SPECIAL EDITION! Teacher Interview: Kids’ Books in the Classroom (Part 1 of 2)

Now, something a little different. An amazing post today for those of you who are parents and teachers (public, private, homeschool or otherwise!). Miss Jeanette Crump is a 2nd grade teacher in Wisconsin who’s agreed to talk with me about children’s books in the classroom. Jeanette has been teaching in schools for ten years, eight as a full-time teacher. She is passionate and it shows. She’s given us creative tools, websites, and tips for using books to teach kiddos reading skills. Read on!

LINDSAY: What are your favorite ways to use children’s books (non-textbooks) in your classroom?

JEANETTE: 1. Read- Alouds: First, I use children’s books as read-alouds, of course. The intention… is often to learn life skills, such as friendship, acceptance or nice manners. Other times, we are using stories to discuss and analyze required reading skills [summarizing the beginning/middle/end, identifying story elements, noticing how a character goes through a time of change, or identifying parts of informational text… table of contents/ captions/ diagrams/ glossaries/ etc.] Books are chosen to match the seasons, holidays, or current classroom interests as well… Inevitably, it will have some kind of teaching point for discussion, even when unplanned. Even, if it’s just a really interesting new vocabulary word!

2. Fluency: I also keep a basket of children’s books for the purpose of fluency. These books are chosen for fluency for one of the following reasons: it is written in poem form, it’s a well-known song (like The Itsy Bitsy Spider), it contains many rhymes, it uses repetition or patterns, or it is written for two readers to read together… Since they provide some kind of rhythmic reading, students seem to especially enjoy reading them. (I admit, they are also many of my favorites!)

3. My Classroom Library: My library has two sections. One section is organized by difficulty level. Students have reading goals each quarter, that include the book levels they should be reading, when working towards their “goal.”… The other section of my classroom library is organized by theme. This way, students can just search for books based on their interests, rather than worrying about the difficulty level. Students are encouraged to pick books from both sections- I want them to love reading but I also want them reading books that follow the “Goldilocks Rule:” not too hard, not too easy… just right! 😉

4. Guided Reading Groups: During my reading block, students are doing stations while I teach my reading lesson to small groups… Small groups allow me to differentiate my lessons to better meet a variety of student needs… I choose books that cover the necessary skill in our pacing guide, and is within the correct ability range of the students in each group.

5. Reading Websites: As mentioned above, students must work independently while I work with small groups. One literacy station is “Listen to Reading.” Students use… websites like tumblebooks.com, PebbleGo.com, Epic! [getepic.com].… These reading websites offer the same books you would find in a library; just the digital version. Listening to stories allows kids to focus on comprehension skills without having to decode, and it provides an opportunity to model nice fluency for students. Another literacy station is “Read With Someone.” This allows students to read together as buddies. They can help each other out with tricky words and they are encouraged to discuss the book with prompts I provide them…

6. Wordless Books & Post-its: Finally, I have a favorite activity using wordless books that I bring out at least once a year. Second graders aren’t used to seeing wordless books, because they are not very popular with ‘older’ kids who now know how to read! However, I give them a partner and a pack of post-its and ask them to write sentences for each page. They just have to make sense of the illustrations to make sentences that match and make sense. They really enjoy this activity! I like it because it encourages them to analyze the illustrations, practice writing, use teamwork, etc.

LINDSAY: I especially love that last tip. It’d be a fun activity for parents or grandparents to try with kids at home using the Journey Trilogy! Tell me about the most read/ most requested book in your classroom. What do you think makes it popular?

JEANETTE: This is extremely hard to answer… my class this year consists of 11 boys and only 4 girls! Needless to say, the princess books are not winning in popularity this year… One thing that is consistent each year is that students LOVE to read the books that I have read aloud. A book they never even noticed before becomes high in demand after I’ve read it to the class. I think they enjoy the familiarity of re-reading the story. For this reason, I feel a pressure to make sure I introduce certain book series that I have a lot of in my classroom, such as The Magic Tree House. Most years, no students show interest in them during the first month of school, but once I’ve read at least one book from the series, they all get taken very quickly!!! Another thing I’ve noticed each year is that students ALWAYS love the non-fiction books that contain excellent quality photographs. National Geographic Kids does a great job with keeping students interested and providing books at an appropriate ability level.

Jeanette has even more book recommendations and some creative tools for helping hesitant readers engage with books. Part 2 will be out Monday! I hope you’re enjoying this and I’m interested to hear your comments- Which of Jeanette’s ideas has inspired you?

Feel free to share the link to this interview with teachers you know. See you Monday!