Favorite Professional Books

Today I just wanted to share a few of my favorite professional reads with you in case you want to add them to your personal library.  

This particular book, written by one of my favorite authors, is VERY helpful when teaching non-fiction.  It is easy to read with lots of great printable resources in the appendix.  The graphic organizers are amazing and help students understand exactly what you are explaining!  She outlines some very good lessons that I use every year.

This is a great, easy to read book also.  Jan Richardson has trained many teachers in my district and she also outlines some very good lessons that can be done at the guided reading table. There are lots of printable resources in this book as well.   See the pattern here.  Easy.  Good Lessons. Printable.

And you guessed it, the Tool-Kit has lots of great resources <all printable or copy-able> and helps you differentiate your reading groups!  It is expensive, but would be great to have in a school, or if you are like me and want to make sure you keep everything together, purchase it yourself.  I have been meaning to purchase this for myself for a while now, but we just got a kit in my building, so we will see how that works!

Hope you enjoyed this.....let me know if there are some other professional reading books that you would like to see on the spotlight!

Comprehension and Fluency, Annoying Cinderella, and a FREEBIE!

The new push in my district is to 'teach within the text, 'teach about the text' and 'teach above the text' in order to improve comprehension.  They even flew Irene Fountas in the train the administrators.  The two books below have become a literacy reference for the many that are striving to put best practices into their classroom and improve both fluency and comprehension.  I have to tell you that I have only read the book below and it is jam-packed with theory and practical application and more ideas than you can try in one year!  The yellow book was recommended to me by a friend of mine and I hope to get this one as a 'summer read'....yes I confess, I am a book junkie.  But, it has served me well!  One recommendation I have for all teachers that use Pinterest--start a board based on good reading materials that are based on best practices to spread the wealth of knowledge that all teachers need!  You can even go back through my posts and pin the ones I have reviewed in earlier posts to make it easy!

Comprehending and Fluency Fountas and Pinnell K-8

Comprehending and Fluency Foutas and Pinnell K-2

Comprehending and Fluency Foutas and Pinnell k-2



Have you been to goodreads.com??  Apparently everyone but me has!  But just in case you haven't, you might want to check it out.  It is a haven for the constant reader!!

My team and I are just now ending our unit on Cinderella Around the World. I LOVE this unit!  I am so sad to see it drop down to the first grade teachers.  My kids have had a blast and I plan to write the unit up more formally and share all of the great ideas my team has had.  Today, we read Seriously, Cindrella is  Sooo Annoying and my kids loved it!  They were very upset that Cinderella was portrayed as a lunatic...one of my students described Cinderella as 'muy loco' today.  He was not happy about it!  So apparently some of my boys have grown quite fond of 'Cindy' also!

Until tomorrow!!!