Big Books!

There is a group of teachers in our district that were picked to do an intensive training through the NEW

  Learning Rocks Educational Group!  Check out 

their WEBSITE and you can find them on Facebook . 

 Of course Katie and I quickly put in our app to get in the group...and we made it!    We love Christie our trainer!!!!  She has been with us through our Debbie Diller training and now she is giving us more information about better ways to use big books, read alouds, and guided reading groups.  We had our 2nd training last Friday.  We had time to plan lessons to do with the big books that we brought.  This week I was so excited to dive in head first and get started.  I want to share with you my experience.  So today I introduced the big book we would be using, Our Whale- Watching Trip.

Day 1 of the lesson...We discussed what a non-fiction book was and discussed why we read non-fiction.  We started a KWL chart about what we know and what we wanted to learn about whales.  We also did a book/picture walk to look at the different parts of a non-fiction book.  I covered the words in the book so the students would not be reading about whales while we are discussing the parts of the book.  

This is what the book looked like once we got inside.

This time I just used construction paper and tape to cover the words.  At our training, Christie introduced us to large Post It notes...LOVE THEM!  So of course, tonight I ran out to Target and picked some up.  Now I'm excited to rip out the uneven construction paper and replace with my cool new large Post Its!  My kids were so interested and engaged in our discussion today, especially for a Monday, that I can't wait to get back tomorrow and start our Day 2 plans.  Point to remember...only spend about 15-20 minutes on this a day.  You keep using this book for about a week and can incorporate so many different activities in the book each day. 

 More to come tomorrow...stay tuned!  :)