This is an informative book on different plants that are commonly used in gardens. There are wide variety of plants to choose from, and each one is described as to the habitat and resources best suited for them. Students will learn what makes a plant high-maintenance and why they need sunlight to grow.
I will use this book to create a hands-on experience by taking my class out into the school yard and learning what we can and cannot plant with our given landscapes and sunlight. Students will be able to find suggestions from the book, and explain many unique facts about plants. This is a science objective for the 3rd grade so it integrates these those subjects together, producing a higher-level of thinking assignment.
This book is about a boy named "Brian the Brain" who decides he wants to do something unusual to win at the upcoming science fair. He gets his friend Josh to help him hypnotize his dog name Arfie to thinking he is a cat. On accident, Brain hypnotizes his friend Josh instead! Josh starts purring, licking things, climbing, and begging for cat food. Brian tries to use what he knows and change his best friend Josh back into a human. Something goes wrong again and the dog listens this time and he answers in "hello."
I used a flipcam video to reenact the basic storyline. Kids will enjoy making a play our of such a silly book.
This book is about a girl named Winnie that runs away from her strict family and finds a tree made out of a wishing fountain. There, she finds a boy named Jesse who is drinking from this fountain. He explains that it is a ritual in his family and he becomes immoral from doing so. A man in a yellow jacket is always watching them. When this guy decides to talk to them Mae ends up shooting him and killing him. A cop is watching the whole incident and puts Mae in jail to be hung. Since Mae will not die from this act, they tell her she must reveal the secret instead. Winnie is then told to drink the spring water on her birthday and she takes Mae's place. They do not tell the secret because the escape was successful. Lightning ruins the fountain so the Tuck family keeps doing the same routines. Winnie was praised for not drinking from the fountain and being a part of the same magic.
This is a good story to get the kids' imagination moving. Since the 4th grade writing test is an imaginative prompt it would be a good idea to make a prompt similar to this. I can use this book as an example of something that students could add to their writing. The prompt I will give them will be "imagine you find a magical fountain what would you want it to give you the power to do and why." This will be a good follow-up activity to the book because they will have to judge if the power they choose will help them or hurt them in the long run.
Hansel and Gretel are two children that come from a poor family. The step-mother decides that since their family is having trouble with the money they have, why not force the kids to go into the woods and fin for themselves so that she and their dad could no longer starve. Even though the father rejected that idea, the children over heard them and decided that they should come up with a plan. They find white pebbles so that when they are stranded outside they will be able to find their way back from the moon illuminating them. Next time they wonder across a house where an old lady welcomes them. She ends up being a witch and tries to put Hansel in a cage. They fight back and trap the witch into getting killed and escape and run back home to find that the step-mother has died. Their father is extremely happy to see them safely home and alive.
I can use this book when teaching the lessons on fairytales and fables. This is a popular one that shows love within a family. For an activity I will have the students predict halfway through the story what they think will happen once the kids are stranded outside. This is good practice for the writing test to be creative and come up with a possible ending. Once we finish the book we can go back and discuss who had an idea similar to what actually happened in the story.
This is an award-winning novel that is about farm animals that talk, which is why the genre is fantasy. It begins with a litter of pigs being born and the smallest one seems too small to keep so the wife of the farmer wants to kill it. The runt's name is Wilbur and he ends up being saved by the spider named Charlotte. The two animals become best friends when the spider writes messages in her web that praise Wilbur. The farmer goes out to the barn to see these messages and starts to think maybe he shouldn't slaughter the pig if he really is all of these good things he reads about him. Eventually Wilbur wins a prize at the county fair. Unfortunately Charlotte dies at the fair but she lays eggs, 3 of which go live with Wilbur and become friends.
This is a good book to use as a read-aloud each day. I would make copies of a flow chart/sequence worksheet for each of the students to complete as we read the events that happen in the story. This will teach students to understand cause and effect and while also hearing a good story they would enjoy.
This book is a spin off of The Boy Who Cried Wolf tale but it is also a modern fantasy because the animals in this story are talking. The wolf thinks the town is boring so he goes to around telling everyone jokes that a boy is after him and they all stop what they're doing to help but then notice eh lied. The wolf does it again, and the people try to help again but still no boy. This time the town did not believe him and no one helped when there really was a boy. The boy actually ended up being the animals dressed in a boy costume to prove to the wolf not to joke about serious issues.
I would use this book to show how playing tricks on people is not always a good idea. I can use this as a book to listen to the students read to check for fluency because there are not mnay difficult words that should make a 3-5th grader confused. It also shows how even the bigger animals who think they are really tough and get scared every once in a while. We will discuss that issue, as well as talk about when it is right to joke and when would it be a bad time to play a joke. A few days before April Fools Day would be a good time to go over this topic to gets students thinking about potential pranks that are not hazardous! :)
This is a biography of Abe Lincoln explaining the daily life of this great man ever since he was born. It described daily chores he did that showed discipline, how he loved to read and write, and his future as a lawyer and a leader. It uses dates to display a sense of time that which this all occurred. Lastly, it describes certain symbol that children may be used to associating him with but never knew why. An example of this would be Lincoln's top hat, he wore it during the war and would keep papers stored in it.
As a teacher, I would use this to first of all, explain what a biography is versus an autobiography. Then I would bring in a penny and a $5 bill to show how important he is that his face in on our money. Then, I would give black paper for the students to cut out a top hat shaped figure and on it they will write using notebook paper, letters that they think Lincoln would have wanted to keep with him during war.
This is a made-up story that explains how people would have lived at this time in history. It is based around 1808 when tribal leaders were scarred by memories of Indians cheating their lands away from them when they were not allowed to read the signed treaties. It stressed what values people had during this time and how things may have changed since them. This book incorporates parts of history such as the Indian Removal Act and court cases centered around land issues.
This book, along with others about the Trail of Tears will be used for a book pass to get the students excited about the new topic we are about to study in social studies. Having multiple books on the same topic will show kids variants and different aspects of the same topic. :Like I mentioned earlier, I will integrate this literature lesson into a social studies unit at the same time.
This book has information on various dates around December and January and the traditions they celebrate on those dates each year. For example, they too go to parties on New Year's Eve and use fireworks as well. One thing that is different between their culture and ours is the fact that their Christmas season does not end until January 6, a day known as Epiphany. Santa Lucia is their version of our St. Nicholas. There, Santa Lucia is accompanied by a donkey and goes around to fill the shoes of young boys and girls that are sat outside their homes. In the back of the book there are art activities, songs, and food recipes that are associated with this topic.
After reading this book I will have the students take off their shoes and place them outside the room in the hallway to show the appreciation for Italy's culture. I will go in the hall and fill each of the shoes with a treat to demonstrate what the children of Italy practiced. Also, I will have the students look at the song pages in the back and notice the Italian version and the English version of Christmas songs.
Two sisters were waiting for their father to come home one evening to celebrate their first Chanukah where their mom wouldn't be there with them. Once he got home he carried arms full of food ready to make their traditional latkes dish. The children wondered how they could do this tradition without mama this year. They kept remembering all the times they had with their mom and exactly what she did as a contribution each year. The girl lit the candles of Chanukah as her mom taught her to in the past. They each say "Happy Chanukah" to each other and to their mother.
I will use this as a book to teach cultures around Christmas time. We can discuss different holidays people celebrate and that it should not be looked down upon to celebrate something that your neighbor doesn't. This teaches holidays and importance of family traditions. I will ask the students to in their journals about 2 holidays they celebrate that they think are important, and why it is necessary to keep up traditions from the past. It will be taken as a reflective assignment for the students to think of what they should be thankful for.
This book gives facts about Australia in a fun, easy to read format. For example, it says that Australia is made up of three regions: the Outback, Tasmania, and the Great Barrier Reef. It also incorporates science vocabulary (ex.defines habitat) throughout the text so that student will be able to understand the information given. It then lists how much each of the four types of kangaroos weigh and asks a math question as "how much more than the smallest kangaroo does the largest kangaroo weigh?" These are all good questions to educate the reader on interesting information while analyzing it in a mathematical way as well.
I would use this book, along with a K-W-L chart to find out what prior knowledge students had about Australia and its habiats, figure out questions they want answered, and also see what they thought was interesting that they learned from reading this book. Overall, it is an excellent book that integrates different subjects into one material.
This book is for talking with students about how to treat others that may learn differently than you. This book says that you may be good in math but not reading or the other way around, so kids should understand that when you know the answer but the person next to you doesn't, maybe it's because they are better in another area that you might not be good at. The book teaches children that it is ok to ask for help, when you ask for help it means you know what areas are your weakest and therefore they are easier to fix.
I actually used this book as a read-aloud for my seminar class and that is the same format I would introduce this book to my students in the future. My teacher that I am paired with wanted me to find a book that taught the kids to no longer pick on students that leave the classroom for specialized attention. One quote that stood out to me from doing this was a little boy in my group that said "ya 'cause even though someone gets pulled out of the class, it does not mean they are dumb, they just learn differently and they may even be smarter than the class, you never know." I really enjoyed that because it showed that the read-aloud worked with that small group to teach them not to judge others for being different.
The Emperor was very high-maintenance and insisted on having a different outfit to wear for each hour of each week! His closest of clothes took up a huge section of the castle. He made sure to never wear the same outfit twice, mismatching as many items as he could. Worse than that, he never got the outfit out himself, he would demand others that worked for him to go fetch the outfit he described. The Emperor did not do his job supervising others because he was too busy thinking about his clothes. His workers soon thought of an idea to trick the emperor into thinking that there was a better material he could use for his outfits that is "softer than a cloud," "glows as brightly as the full moon," and "only fools can't see it!" Once the material was "made," the emperor wore it around town and that is when he noticed he had been tricked all this time! His assistant asked if he was too embarrassed and wanted to turn around but the emperor decided he deserved this for being to foolish and walked proudly in his underwear.
As an extension to this activity I will have the students turn to this back of this book and notice that there is a glossary full of about 10 words that are defined from the story. I will point out that using resources such as titles, pictures, glossaries, indexes, font styles, and knowing the genre types are all important parts of the book that should not be overlooked. To emphasize the importance, I will assign the students to use the definitions given in the glossary and write a sentence with each one describing some part of the story we read.
This book is another version of Sleeping Beauty but it uses mice as characters instead of people. Unlike Sleeping Ugly, this story is very similar to the original version that most people know. The King and Queen mouse had a child and the six guests of honor that came were the fairies of the kingdom. The first five offered the newborn some form of help with life situations and the sixth one was interrupted as the evil fairy mouse flew in. This fairy wished that the newborn will die once she pricks her finger at the age of 15. As soon as the evil fairy left, the last fairy realized she still had a wish to give. She wished that the baby would go into a deep deep sleep right before it was time to prick her finger. This way she wouldn't have to face the evil fairy and her wrongdoings. The Princess mouse did just that, she went into a very deep sleep. It was such a deep sleep that that people from the town tried to wake her she wouldn't budge. As the years went by people started to forget about her. All but one mouse who ended up kissing her to wake her up and eventually married her.
Since this is such a well-illustrated picture book I will make an effort to emphasize the deep blue cover on the inside cover to produce a calm feeling, and also point out how the pictures say more than the words on the page. After that discussion I will ask my students to draw a venn diagram with three circles to show how this version, the Shrek version and the original version all tell relatively the same storyline but are still very different. I may also encourage students to go to see a ballet version of this story in their own time if they are interested in seeing how else this story can be displayed.
This is a redone version of Sleeping Beauty that uses parts the traditional tale and changes it to make it funnier and more exciting for kids to read who have previously read Sleeping Beauty. It is a story within a story. Shrek, Donkey, and many other fairy tale creatures are talking and going about their day as normal, when Shrek begins to tell his tales to the other fairy tale creatures. He starts with the original story of Sleeping Beauty and changes the name to Sleeping Ugly. Details of the story start to change when Shrek says the lady gets woken up with a kiss but doesn't change how ugly she is. This causes a riot between the fairy tale creatures as they notice all the new details. Shrek explains that he doesn't like the original story and he thinks it's more exciting to change what happened and that's why he tells it this way. Even though Shrek's story was unusually different, he ended with "and they all lived happily ever after" just like most all fairy tales end.
Throughout the book Shrek tells the story by using poems for communication to tell what the characters said. This will help the students in my class realize how to incorporate dialogue into their stories, and also to show that poetry can occur in novels too. A follow-up activity would be to get each of the students to write 2 stanzas of their own poem to tell a story of their own.
This novel is about a boy named Dave that comes up with this crazy idea to try to practice what Ghandi did, and not talk for a long period of time and see how it makes him think. When he makes a comment to a girl Lynsey and says that "there's no way girls could do this, because they talk all the time," Lynsey gets mad and decides this should become a competition between the boys and girls at this school. All boys and girls agree to be on the honor system while at home and keep track of how many words they accidentally say. Lynsey and Dave decide to change the rules to say that students can respond to teachers' questions so they won't make them stop the competition. The only exception is that you are only allowed to answer the teacher's questions with three words at a time. The contest had begun. Girls reported to Dave when they admitted to saying inappropriate words, and the boys did the same to Lynsey. Teachers and administrators started to notice something was up, because the noisiest group of fifth-graders just had silent lunch without being told to do so. Teachers started getting angry that students wouldn't explain their answers in depth; they could barely explain them at all. When the music teacher figured out their mischief agreement, she agreed to let the students hum in place of singing that day. After 2 days of barely any talking, the students were able to take time for themselves and just think. They learned to plan 3 words that would answer the question and still be understandable. The principal talked to Dave and understood the benefits from doing this. She agreed to play along for a few days but knew this would not be the effective way to learn the whole year long. At the end, Lynsey had the final count of words said for boys and girl so she purposely blurted out the exact amount to tie the boys and girls right before the competition was officially over. Neither gender won, and the students got to challenge their thinking while showing that boys and girls can work together instead of against each other.
This is from the same author as The Report Card and because of it they have many similarities. Therefore, I would probably use this book as a read-aloud as well. We will list the pros and cons of attempting to do such an activity at school or at home. Afterwords, I will give the students a venn diagram with two circles for them to complete similarities and differences amongst these two books. Students should list how the roles of the librarian in The Report Card and the principal in this book are the same. They should describe how students rebel in each, and any of the various other parts of the stories that compare or contrast.
Nora has always known she was far more intelligent than she was "supposed to be" for her age. Three years before Kindergarten she was already teaching herself to read. She could place together puzzles faster than her sister who was 6 years older than her. Once she got to school, she was reading adult material as sophisticated as the Britannica, when other students in her class were just starting to read children books. It wasn't that her peers were behind, they were on grade-level. Nora was just born extremely talented academically, and it embarrassed her so much that she purposely tried to make bad grades so she wouldn't be classified as different. She would mimic students in her class in order to seem like she was struggling with subjects as much as a "normal" fifth grader would. Her goal was to make a D in all subjects on her report card, so she was mad when she saw that she made a C in spelling. Her parents were very concerned when they saw her report card so they went to school and talked to the administrators about what they could do to improve their child's grades. The librarian noticed that Nora had been searching multiple topics on the internet that are higher level than some adults read. The librarian called Nora to her office and told her she knew she must have been up to something. When Nora explained her reasoning, why she thinks students shouldn't care about their grades as much as they do, the librarian understood and decided to become part of the plan. Once Nora told Stephen, he passed out fliers to make all the students purposely get a zero on every test they were given that week. This made all teachers, administrators, and even the superintendent very furious and they called an assembly for everyone to attend, even Nora's parents. After a few arguments, the librarian stood up for Nora and explained her reasoning behind all of this. Nora agreed to be placed in some academically gifted classes as long as she still had some time as a "normal" student. Stephen stills gets to hang out with Nora, and even though she is a genius, he still treats her like he would any other kid, exactly what she wanted.
I would use this book as a read-aloud to read to the class as a whole before lunch each day. I think this book has many opportunities for class-wide discussions. I would ask the students "why do you think Nora feels bad to be treated differently if it's not a bad thing to be smarter than others?" I will use this book to explain why grades should not determine your future; if you get a bad grade that just means you have to work harder in a certain area, it does not mean you are dumb. Third graders can also use this book to relate to as they begin the various testings that they go through this school year.
This book is about a girl named Miata Ramirez who always loses everything. One Friday she accidentally leaves her skirt on the bus and cannot get it back until the buses run again on the following Monday. It is not only any skirt, her mother actually wore it as a child when she lived in Mexico. It represented more than a skirt, it was an authentic part of her culture that she did not care enough about it to keep track of it. Not only does her mother not need to find out about this disaster, but Miata is supposed to wear it Sunday for her folklorico dance performance! She and her friend Ana sneak over to the buses and reached their arm inside to undo the lock as Miata's father walks in the parking lot to fix mechanical problems on one of the buses. He sees two girls run away, but does not notice it's his daughter. When they get home Miata and Ana lie about where they've been, saying they went to the library all day. Miata's mother brings home a new folklorico skirt for Miata to have as her very own, saying that the one she has now is worn out. Once Sunday comes Miata wears her new skirt, and as she dances it lifts up slightly to where her mom saw that she was wearing her old one under the new one! Her mother was very proud, and never even knew all the effort it took to get the old skirt back.
I would assign my class into reading groups by performance levels and I'd have this as a book for the group to read who are closest to this reading level of this book. After they read it as a group, I would show them how to make scratch-art using crayons. They will draw a folklorico skirt as shown on the cover and be sure to use red, green, and white, the colors of Mexico's flag. After they finish that I will suggest writing the Spanish words shown in the book and translating them to write their english equivalencies aside it. This will incorporate Spanish culture by teaching the flag's colors, as well as connecting the Spanish and English Language.
http://prezi.com/jwqlohugygzm/jupiter/
