Wednesday, March 6 was World Read Aloud Day. To celebrate, Jen from Teach Mentor Texts came to visit our class and read us a story. Jen is a hearing itinerant in our district. This year instead of being a hearing itinerant, she is working for the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative Office and Teacher Mentor Program. Jen is amazing, smart, and has limitless energy. She is also a National Board Certified teacher! Her blog is a fabulous place to learn about books for kids of all ages!
You can see Jen talking to us about the story here:
And then she read the story! Miss Erin participated as her puppeteer! Miss Stephanie recorded the story. Jen knows sign, so Stephanie got to take a break!
During the afternoon, we got to together to read another dragon story. This time Miss Erin read the book and Miss Stephanie signed it. We had fun talking about dragons on World Read Aloud Day. Did you do anything for WRAD?
Because it is winter and last week we had QUITE a bit of snow, we thought Snowmen at Night would be another great story to share with our students. What do YOU think snowmen do at night!?!
We love the Pigeon books because we love to yell, "No!" at the book when the pigeon asks to drive the bus! Here you can see Miss Erin and Miss Stephanie reading about that silly Pigeon!
We have been enjoying reading the book The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything over the last few weeks.
We each took a turn using the Smartboard to retell the story! It is so neat! We each took a turn wearing the microphone and moving the pieces around the Smartboard while telling the story. We are still a little shy while using the microphone since it is the first time this year, but we will warm up to it!
DA
ES
GT
JT
JTT
MM
HG
JY
Miss Stephanie telling the story on the Smartboard
You can click on the pictures below to see signs that go along with our story!
You can see our post with the embedded videos here from last here!
Here are Miss Erin and Miss Stephanie reading the story:
Pete the Cat came to visit! We came in this morning and Pete the Cat was sitting right there on Miss Stephanie's chair! Not only did he visit us, but he brought us a new book! Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. We got to read it during Circle Time!
Miss Stephanie even just ordered a bunch of Pete the Cat books from Scholastic because we tend to love our Pete the Cat books to death around here!
Last year, Miss Erin and Miss Stephanie recorded Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes and did a post about it here. We have another Pete the Cat post here.
Here is our NEW Pete the Cat video: You can also see some of our favorite videos with Eric Litwin, the author himself, reading the stories: Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes
Pete the Cat Rocking In My School Shoes
AND you can download Eric Litwin reading the stories right here on the Harper Collins website. It can also help you learn how to sing the songs! Four Groovy Buttons has quite the beat! You can learn it on this site.
Miss Erin and I recorded another video to help you learn some of our Circus vocabulary. First we review our circus words and then read the book "Ringmaster, Ringmaster, What Do You See?"
You can watch it in the presentation below, or on YouTube here: Ringmaster, Ringmaster, Who Do You See? (We like to embed the OneTrueMedia presentations into the blog entries because they are visible from the school computers.)
Take some time at home to talk about the circus vocabulary. We made a book this week. We each wrote about what job we would have at the circus if we worked there and why. -Tell your child which role you would want to play. -Ask your child about what he/she would want to do. Ask why.
In our last post you see the clown hats that we made while reading along with the book "Colors at the Circus". You can watch it at YouTube here: Colors at the Circus
-Play "I Spy" to come up with other colors in your house that match the colors we talk about here. -Think of other items at the circus that could have those same colors. -Find pictures in magazines or books that have the same colors.
Check out Miss Erin and Miss Stephanie reading "Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes" by Eric Litwin. You can watch on YouTube right here: Pete the Cat in Sign Language
It has become one of our favorite books to read in class. You can always find at least 2 students at the Listening Center reading AND singing along with the book during centers time.
Even the students in our deaf and hard of hearing class LOVE using the Listening Center. Thanks to modern technology, we are able to hook up Miss Stephanie's microphone to the Listening Center and the CD is transmitted right to our hearing aids and cochlear implants to help us follow along with the story!
After reading the story a few times we talked about our own shoes and how we love our own shoes. We each sang about the type of shoes we were wearing! Some of us had white shoes, pink shoes, black boots, rainbow shoes, Spiderman shoes, and even Buzz shoes!
This is just one example of how you can take a story and expand on it at home! Ask your child how THEY relate to the story.
Another great way to encourage your child to develop his/her literacy skills is to have your child look at a book and tell the story without words. Some kids will say "I don't know what the words say" and some will jump right in. Encourage your child to look at the pictures and try his/her best to tell the story by using clues they see in the pictures. Understanding that pictures give us clues is a great first step to reading!
Here you can see a video of two students in the afternoon who were sitting independently in the library area reading a story together. Miss Stephanie thought it was a great moment, so she got out her camera and had them start from the beginning.
It is OK if the plot of the story isn't the same. Using pictures as clues to try to understand the story is a great tool! Try it at home this weekend. Pull out a picture book and tell your child, "Read to me!".
Here you can see a Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes YouTube performance:
Check out another Pete the Cat video here:
For more Pete activities you can click here: color the shoes
Our November theme is "Castle". We are really excited to transform our classroom into a castle and discover all kinds of new vocabulary about things that are found in a castle.
Don't forget to start working on your family project this weekend. We need items for our castle! You could make a tower or something a king/prince/princess/knight would have. Be as creative as you want! We just need props for our castle. Make sure you work together as a family. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be done together.
Here is a video reviewing some of our new castle vocabulary:
Miss Erin and I videotaped ourselves reading one of our VERY favorite books: The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. It has been a big hit in our classrooms over the last couple weeks. We love to read the story and make the hand motions to go along with it. We have also enjoyed our SmartBoard activity that goes along with it!
Check out the YouTube video by the link on the right sidebar for a higher quality version.
Miss Jill and some of the other Independence staff helped perform this story on Thursday. We had a blast watching them and participating with them! Our class was the "shirts". When Miss Jill read about the shirts, we held our white shirts up in the air and said "Shake, Shake!". You can enjoy the Independence rendition of the story here:
On Friday, we watched the performance again in the morning because some of us were absent on Thursday. We enjoyed it just as much the second time! (This time Miss Stephanie is interpreting the story in sign language).
Today we had our very special Llama Llama Red Pajama Day! We were very excited about this day because the Llama books are some of Miss Stephanie's very favorite books! Whenever she hears a new one is coming out, she orders it right away so she gets it the day it comes out!
We love the llama books because they are about things we can relate to, they rhyme and are fun for us to read, and we think the llama is funny!
Our Llama Llama Red Pajama day was sponsored by the Pearson Read for the Record program.
In the AM class, we read our book two times. We were VERY excited about the llama stuffed animal we had to help us read the story. We tried to go on the website to read the book on the computer, but the website was down in the morning. In the AM, Mrs. Chris (our principal) stopped by in her red pajamas to bring us our very own copy of the book!
In the PM class, the website was working again. We enjoyed reading the book online and retelling the story ourselves. In the PM we had special guest stars come to read us the book! Dr. Susan Ali, the Coordinator of Literacy and Learning for U-46, came with representatives from Pearson and a reporter and photographer. Our class was chosen to be spotlighted for this special day. "Ms. Susan" read us the book and she also had a special PowerPoint to go along with it. It is the same one you can find on the We Give Books website! At the end, our special visitors gave all of us copies of the book to take home for ourselves! We were so excited!
This is the same website that has been featured in our newsletter. It is a great opportunity to share picture books with your child and to expand your library without buying additional books. The website does not "read" the book for you, it is like reading a real picture book! If exploring the books with your child, you can read the books in the typical way. You can also have your child click through the pages and retell the story independently. In addition, when you read a digital book on the website, you can click "donate" at the end and it will donate books to schools in need. If you click on this link, the author will read the story to you!
We had a great day and feel very lucky to have the special visitors come to our class. We are excited to keep reading the books online at home and school.
To read along with the story with your very own llama book, you can watch the video of Miss Stephanie reading and signing here:
