Class Books - We LOVE Them!

I love class books!  My students love class books!  We all love class books!  And you will love them too!

In my room, class books are THE most popular books that students choose to read from our library!

Students love seeing themselves in the books, and they love reading what the other kids have written. The students feel a sense of ownership and pride, when they contribute to a class book.  The relevance that the students have to the books make them want to read them over and over!

Here are some of the books that I have created with different classes over the past years.

At the beginning of the year, we like to create a name book.

One year, we took our stuffed lion mascot around the school and took pictures.

We read The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and wrote this book.

The Gingerbread Boy gave us inspiration for this book.

After reading a book about animal babies, we wrote this class book.

Of course, food is a great topic for a book!

And a field trip to the zoo, inspired this book.

And don't forget to include your teacher pages in the books!  The kids really love seeing them!!!!

So fill up your classroom library with class books!  Everyone LOVES them!

It's EVERYWHERE!

     A, B, C, D, E, F, G…..are you still excited about singing the "Alphabet Song"?  Need some new ideas for teaching letters and sounds?  A fun way we've found is to use environmental print.  This is defined as the print found in the natural environment of the child.”

     This is the print that is all around and is really the first print children learn to "read"!  Stop signs, logos, stores and restaurant names like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, etc. good examples.  It’s everywhere and children see it and use these known words to make transitions to new knowledge.   Children know a favorite food by its packaging but you can use that recognition to teach about letters and the sounds they make. 

     Start by asking students to bring in labels and logos that they are familiar with.  Send the parent letter home.  Click {here}. When the labels come pouring in, you will want to trim around them until only the main logo or name is left.  You can see that the word Ruffles (on green board below) has been trimmed until only that one word is predominant.  Don’t be afraid to throw some of the more questionable labels! Put the labels in baggies or envelopes with the students' names on them as some of the labels will be used on individual projects and some will be used for whole class activities.

I Can Read Posters: (We suggest that you start with this one!)

Make individual student posters called “I Can Read”.  Glue 3-5 labels that each child has  brought in that they know on a 12"x18" sheet of paper! Anything they can recognize is allowed even if it has a digraph, blend or r-controlled vowel at the beginning of the word. If they can read it, they can glue it on their poster.  Have children share by “reading”

their poster to the class.  Display them on the wall so you can refer to them as the need arises.  An additional activity could be the small version seen below.  Have each child choose one of their labels and glue it on {this paper}. They copy the name of the item and write the first letter.  Model several of these with the whole class before having them do them individually.  This will help reinforce the letter names and the sounds they make. 

Student Extension paper

SORTING LABELS center

Sorting Center:

One center activity could be "Sorting Labels". Provide students with a stack of labels and 2-3 letters as the “sorting categories”..  Have students sort out the labels by placing them under the correct beginning sound.  Scaffold this activity by pre-bagging labels that match your target letters. Having too many in the 'mix' will be confusing!  You might want to glue the labels onto small cards for easier handling. 

Since you are focusing on letter names and the sounds they make, we suggest that you do NOT use logos that have digraphs or  
r-controlled sounds or other phonic elements that have not been taught yet.

Sample Dictionary page

Class Dictionary: Use 26 large pieces of construction paper.  Label each page with a big letter.  Glue environmental logos on the pages that correspond with the same beginning sounds.  Ex. The M page might have a McDonald’s logo, M& M’s, a magazine picture of a milk carton , etc.  One management tip would be to do 1-2 dictionary pages a day as a whole group activity.  Go through the labels and ask the children to “read” them and determine whether they start with the letter(s) on the dictionary pages being created that day. 

Remember to use the familiar print to reinforce their learning about letter names and their sounds.  Use clear logos and labels that are good examples of the sounds. Save words like Cheerios and Chips Ahoy for later in the year when you are learning about digraphs! 

Shared Writing:

Use the labels during Shared Writing too!  Place some labels in a bag and pull one out at a time.  Ask students to say a sentence using that logo.  Write the sentence on a large piece of chart paper or tablet and glue the logo in the place where it occurs in the sentence.  Pull out another one.  Share the pen (colored marker) with the students by choosing someone to come and write a letter that starts or ends a word in the sentence. Do several in one sitting or add to the chart on subsequent days.  Reread all the sentences written during that session of Shared Writing. Reread the previous day's writing if you are adding to the chart. 

Pocket Chart Reading:  Add sentence strips or word cards with sentences like:
I can read___________, I like to shop at ____________, I like to eat at ___________ etc. Add labels to the ends of these sentences. 

There are so many uses of environmental print. It's amazing how quickly your students begin to make the connections to letters and sounds when you use the power of the wonderful world of print they already know!

Keep on reading! Jackie & Kylene

Here are some products you might enjoy using with your class.  Click the links to find them at our TPT store. 

Beginning Readers for Guided Reading

ABC Race Car Literacy Center

ABC Apple Swipe Letter Recognition Game FREEBIE
I Like Letters Song & Student Extensions

Let's Talk About Class Books!

Hey everyone!  It's Aimee from Primarily Speaking.

I'm so excited to be back here blogging on Who's Who and Who's New!

Let's talk about class books!  I love class books, and so do my students.  These books are always, hands-down, the most popular books during the students' free choice reading time. 

I like to use class books to help my students develop and continue to practice good work habits.  Translation: they are a great way to encourage your students to work neatly.  Before we make a book, we always talk about who will be reading the book.  We talk about the other books we have read (printed books that have clear and easy to read text) to help clarify the importance of making sure their contribution to the class book is user friendly.  Knowing that their peers will be looking at the books often, reminds the students to slow down and turn in a quality piece of work.  This also encourages them to take ownership of their learning and to take pride in their work.

Next year, I plan to start my year by making class books.  It's the perfect way to give my students practice with the quality of work expectations I will set forth the first week of school. 

Class books also encourage students to read!  My students always love to read what their peers have written and illustrated.  I watch them read these books and laugh and smile.  I watch them get "Sally's" attention to let her know that they are reading her page.  In this sense, the books also help to build a sense of community within the classroom!

They are also a great way to showcase learning.  We recently wrapped up a mini unit on collective nouns.  As part of our study, we made a class book.  Each student illustrated a collective noun phrase (a bunch of grapes, a gaggle of geese and so on).  It's been a hit ever since it hit the shelves, so to speak.

We have also made class books that showcase our knowledge and understanding of multiple meaning words and using polite manners.

Since these books are so popular, I want them to be easily accessible.  So, I store them in a bin like this.

So, what to do with those books at the end of the year?  Well, you could raffle them off to your students during the last week of school.  Or, if you have a classroom economy, your students could buy them with their classroom dollars.  Or, you could save them for the following year for your new batch of students to enjoy.  Even though their classmates may not have made the books, your new students will still enjoy reading content that was created by other kids.

Toodles!

     Summer is here and time to dive into the OCEAN!  

     What a perfect time to study the ocean and beach!   We'd like to share some of our favorite activities in our ocean/beach thematic unit.

     When starting a new unit of study we begin by building a “community” bulletin board.  Everyone in the class contributes in creating the habitat.  For the ocean, we start with  a blue background and add large clumps of seaweed for inspiration!  Step one involves brainstorming all the living things that might be found in  the ocean.  Next, each student is given a white piece of paper with instructions to completely fill it with their drawing.  We found they have success if they first draw their “creature” in pencil and then color it with crayons or colored pencils.  When it is complete, they cut around their drawing and all the pieces are stapled to the blue background.  When the board is complete, the whole class says, “It’s alive!” as we marvel at our beautiful ocean scene.

     

This is a close-up picture of a small part of the bulletin board.

 Parent participation is always welcomed throughout the school year. Early on, we send a letter asking parents if they would be willing to share their talents, hobbies, skills, and professions with our class.  This is always optional but the parents love to be part of their child’s learning experiences.  When our ocean unit starts, we are amazed to find life guards, fishermen, boat owners, snorkelers, scuba divers, etc. all willing to come in and share!

For example, one parent brought in all the gear necessary to go scuba diving and snorkeling.  We pushed back the classroom furniture to clear a large space.  The students had fun putting on the flippers and snorkeling gear.  They even tried carrying a air tank and discovered it was quite heavy.  They pretended to go scuba diving with the carpeting being the ocean floor.  We placed some large seashells around for them to pick up.  What an experience!

     Ready for a GOOEY slightly smelly hands-on Experience?  Bring in a whole large fish from the grocery store (yes, with the head still on!) and use it to look at the body parts (bones, gills, fins, eyes, etc.) The boys LOVE this!  It is great for  generating describing words (ie. smelly, slimy, and slippery!)  We then do a rubbing placing paper on top of the fish and rubbing a soft pencil over it to notice the scales.  Have the students write what they learned about a fish! This activity can only last a few days of course! 

     As we continue to study about the ocean many discussions pop up which lead into writing projects for the whole class.  Here are a few of the class book covers we use to motivate our students.   

       In making the cover for The Message, use a piece of colored cardstock and cut the bottle shape out before laminating.  Here’s the tricky part….as you are SLOWY laminating, slip a little piece of paper in so it will be somewhere near the middle of the bottle. You might want to STOP the laminator so you can slip the word under the film!   (We wrote the word HELP on the note.)  We talk about why someone would send a message in a bottle and what it might say. Then they’re off and writing!

    In making this book cover, Deep in the Sea, put aluminum foil  around the porthole to give it a metallic look.  An ocean scene appears in the center of  the porthole showing the  bottom of the sea.  Remember to cut out the top part of the porthole before laminating so the clear film will give the feeling of a piece of window glass.  Place a blue piece of paper as the first page of the book so it will appear blue behind the porthole.  We talk about submarines and other types of diving boats that would have portholes to view the ocean.   The kids just love looking through both the bottle and the porthole when looking at their class books.  (Helpful hint:  If you don't put your name or classroom number on the cover you can replace the students' writings each year and reuse the covers! Time saver!!)

       Do a lot of Read-alouds with Ocean books to build background knowledge.  Students can write either fictional stories or non-fiction mini-reports about what they learned and what they saw (if you happen to live near an ocean!) or could see in the deep blue sea. Use your imagination!  And of course, most everyone has seen Finding Nemo so they have that for a reference point!  

This DOWNLOADABLE file contains a class book cover and 3 styles of themed writing paper.  Click {here} to find it! 

   We conclude our thematic study with individual ocean scenes.   Each student is given a piece of blue tag board.  Students either make new sea animals or reuse the ones they stapled on the community board.   Green construction paper is used to make their seaweed.

BEFORE gluing anything each student should draw a wiggly line at the top of their paper for the waves and a line about 2 inches from the bottom to create the ocean floor.  Once students have all their pieces,  they are ready to add the REAL sand and shells to their paper.

    SAND:  We have found the best way to manage the sand is to use a box to contain it. The paper is "painted" with white glue using a paint brush.  Place the blue paper into the box.  Students  scoop up some sand and sprinkle it over the glue. Lightly shake off the excess.  Place the paper on a flat surface and add REAL shells (use small ones and LOTS of glue!).  You might want to limit the number of shells (3-5) you give to each student as they will go crazy with the shells!  Elmer's glue works well and dries clear.   Sand and shells can be found at any craft store.  There is usually enough sand and shells to do this many times in the coming years so the cost is fairly minimal.   Glue on the sea creatures and their beautiful ocean scenes appear!  This art project is something they will treasure! 

     After studying about ocean life we have a “celebration”!  It was NOT a party as we can only have 3 parties a year.   However there is no limit to the number of  “celebrations” a classroom can have!!  We serve blue jello in clear cups with gummy fish.   Fish sticks, small popcorn shrimp and clam chowder round out our Ocean “celebration” meal.  

(You can see our ocean community bulletin board in the background.)

                              Here is a FREE game you might enjoy using with your Ocean studies.  

It comes with EDITABLE cards so ANY content can be added: sight words, math facts, your choice!

Beach Time Game FREEBIE with EDITABLE cards

Visit our website for other Ocean-themed ideas!