Rainbow Fish

Rainbow Fish is a great story with many hidden meanings. It helps to teach children life lessons and gets them involved. It has beautiful illustrations.

I found this great web site that has lots of hands on activities for different ages that go along with this story. It is also a great start of the year book in a classroom.

http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/fish.html

What "Click, Clack, Moo" , By Doreen Cronin Can Teach

“Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type” is a great book for a Readers’ Theater activity, as you can see from out podcast. However, I wanted to point out to all of you just how many notions this books presents to young emergent readers.
This story can be implemented for several different content areas. The book presents and interesting introduction to conflict resolution. The cows desire blankets which they are not being provided with and deny the farmer of milk when he does not comply with their demands. With a natural third party both the farmer and cows reach an agreement and both receive something they desired out of the situation.
I think this can show children that in life everyone has disagreements, and sometimes in order to solve a problem each side needs to give and take a little. A third part can help in resolution. Conflict resolution needs to be taught to children. They need to learn that disagreements do not need to be harsh or even violent. This text can help them see that conflict can be resolved peacefully. In addition, it would a great read for a unit on farms.
A website with other lesson ideas for this book that you bloggers may find useful!

http://www.teachingheart.net/clickclackmoo.html

Tuesday by David Wiesner

Tuesday by David Wiesner is a wordless book that can be applied to many grade levels. This book is about the events that occur on one Tuesday in a town where the frogs start to fly because their lily pads begin to float around. This book allows for work on comprehension, the book can work on measuring students ability to make practical predictions based on the pictures and scenes of the book. One of my favorite activities in the book is have the students write what will happen when the pigs begin to fly at the end of the story. Depending on your grade level you can adapt this story to meet the needs of your students. http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/wiesner/ is the the link to the authors website where you can view biographical information about the book and see what other books the author has available.

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type - Readers' Theater

ATTENTION BLOGGERS!

My group and I would like to thank you for your insightful comments. We enjoy hearing from all of you. Please remember that we would love to hear more from you. Having good background knowledge of good books that are out there to use in the classroom, can make instruction and lesson planning so much easier and effective. Know we are all here to help each other. Teaching is a learning experience in itself and we want to make that experience a positive one!

We Planted a Tree

This book is about- you guessed it, children planting trees. It's a great story about why we should plant trees. The children in the book learn how trees help the environment and us. I read this to my 3rd graders as part of our Earth Day week in school and they absolutely loved it! Afterwards we were able to actually plant trees and clean up the area around our school. It's a great book to use if you are trying to introduce basic information about our environment, seasons, or healthy eating. It's written as a poem, so you can also use it in a poetry unit if you'd like.

My Dog ate my Homework!

This book is really fun! It is a collection of silly poems that both children and adults will find amusing. Here is an example of the title poem.

My Dog Ate My Homework
My dog ate my homework. That mischievous pup got hold of my homework and gobbled it up. My dog ate my homework. It's gonna be late. I guess that the teacher will just have to wait. My dog ate my homework. He swallowed it whole. I shouldn't have mixed it with food in his bowl.
--Kenn Nesbitt

As you can see the poems are really fun and can get students engaged. Poem units can be a challenge sometimes because the children either love poetry or hate it. Usually there is no happy medium, but incorporating this text can break that cycle. This collection of poems can help children see that poetry can portray even the silliest of emotions. That makes the reading and writing of such poems, a really fun experience for all!