What is an Interactive Read Aloud? An interactive read aloud is a planned and purposeful read aloud that you can incorporate into your daily and weekly lessons. Interactive read alouds help build students’ fluency and comprehension while teaching specific skills. Students are involved and engaged in the read aloud process instead of passive. These planned read alouds […]

When it comes to St. Patrick’s Day, Jamie O’Rourke is one of my favorite characters! Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato to focus on cause and effect.   CLICK BELOW TO GRAB YOUR FREE LESSON: I thought I would offer a free read aloud lesson for this St. Patrick’s Day favorite. Just click above to […]

Looking at how characters change throughout a story. Comparing characters. Completing a character study. These are some of my favorite skills to teach in my first grade classroom! I wanted to share some of my go-to read aloud books for teaching these skills!   When I teach character changes I love using: Julius, The Baby […]

Main idea and theme can be some of the most difficult topics to teach my first graders, so I thought I would share some of my favorite picture books I use to teach these skills in my classroom. Favorite main idea and theme read alouds:   Sheila Rae, The Brave by Kevin Henkes This story […]

I love teaching nonfiction to my students. My students LOVE to learn all about animals, space, nature, etc. It is real and attainable to them and they just seem to seek that knowledge on their own. I like to let my students know that with nonfiction they know what they’re in for. If they want […]

I thought I would share a few of my favorite books for teaching text-to-self connections, text-to-text connections and text-to-world connections: When students are able to make connections with a book they find more meaning to the story. They are able to better connect with the characters and the plot and really understand what is happening. […]

My favorite time of day is read aloud in the classroom.   All my students sitting around and enjoying a story together. As the teacher, I always like to choose rich texts with tons of learning opportunities for our read alouds. Some of my favorite books are the ones we can read over and over […]

Just dropping by this morning to share this FREE St. Patrick’s Day close reading passage and fun poem for the holiday coming up! Included in this mini-pack is a nonfiction passage about the holiday with a vocabulary sheet and a comprehension sheet for students to answer using text evidence. They questions are set up in […]

Book clubs in first grade?! It may seem like a stretch, but the Spring is such a great time to get your students ready and used to reading, thinking about, and discussing books with their peers instead of me, the teacher! When done right, it can be such a fun learning experience for both the […]