Wednesday, February 22, 2012

So I bought some professional books...

First of all, I would like to apologize for how long it has taken me to post about Reading for the Love of It! While it was an amazing conference and I had a great time...I also came home that night with strep throat. So here we are, a week or so later, a round of antibiotics done and... 10 lbs lighter! It's amazing what not eating can do in a short amount of time. But I am healthy, back at work and ready to share!



This post will be mainly about the professional resources I bought while at the conference and then I plan to share my thoughts on the workshops I attended in a separate post.

1. This is a set of reading comprehension cards I purchased that are aligned with the Fountas and Pinnell reading levels. As a former Grade 7/8 teacher I know VERY little about guided reading and am not proud to admit it's rarely done in my class. I just don't know what I am doing! So, I made it a goal to work on this area and this is one step towards that. These cards are both fiction and non-fiction and come with questions to discuss with the students. I figure if I start out small and get my feet wet I will feel a lot more confident when trying to do guided reading.


2. This is a book I had been eyeing up for my Medieval Times unit. It's full of monologues and dialogues of various people in the middle ages. What a great way to learn about the way of life and to integrate some drama!

3. These are my two big resource purchases! I saw both of these authors speak- Tony Stead and Lori Jamison- and loved every minute of it! I have heard Tony in the past and knew it would be great. I really enjoyed hearing Lori on the first day and went back to a second workshop on the second day of the conference but due to the settling in of strep throat I was forced to leave a little early.


Tony's book- Good Choice! is all about reading response in Grade K-6. Again, I am relatively new to Grade 4....only have taught until December last year and then going off on mat leave with my daughter. So here I am back in January feeling like a brand new teacher again as I make up everything as I go. (Thank goodness for Pinterest and blogging!!). I have done a lot with Reader's Notebooks in the past with my 7's and 8's but really felt like a lot of what we did couldn't be brought into a Grade 4 classroom. I am hoping that this book will give me some ideas and insight about how to do reader response with my Grade 4's.

Lori's book- Guiding Readers is a another steo towards my goal of learning how to do guided reading. She provides some great example mini-lessons and activities that she does with the students. The book is written very clearly and outlines how guided reading should/could look with readers working at different reading levels and stages of development. I am very excited to dive into this one!!

4. I also purchased The New Dramathemes, 3rd edition to complement my ongoing drama program. I have read through the previous editions but did not own a copy for myself.


Ahhhh. books! Gotta love them!

4 Brilliant Teaching Thoughts:

Think, Wonder, and Teach said...

Thanks for sharing! I need to post about my latest professional reading but there is so much to write about and so little time.

So glad to hear you are feeling better!

Misty
Think, Wonder, & Teach

C said...

Interesting. I may have to check these books out. Have you read the Fred Jones book? I've only gotten to read the first 70 or so pages so far, and all of it is common sense stuff, but it still makes me think, "Why didn't I think of that?!"

Tara Mulvany said...

Thank you for sharing. These sound like great resources!!

Anonymous said...

i was actually so lucky as to find those comprehension task cards and also set 1 at goodwill, for like 5 bucks. the kids love that they can use the dry erase markers on them :)

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