Barkus

Newbery Medalist, Patricia MacLachlan, has written a charming beginning chapter book about a girl and her dog. Barkus is a gift from Nicky's Uncle Everton. Barkus is smart, he does tricks and he doesn't bite. Perfect! In five chapters, Barkus becomes class pet in Nicky's classroom, has a birthday party, finds and mothers a newborn kitten and goes on a backyard campout with Nicky and the kitten.

Dog lovers will love this book, I have had a dog like Barkus and I bet many of you have, too.

The full color illustrations by Marc Boutavant animate the story. The font is large and the words are well spaced. Emerging readers and older reluctant readers will find this beneficial. If you look closely at the tag on Barkus' collar, you will see it says "Book 1". A sequel is due out next year.

The Sonoma County Library has five copies. Great book for first and second grade classrooms.

Elephant & Piggie Like Reading

Last spring, the final Elephant & Piggie book, The Thank You Book, was published. Now Mo Willems and a series of writers are bringing you the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series. Each book has a book within a book: Gerald and Piggie introduce each book, we read it with them and then they come back and comment on it. Like every book in the original series, there is plenty of humor and drama in each one.

The first book, We Are Growing by Laurie Keller is as Gerald (Elephant for the uninitiated) says about watching grass grow.  We meet eight blades of grass, one after another start to grow, each in their own way. One is the tallest, one is the curliest, one is the silliest and one is a dandelion. Two are pointy and one is crunchy but one, named Walt,  does not know what he is. What is that buzzing noise? It helps Walt find out. 

The Cookie Fiasco by Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat is the next book in the series. Again Gerald and Piggie introduce the book. The story involves  a crocodile, a hippo, two squirrels and three cookies. How can everyone have an equal share of cookies when there are four of them and and three cookies? After much mayhem, the answer involves a hippo who breaks things when he is nervous and division. Gerald feels hungry after reading the book and Piggie brings just the right number of cookies and glasses of milk for them to share.

The Sonoma County Library has eight copies of We Are Growing! and six copies of The Cookie Fiasco. Since both books were published today no AR level has been assigned yet. The original series had AR levels from .5 to 1.3, these books have bigger words but can be sounded out by kids with the phonics skills of mid to late first grade. The font is large and there are limited words on each page. Fans of the original series will love this one, too.

50 Ways to Help Your Child Learn to Read

School starts here in a couple of days. Yulupa is a K-3 school, so learning to read is a big part of what goes on here. Learning to read starts at birth, it is a complicated process. Both teachers and parents have a role to play.  Allison McDonald from No Time for Flashcards has a list of 50 ways  to help your child learn to read.  The most important thing a parent can do is to read and talk to their child starting at birth. Some of my favorites on her include rhyming games, getting a magazine subscription (what kid doesn't like to get mail?), and let them choose their own books at the library or in the store. One more way that she alludes to is pointing out environmental print: stop signs, names of stores, billboards, street sign and exit signs. I think most of us knew what a stop sign said before we could read the words in a book but didn't think of it as "reading".

Reading and Bookish Links

This week let's start off with a fun quiz to see how many of the 100 Best Children's Books of All Time you have read. I got 69 of 100. Bonus feature: it makes a great list of book ideas for the kids in your life.

Some young kids pick up reading quickly and want to read chapter books. They may be good readers but the content of books they can read is not age appropriate. Ellen from the Cutting Tiny Bites blog has done the hard work of compiling and reviewing a list of chapter books for very young readers. Hat tip: Growing Book By Book

Would you like a way to check your beginning reader's progress? Reading Is Fundamental has a Reading Check up for Beginning Readers (Grades 1/2) to help.

Jodie Rodriguez from Growing Book By Book wrote a guest post at parenting blog, Childhood 101, How to Support an Early Reader. Her five tips include understanding a new reader, coaching a new reader, modeling fluency, checking for understanding and picking "just right books". Scroll down to see links to other articles by Jodie about beginning readers.

Parents are their child's first teacher. It is their job to lay the ground work for future success  in school. That job begins at birth. Maya Smart from Book Riot has a quiz for parents to see how they are doing in Are You Raising A Reader?

Along this same theme is An Expert's Opinion: What Parents Can Do That Apps Can't. There are many commercial programs and apps that claim to teach young children to read. Brightly has published an excerpt from Tara Haelle and Emily Willingham's The Informed Parent: A Science Based Resource for Your Child's First Four Years. Their research-based advice for parents is talking and reading to children from birth and having lots of books around. Just handling (or even chewing) books is an early literacy behavior.

Sight Words

Yulupa uses a phonics based reading program, but there are plenty of commonly used words in the English language that do not follow the the “Rules”. These words are called Sight Words: the, and, see, come, go, know; you get the drift. By the end of first grade a child should know over a hundred of these words.

 This Reading Mama has a great article about the development of word learning as it pertains to sight words. Most of the students we see in Schools of Hope are in the second phase. These learners typically know basic letter sounds but not more complex ones like sh or th; they do not have strong decoding skills and rely on pictures and cues like the first and last letter to read words they don’t know.

A Schools of Hope video from Racine, WI has some interesting ideas about teaching sight words called Sound It Out?

Sight words are  introduced in the classroom gradually. Schools of Hope tutors review current sight words with their students every week. There are fun ways to do this. I have a couple of Sight Word Bingo games and a Picture Word Bingo game. 

I found these games locally back when we had a teacher store in town but they are available like almost everything else, at Amazon. Another game that kids like to play is Pop for Sight Words. There is a second version appropriate for late first grade and second grade.  I found the original game here in town but it both are also available at Amazon.

The Reading Mama, Becky Spence, has more than a dozen free printable sight word games here. Scroll down to the list under sight words and click on any of the games that interest you. All of these games are far more fun than drilling with flash cards while accomplishing the same goal.

Little Lola

Lola is sleeping in the park when she is woken up by an apple falling on her head. She has big plans. One of them is to have an adventure. Lola finds a pair of pink glasses, a blue skirt, a red stripped shirt and a pink backpack. Dressed and ready to go, she hops on the school bus.

At school, Lola practices reading, writing, math, art and singing. She especially loves story time and show and tell. Her contribution is a live mouse which causes a mess that Lola promptly puts back in order (almost). School is over and Lola is back at the park for a nap.

Little Lola is the first book for husband-wife team, Julie Saab and David Gothard. It is a perfect first day of school book but it also is a fun beginning reader. There are only a few words on each page, the font is easy to read and some of the harder words are clearly illustrated to help in decoding.  The AR is 1.3 (first grade, third month). The Sonoma County Library has three copies.

Stick and Stone

When we first meet Stick and Stone, each is alone and lonely. When both are playing by themselves at the park, Pinecone makes fun of Stone. Stick comes to his rescue, banishing Pinecone. The two become fast friends and have fun together until a hurricane separates them. After the storm, Stone sets out to find Stick, searching day and night until he finds him stuck upside down in a mud puddle. Now it is Stone's turn to save his friend.

This simple story is written by first time author, Beth Ferry, and illustrated byTom Lichtenheld. It is a perfect book for  beginning readers. The text is minimal and the illustrations advance the story without unnecessary visual clutter. The font is large and bold and the words are well-spaced. Most of the words can be sounded out by a first grader, It is a funny story about kindness and friendship and in the case of Pinecone, redemption.

Stick and Stone is available at the Yulupa Library and Sonoma County Library. The AR is 1.2.

The Book With No Pictures

Reading aloud to your child is an important part of raising a reader. The writer, Emilie Buchwald,  says that "children are made readers in the laps of their parents".

 The Book With No Pictures will delight children of all ages.I dare you to find a kid who would not sit through a reading of this book. It makes grown ups say silly things. What kid wouldn't like that?

A book without pictures may seem boring and serious (according to author B.J. Novak), BUT "Everything the words say, the person reading the book has to say. No matter what." Even  if the words aren't even words like blork or bluurf or if you have to read like a robot monkey or even sing a song about eating ants for breakfast. The book provides all the  words for you to say, even the asides.

The Yulupa Library has one copy, The Sonoma County Library has twenty-one copies. Scholastic is now selling the book as well. Strawberry's Book Fair will be from Friday, November 13 to Friday, November 20, 2015.

Sight Words

Yulupa uses a phonics based reading program, but there are plenty of commonly used words in the English language that do not follow the the “Rules”. These words are called Sight Words: the, and, see, come, go, know; you get the drift. By the end of first grade a child should know over a hundred of these words.

 This Reading Mama has a great article about the development of word learning as it pertains to sight words. Most of the students we see in Schools of Hope are in the second phase. These learners typically know basic letter sounds but not more complex ones like sh or th; they do not have strong decoding skills and rely on pictures and cues like the first and last letter to read words they don’t know.

Sight words are  introduced in the classroom gradually. Schools of Hope tutors review current sight words with their students every week. There are fun ways to do this. I have a couple of Sight Word Bingo games and a Picture Word Bingo game.

I found these games locally back when we had a teacher store in town but they are available like almost everything else, at Amazon. Another game that kids like to play is Pop for Sight Words. There is a second version appropriate for late first grade and second grade.  I found the original game here in town but it both are also available at Amazon.

The Reading Mama, Becky Spence, has more than a dozen free printable sight word games here. Scroll down to the list under sight words and click on any of the games that interest you. All of these games are far more fun than drilling with flash cards while accomplishing the same goal.

Easy Readers

Melissa Taylor of the Imagination Soup blog has compiled a very long list of beginning books for 5 and 6 year olds. She includes a brief description of each book or set of books. You can find it here.

My Teacher Is a MONSTER!

Peter Brown, the author of one and illustrator of two of my favorite picture books of the last few years , Mr Tiger Goes Wild and Creepy Carrots, has written and illustrated a perfect back to school book, My Teacher Is a MONSTER! (No, I Am Not).

Bobby’s teacher, Ms. Kirby, doesn’t like a noisy classroom or paper airplanes thrown during class or dawdling. She stomps and she roars. Bobby decides she is a MONSTER! One Saturday, on his way to play in his favorite park, he runs into his teacher sitting on a  bench reading. Her hat blows away and Bobby runs to retrieve it. He catches it just before it blows into the duck pond. Ms. Kirby tells Bobby that he is her hero. That breaks the ice and they spend some time quacking with the ducks and Bobby shows her  his favorite spot, high on a hill in the park. Ms.Kirby pulls a sheet of paper out of her handbag and gives it to Bobby to make a paper airplane, then they watch it fly all the way down the hill. They decide that, perhaps, that was the greatest paper airplane flight in history. Back at school, Ms. Kirby still stomps and still roars but is she a monster?

I love the slow evolution of Ms. Kirby from green monster to a pretty, young woman as the two get to know each other in the park. It is an experience my seventh grade class had with one of our teachers. She had a fearsome reputation. We were prepared to loath her but because we got to know her outside of class (after school), she became our favorite teacher. Who knew teachers were people, too?

The Sonoma County Library has several copies and the AR is 1.7.

How To Get Your Kids to Love Reading

Jon Scieszka, author of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, The Stinky Cheese Man and the Time Warp Trio series, has some terrific ideas how to get your kids to love reading. Before he started writing children’s books, he was a teacher, so his ideas have been field tested. Find out what your child really loves and then find books, magazines, or any kind of text about that subject. Whether your child loves mysteries or space or fairy tales, there are chapter books, short stories, picture books, graphic novels, comics and audio books. One additional thing he does not mention is READ to your kids! Start early and keep reading to them even when they can read what they want on their own. You can read the whole interview at the Musings blog (Parnassus Books).

Luckily, John Scieszka has a website devoted to getting boys to read called Guys Read. He has organized his recommendations into categories like, How to build stuff, Realistic kids in realistic situations and one sure to be a hit with my grandsons, At least one explosion. Other categories include Series, Ghosts and Action/Adventure and several more. Scieszka includes comics (Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic books are prominently featured), graphic novels, magazines and audio books.

Hat tip: Imagination Soup

The Watermelon Seed

The Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal winner for 2014 is The Watermelon Seed  by Greg Pizzoli. The book uses simple  graphics employing the colors of watermelon: pink, green and black. The text is large and well-spaced, very useful to beginning readers.

Our crocodile protagonist LOVES watermelon. He eats it morning, noon and night and even for dessert. One day, he swallows a watermelon seed. In his panic he envisions the horrors that await him. It is growing inside of him, the vines will soon grow out of his ears! He may turn pink, his stomach will stretch! Can someone help him? His stomach feels funny and on a page that will get the reader giggling is a l-o-n-g burp and up comes the seed. He swears off watermelon forever, except for maybe just one little bite.

The Sonoma County Library has several copies. The AR level is 1.0. This is the author’s first picture book with two more to be published in 2014. You can check out his website here.

Penny and Her Marble

Kevin Henkes not only won a Newbery Honor for The Year of Billy Miller but also won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor for Penny and Her Marble.

Penny is feeling  uncomfortable. She didn’t want to help Mama  make sugar cookies, she wasn’t hungry  and had a hard time getting to sleep last night. Why is she feeling uncomfortable? The day before, she was pushing her doll, Rose, in her stroller down the sidewalk. When she passed Mrs. Goodwin’s house, she saw a beautiful blue marble on the grass. Penny thought Mrs. Goodwin was too old to play with marbles, so she picked it up and put it in her pocket and rushed home. In her room, she found that the marble was smooth and fast. She held it up to the blue sky, it looked like a piece of the sky. Through the window, she spotted Mrs. Goodwin in exactly the place where she found the marble. Was Mrs. Goodwin looking for the marble?

The morning after her rough night, Penny wakes up with a plan. She puts Rose in the stroller and heads to Mrs. Goodwin’s house to return the marble. How is this story resolved? Did Penny take something that wasn’t meant for her?

In four short chapters, Kevin Henkes explores a common childhood dilemma using age appropriate words and simple sentences.

The Sonoma County Library has several copies. Even though this is a Level 1 I Can Read book, it has an AR 0f 2.5.  I’ll leave it to someone at a higher pay grade than me to explain the discrepancy.

A Big Guy Took My Ball

Perennial Theodore Seuss Geisel medalist and honor winner, Mo Willems, has written and illustrated a 2014 Honor book,  A Big Guy Took My Ball. True to form, this book is both funny and sweet.

Piggie has found a big ball and is having fun but a big guy came and took it. Upset, she goes to Gerald for help. It is not right and Gerald offers get her ball back. Big guys have all the fun! Gerald goes to confront the big guy. Turns out that even for an elephant, the big guy is really, really big. He is a whale. As Gerald is explaining to Piggie why he did not get her ball back, the whale comes to thank her for finding his little ball. He says that no one wants to play with him because he is so big. Little guys have all the fun! Gerald and Piggie offer to play “whale ball” with him and all of them have BIG fun.

The AR level is 1.0. The Yulupa Library has one copy and the Sonoma County Library has  several copies.

Thought For Today

From Ebook Friendly on Tumblr

10 Ways your Child Can Become a Better Reader

It is simple: to do something well, practice is necessary. The more your child reads, the better reader he becomes. Thanks to Melissa Taylor at the Imagination Soup blog for this graphic.

Thought For Today

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or a duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift. – Kate DiCamillo

Hat tip: Imagination Soup

Learning to Read

You are reading with your child or one of your students. When he comes to a word he doesn’t know, is sounding it out the best strategy? Not always. Melissa Taylor  offers some Word Attack Strategies on her blog, Imagination Soup. Several of them I have used successfully with my Schools of Hope students. She also has free printable bookmarks listing the strategies. My favorite advise is about giving specific praise rather than a general “good job”. Check it out!

Reading Comprehension Strategies

Is your child able to understand what he reads? Melissa Taylor has outlined strategies that parents can use to determine if their child is comprehending what they are reading and what to do to help them learn. These techniques are for beginning to advanced readers:  Part I and Part II.

Hat Tip: Imagination Soup