kindergarten student I work with.  He has needed a lot of help with learning the letters of the alphabet.  We started our tutoring session by using some of the activities from the I Can Read the Alphabet packet from the Educents Preschool Rocks Bundle.
 
I used the alphabet cards from the pack to help with letter identification and order.  I taped the words around the room for him to find.  He used his alphabet tracking page to help him find the letters.  As he found them, we put them on the table.  Here are some of the letters and him as he was looking for the letters.  He had so much fun with it!
 
After we finished finding the letters we worked on letter sounds and completed this simple matching sheet that went with it.

2.  Each session he reads a new book and works on tracking print.  Yesterday he read the book from the I Can Read the Alphabet packet.  He did a wonderful job tracking the print as he went through the book.

3. He has the most problem with rhyming, and we used a cut and paste page from the Rhyming Unit Mega Bundle to work on rhyming.  He did a marvelous job with it!  I love when I see such progress in a student!
 
4.  On Sunday I broke my cherished Deep Covered Baker from Pampered Chef when I dropped the lid on the floor.  Ugh!  I am having an online catalog show, and you can help me get a new one by browsing the catalog and placing an order!  And if you order through this link, I will send you any item of your choice from my TPT store!

5.  And I leave you with these pictures of my kids sledding down the hill.

What were you up to this week?  Link up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching to let us all know!

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A Snowy Book Talk Thursday

I have really enjoyed my super long weekend, but it was back to the daily grind today!  Though we had a two hour delay, I still enjoyed going into work, but I missed some fun time with my own kids.  {I did NOT miss the fighting, though!}

Still it is back to Book Talk Thursday!

Today was my tutoring day, and I always spend part of the time doing a read aloud with my kindergartener.  Some background on him:  he was very premature and had very little hearing, which meant he did not learn to rhyme, letters, or letter sounds.  He just got new hearing aids and is able to hear, resulting in some of the fastest learning I have ever seen!  Two weeks ago, he only knew the letters in his name.  The next week he knew a lot more letters and sounds!  Wow!

I have a pile of books at school, but with our being out of school, I had no access to them.  I needed to find a book for today, and I found it when I read to Ginny Beth.  Since we had a snow day, I chose the book Snow by P.D. Eastman and Roy McKie to read to her, and I am so glad I did!  It was one of my husband's books from when he was a kid, and it is a gem!

I love this book because it is full of rhymes, and during our first assessment and subsequent tutoring sessions, he could NOT rhyme at all!  It is also an easy to read book, which would be perfect for children just learning to read.  But I wanted to use it to focus on the rhyming aspect of the book.  Before reading, we talked about what he did in the snow yesterday and what other people do in the snow.  Then I read the book to him, and he helped me fill in the rhymes.

The two kids in the book have all kinds of fun on a snow day by sledding, having snowball fights, building a fort, skiing, and building a snowman.  When the sun comes out, they make some snowballs to freeze and play with anytime.  Kids will love the fun the two kids have as they play in the snow.

After reading the book, we worked on rhyming words by playing a game.  Yesterday on our snow day, I felt inspired and created a concentration game to play with him. He did remarkably well, matching rhyming words by sound for the first time!   He had fun playing it and even didn't want to stop when his dad showed up to pick him up.  We had to finish out the game!  Here are examples of him flipping the cards.

no match

Match!

And you can grab your own copy of it for free by clicking {here} or on the picture below!

What is your favorite book or activity to help students with rhyming?

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Snow Day!

Yesterday we had the entire day off of school because of a threat of snow.  Our weatherman even said at 5:15 to "take a picture now and then one 24 hours later.  Your yard will look different."  Yeah right!  Here are my pictures!

Monday at 5:15

Tuesday at 5:25 See any differences?  Me either!

Then around 7 PM, everyone in my area started posting pictures of snow!  And there it was!  Snow!  Only about 2-3 inches of it, but enough to go play in!

I just wanted to share some of our fun pictures in the snow as I have enjoyed another day off today.  Enjoy and stay warm!

Night sledding on the driveway

It's snowing!

Ready to go!

Street sledding

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Book Talk Thursday ~ Characters and Setting

It's Thursday, and you know what that means?

It is assessment week at our school for grades K-3.  I always like to help out by teaching the class while the teacher does the assessments, since they are required to do them at our school.  When I can, I try to incorporate fun lessons into the day with some of my favorite books.

The second graders have been working on writing personal stories, and I have been working with them for writing this week.  We are using a super scripted program, but I decided to waver and use one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors to help them understand both setting and characters.  I read aloud the book Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco.

The book features a young girl who is at her grandmother's house just as a storm is coming along.  The girl is scared of thunder, and her grandmother tells her they are going to make Thunder Cake.  As they go around the farm gathering items for the Thunder Cake, they count the time between the thunder and lightning to see how many miles away the storm is.  As it gets closer, the girl counts and helps.  Once they get back to the house, the storm comes just in time to put the cake into the oven.  The little girl and her grandmother talk while they wait for the cake to bake.  In the end, the girl is no longer scared of storms because her grandmother helped her overcome her fear.

The book paints a vivid picture of the setting and gives us many clues about the characters.  After reading the book, we talked about the setting, describing the where and the when.  Then, I had the students complete the graphic organizer below.

After they told about the setting, the where and the when, they created the same graphic organizer in their notebooks and wrote a personal story based on the setting.

Today we worked on describing character.  We reviewed the young girl and the grandmother in the book.  We worked together to describe the grandmother, using many character traits and telling how the character looks and acts.  The students then completed the graphic organizer for the girl in the story.  Here is an example.

Tomorrow they will think of a new personal story and use this graphic organizer to describe a character in their own stories.  I cannot wait to see what is will come out of it all!

I really enjoyed working with the second graders to think about setting and character and then use it to help with writing.  If you click on the images below or {here}, you can grab your own graphic organizer freebies.

What do you do to help your students create vivid pictures of characters in their writing?  I would love to hear your ideas!

Thank goodness "testing week" is almost over!  I am ready for a normal week again!!

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