Week 4 Post

I love incorporating picture books into my English lessons. About three years ago, I picked up a series of books from "Really Good Stuff" magazine by Brian Cleary, that I use during English class. Each book has a specific subject area that they focus on dealing with parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, synonyms and antonyms. I introduced the synonym and antonym book to my students in September when we were learning about that subject. By the end of the year, the students were so excited to hear another story about that specific part of speech they were learning about. It was exhilarating as a teacher to hear my fourth grade students become so excited about a picture book.
These books use a rhyming pattern, illustrations, and different color font to point out the parts of speech it is reinforcing. There are also mini posters that go along with the books. I would hang them up after I read the book and it was a nice reference for the students to use!

The names of some of the books are:
"I and You and Don't Forget Who. What is a Pronoun?"
"Pitch and Throw, Grasp and Know. What is a Synonym?"
"Dearly, Nearly, Insincerely. What is an Adverb?"

Week 3 Post

A terrific book to use with fourth or fifth grade students is "The Cricket in Times Square" by George Selden. There are soo many cross-curricular activities that you can do with this story! The summary of the story is basically about a cricket, Chester, who lives in the country and jumps into a person's picnic basket, eats too much of their food, and falls asleep. When is awakes, he realizes he is on the train and the destination is Times Square, New York. Chester makes a variety of friends, including a cat and mouse and a young boy. The young boy discovers that Chester can play music with his wings and he sounds like a violin. In order to raise money for the boy's family, Chester plays music in the boy's newstand in Times Square and attracts many people, who then buy magazines and newspapers. Eventually Chester gets homesick and goes back to the country where he belongs.
This book is excellent to use to compare the city and country, as well as weather patterns in each of these places. There is a part of the story when the boy goes to Chinatown and befriends an older Chinese man who lets him in on secrets about crickets and how to take care of them. The two even eat a traditional Chinese meal. During this part of the book I bought Chinese food for my class and we shared dishes that were mentioned in the story. We also did a study on crickets and the opera.
This is a really fun book that you can incorporate exciting activities into!! I strongly recommend it!!