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!