favorite picture books

Francis & Ginger Park (sisters) are the authors of My Freedom Trip. Its a suspenseful story about a little girl who escapes South Korea during the war. I read this book to my class after they have worked with all of the reading strategies for a few months. We use the mats and the stickies to make their thinking visible while I read aloud. Its a really good choice for questioning and predicting. As the suspense builds during her escape, I find myself visualizing a great deal as well.The sisters also wrote another great book to share with kids called The Royal Bee. Both stories are actually based on family members (their mother and grandfather) and could be considered historical fiction. Christine

Story Elements

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Emily Kissner has lots of great powerpoints to use with grades 3-5 on www.slideshare.com. I showed this one on my SMARTboard. Christine

Story Elements

View more presentations from Emily Kissner.

plot profiles

I got this idea from Literacy for the 21st Century by Gail Tompkins. Its a great visual for helping children to understand rising and falling action in fiction texts. I read two or three chapters before I introduce the poster. (The poster is laminated and those are just dots/stickers with masking tape stuck on the back for easy removal.) I might write notes next to the dots so that down the road we can remind ourselves what exciting event (climax) the dot referred to. You can see I wrote "steals dog" and then later, "Shiloh hurt" so that we can discuss which event had the highest tension/excitement. Much of this is discussion and the children don't always agree where the sticker should go. As the plot profile develops you can really see the way the author used rising and falling action to build the story. Sometimes I give the children a worksheet copy of the poster and stickers so they can build their own. Christine

picture books for teaching social studies

I have used Katherine Kirkpatrick's historical fiction picture book Redcoats and Petticoats while teaching the American Revolution for the past few years. Its a wonderful book about a young boy who unwittingly becomes part of a spy ring. The questioning strategy is activated frequently while reading this book. Why is mother doing so much laundry? Why is she acting so strange? Didn't she just wash those same petticoats yesterday? I have the children use the mats I made (previous post) and stickies to make their thinking visible as I read the story to them. After reading we go back and look for all of the clues the author gave us that show what is really going on (its a patriot spy ring ). The kids love this book. Its a fifth grade favorite.Christine

vocabulary parades

This is a great book by Debra Frasier. It is the inspiration for the vocabulary parades going on in dozens of elementary schools across the country. Due to a vocabulary "disaster", (Sage was out sick on vocabulary definition day) she thinks miscellaneous is really a person: Miss Alaineus, queen of all odd or lost things. This causes much embarrassment in school, but in the end our main character makes lemonade out of those lemons. Very funny book! You can learn more about her books and get some teaching resources at http://www.debrafrasier.com/ Check out the last post, it is a Youtube video of a vocabulary parade in an elementary school. Christine

Debra Frasier talks on Miss Alaineus Vocabulary Parades

Don't you want to have a vocabulary parade?

teaching conflict

Conflict is a more sophisticated word than problem to use with 4/5th graders.

I leave this poster up all year. I make small pictures of the books we read and laminate them. After we have read three of four stories together (trade books, Trophies basal stories, picture books) we have a discussion about which type of conflict is predominant in the story. Sometimes the children will discover two or more different types of conflict present in one book. We have also discovered that a particular conflict can be a recurring theme in the story. This activity also makes me reflect on my book choices for the class. Am I leaning towards books which have a character vs. character conflict? Christine