New Books

Some professional reading I recommend:

I am taking 2 classes right now and the professional reading is phenomenal. The first book is called Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier.



This book is a great read for beginning teachers and seasoned teachers alike. This book is mostly about helping struggling readers but it has already made me think about my own theory of reading education.

The next book is called Best Practices for Best Practices in Early Literacy Instruction by Diane M Barone and Marla M. Mallette.



This book is more about how research has informed the best practices for Early Childhood Education. I haven't started reading it yet, but I am sure that this book will challenge me to improve my practice.

Both books are available on Amazon.

What books are you reading for professional growth?

Popplet ABC Books

In first grade, kids are practicing with letters and sounds. In the beginning they need practice just knowing their letters. Our Grae level team came up with the idea of creating a MHW ABC book for things we found around the school. Here are some examples of the slides we created for the ABC book. We assigned each child a letter and here are the things they came up with. 

Real Reading vs. Fake Reading

Our class learned all about what's our independent reading time should look like. We made a chart for real reading vs. fake reading. Then I took pictures of my class and they wrote sentences about their reading. Here are some of the pictures and sentences they came up with.

Fake reading is a book on top of your head.

Real reading is looking at the book.

Fake reading is playing with your books.

Real reading is eyes on the book.

Fake reading is sleeping with a book on your head.

Real reading is turning the pages. 

Then we made a bulletin board for real vs fake reading. I still reference this from time to time when students aren't reading as they should.

What things do you do in your classroom to help students understand how they should read independently?

Using Popplet to introduce yourself

One of my favorite apps for classroom use is Popplet lite. At the beginning of the school year, I used Popplet to do an introduction of myself to the class. I inserted pictures and wrote sentences in this graphic organizer to tell all about me.

Then, I showed students how to use Popplet so they could create their own. The great thing about this is now students have a graphic organizer that can be saved to the camera roll and printed. Students can use their graphic organizer to write a paragraph about themselves.

Popplet has endless possibilities. How could you use Popplet in your classroom.