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Tomorrow, January 20th, is America’s 59 th Presidential Inauguration. Students are sure to have heard about it from their family or the media; your school district may even encourage watching the event on TV during the school day. Acknowledge your students’ curiosities and provide them with basic inauguration facts by comparing and contrasting the past ! First, ask your students for basic information about this year’s inauguration: When will it take place? Where will it take place? Who is the next president? Students can also visit kids.gov , a federal government website designed specifically for kids, to find information about the inauguration. Visiting this website will fulfill the Common Core State Standard to “integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably” ( CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.9 ) Next, tell the students that you will be examining American life in 1789, when George Washington became the first President of the United States. George Washington from the Hameray Biography Series describes Washington’s inauguration on p. 30: Ask students to compare and contrast George Washington’s inauguration to tomorrow’s inauguration . You may want to create a Venn diagram to record the similarities and differences. Use the rest of George Washington’s biography to get a glimpse into American life in the late 1700s. How was the late 1700s different from your life today? p. 6: the calendric system p. 9: American schools p. 17: Fashion p. 19: The political status of colonies p. 30: The U.S. capital By using the Hameray Biography Series to compare and contrast, your students will learn real-world knowledge while fulfilling Common Core State Standards! ~~~

J. Richard Gentry, affectionately known as

Editor's Note: This blog was previously published. We are re-sharing it for a fun holiday-themed literacy-building activity. This is a guest post from teacher and blogger Elizabeth Hall. Learn more about Elizabeth by visiting her blog, Kickin' It In Kindergarten. During the past few weeks, we have read some fantastic holiday books. We spent an entire week reading and comparing different versions of The Gingerbread Man. I like doing a week of gingerbread stories because it allows you to be “holiday-ish” without talking about Christmas. Even though you might love Christmas, not every child in your class celebrates it. Gingerbread stories give you the feeling of Christmas, and students don’t feel like they are being left out of a celebration. It’s a win-win situation! We completed our first

At the beginning of the school year, your students arrive with different histories, households, and emotional experiences. Developing social and emotional skills not only influences a student’s willingness and ability to learn—these skills also plays a crucial role in classroom behavioral management. That being said, abstract topics like emotions do not necessarily lend themselves well to explicit instruction in a classroom. How can you effectively teach emotional literacy? Reading narrative texts will help students develop their emotional and literary intelligence! This five-post blog series will demonstrate ways that narrative books can teach four basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Emotional Literacy Also Links to Common Core State Standards The ability to identify and describe various emotions is crucial for reading narratives. The Common Core State standards for Grade 2 require students to “describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3), which they can only accomplish after learning how to “use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, settings, or events” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.17). By building an emotional vocabulary, students can begin to understand how characters feel in different situations. The skills used to describe fictional characters easily apply to real-life people as well. Scanning illustrations to find clues about the characters’ thoughts is comparable to reading facial expressions. Particular diction and inflection within an utterance can signal the intensity of the emotion. By practicing these reading skills, students also improve their emotional literacy. Beginning with next week's post, we will share books from Joy Cowley Early Birds and the Kaleidoscope Collection that promote emotional literacy. Today, we’d like to highlight Hameray products that are specifically designed for developing emotional skills: A Box Full of Feelings A Box Full of Feelings features situational pictures, finger dolls, and posters to introduce emotions. With an emotive music CD and “feelings” masks, there are limitless opportunities for classroom activities. This blog series centers on the same four feelings addressed in this box—happy, sad, angry, and afraid. Familiarizing your students with different facial expressions will help them identify those emotive clues in a story's illustrations. The Feelings ArtbookStudents familiarize themselves with emotional issues through drawing activities. The “Empathy” section prompts students to think from different perspectives. This emotional skill serves as the basis for considering the feelings, responses, and personality of fictional characters in a book. Make sure to click this link to browse our full list of products that will support this blog series. Next week, we will begin with the most familiar and desired emotion,

This is a guest blog post by Marcy Godesa, a first-grade teacher from Oregon who blogs over at Searching for Teacher Balance . If you like what you read here, check her blog out, and be sure to check back here for more of her guest blog posts! When teaching students the importance of understanding their reading, lessons on making connections must take place. As adult readers, we constantly connect what we are reading to real-life events and topics. These connections are what allow our brains to store the newly read information for immediate and future use. How do we get young readers to do they same thing? First off, as parents and educators, we need to make sure that these readers are exposed to rich text, meaningful stories, and all around interesting topics. You can find wide range of books that cover these three needs in the Fables and the Real World series. My students and I love that their books contain real photographs and cover interesting topics. Second, we need a variety of books to support the strategy of making connections. By reading nonfiction text and comparing it to the author's message/moral of the story in fables, young readers are able to grow their reading minds. The connections that they are able to make between nonfiction and fiction helps to build the bridge to successful comprehension. I feel that too often young readers focus only on text-to-self connections and the text-to-world connections fall to the wayside. It is these text-to-world connections that strengthen our language skills and understanding of the world. Paired texts such as Fables and the Real World and Story World Real World are an incredible resource to use when teaching students about text-to-world, as well as text-to-text connections. My kiddos not only love the nonfiction component, but they thoroughly enjoy discussing the morals of the fables. What is your favorite resource for teaching connections? Leave a comment below letting us know! ~~~ Want to learn more about the paired texts shown in this post? Click the image below to read about the Fables and the Real World series.

By Beth Richards Phonics isn’t just a hot new buzzword; it’s an integral part of any literacy curriculum. Blevins (2017) reminds us that phonics is a tool to help students gain access to meaning through comprehension, learning, and enjoyment - the true outcomes of reading. As a follow-up to your explicit phonics instruction, you can incorporate embedded phonics work for a few minutes during small groups to reinforce the newest skill and review those previously taught skills. Here are some quick ways to reinforce phonics during small group instruction. For these examples, I’ll use the Hameray text, The Hungry Giant’s Shoe, a level I book from The Joy Cowley Collection. Regardless of your district's program, most phonics scopes and sequences will have kids at levels H-I working with long vowel patterns. Previously taught skills before these levels are typically CVC words, initial and final blends and digraphs, and silent e words. Here are some activities you could do after reading The Hungry Giant’s Shoe and instructions around the long o pattern -oa. These quick activities reinforce the current phonics focus and can be used with any phonics skills. Have students locate the word roar on page 7 and build it with magnetic letters after discussing its meaning. (Some students may benefit from color-coded vowels and consonants to allow the vowel patterns to pop.) Ask them to notice the -oa pattern and change out some letters to make new words that have the same pattern. Have them clear the consonants, and ask them to build the word boat. When they are finished, encourage them to check it in the text by locating it on page 12. Repeat with the words coat, road, and goal. Since these words are not in the text, you can build or write them on a dry-erase board for students to check. Ask students to write the word boat, and then check it in the text by locating it on page 12. Point out the -oa pattern and the sound it makes. Tell them they will change some letters to make new words with the /oa/sound they need to solve. (You can ask them to put their hands on their heads once they have solved it to avoid some students doing all the work. Once all students have hands on their heads, you can call on one of them to share.) Ask students to change the b to an r and the t to a d (road). They can then change the d to st (roast). Change the r to c (coast). Add -er to the end (coaster). Discuss any meanings they may be unfamiliar with. Hand out the following magnetic letters and have students line them across the top of their board: r, e, a, d, o, r, g, n, i, s. After rereading page 7 together to practice fluency, ask students to build the word roared. Show them how to break off the inflectional ending, and explain that the -ed part signals that the action happened in the past. Ask them to put the ed back at the top and pull down the letters to make the word roaring. Practice using it in a sentence and discuss how it’s different from roared. Ask students to draw a vertical line down the middle of their dry-erase board to make two columns. Have them write an oa header at the top of one column and o_e (a previously taught skill) at the top of the other column. Give them a word, and ask them to write it in the correct column. If students aren’t sure, they can try it both ways and see which one looks right. Examples of words to have students write in the chart include roar, boat, load, hope, globe, soap, float, hose. These are just a few ways to reinforce phonics skills during small group instruction. The activities can be done in only a few minutes and help your students notice and transfer the phonics patterns from your explicit instruction into the words they read and write in continuous text. ~~~ Explore the Joy Cowley Collection for more titles about the Hungry Giant and other humorous Joy Cowley characters such as Mr. Whisper, the Meanies, and Mrs. Wishy-Washy. Also available in select titles in Big Books and Spanish. ~~~ Beth has been teaching for twenty years. For the last nine years, she has been a literacy interventionist and Reading Recovery teacher. Prior to that, she taught kindergarten, third, and fourth graders. She loves spending her days helping her students develop and share her love of reading.

January presents a great opportunity to authentically assess your students’ literacy skills. After a few weeks of vacation, how many literacy tools have your students retained? By conducting assessments, you’ll get a clear picture of which lessons students remember from last semester and which concepts still need reinforcement. English Language Learners have most likely spent their winter vacation with their families, speaking little to no English. An assessment of their language skills will help you tailor your future literacy lessons. The Oral Language Development Series Teacher’s Guide states, “Listening to students talk is one of the most powerful formative assessments you can use. Capturing and analyzing brief snippets of students’ oral language is a crucial component of supporting their language development. Teachers should listen to, record, and analyze student interactions in a variety of settings: whole group, small group, one-on-one, between peers or with a teacher” (8). If you don’t have much time to individually assess each student, the wordless books in the Oral Language Development Series will help you quickly and easily analyze language skills . Each wordless book contains relatable photographs that will stimulate any student’s creativity. What is happening on this page? The following passage from the Teacher’s Guide explains how to prompt students and record their language skills: ‘“Tell me what’s happening on this page.’ Record exactly what the child says for each page. Once you have a sampling of the child’s output, you can analyze it to see what structure that child holds independently... You can use any wordless book to assess a student’s language structure. The key issue is to have a natural conversation about the topic and see what language the child generates” (8). Remember, oral language skills go hand-in-hand with reading and writing skills . To access the assesment rubric and learn more about the importance of oral language, download our Teacher’s Guide for free at the bottom of this post! ~~~ Click the image below to download the Oral Language Development Series Teacher's Guide for FREE! ~~~

By Marisa Morales Students need to be immersed in a print-rich environment where they are given various opportunities to practice authentic reading and writing. Shared reading is one way that teachers can provide real-life literacy activities that engage all students at any language level. By mimicking lap stories read to children at home, shared reading instills a love of reading, creates community, and allows students to behave like readers with their teacher’s support. Shared reading teaches foundational literacy skills and early reading behaviors while simultaneously building students’ confidence as literacy learners. In shared reading, an enlarged text is used so all students can see the print. There are a variety of options teachers can choose as the source of the text. A few examples include commercially published big books, texts enlarged using a document camera, teacher- or student-made books, poems and chants, or a wall story. A wall story is a highly engaging resource that can be used for shared reading and is loved by students throughout the year during their independent reading time. Wall stories can be a retelling or innovation of a commercially published book and can also be related to a theme or concept currently being studied. The storyline can be created by the teacher or the students but is usually written by the teacher to ensure legibility. The students typically illustrate it. As indicated by its name, the wall story is posted on the wall for easy access by the children and can later be formatted into a book. In this example, students read the big book Es un reptil, by Debbie Moeller, from Hameray’s Colección Caleidoscopio as a shared reading text. The book has simple, repetitive text, with each page introducing a different reptile. As a follow-up to Es un reptil, the teacher creates a wall story about reptiles with a focus on punctuation. The teacher types the simple text in large, clear print, and the students use watercolors to paint the illustrations. The children feel ownership of the text because they participate in creating the illustrations. Wall stories are a powerful resource in any primary classroom because they can be tailored to meet the needs of a teacher’s current group of students. The wall story based on Es un reptil could be made more complex by extending the second sentence on each page from one word to a more complex sentence: Sí, un cocodrilo es un reptil. / Yes, a crocodile is a reptile. or Sí, un cocodrilo es un reptil porque tiene escamas. / Yes, a crocodile is a reptile because it has scales. The concept could be made more complex by adding non-reptilian animals so that the answer varies between ‘sí / yes’ and ‘no.’ An additional feature of the wall story is the matching text. Each page of the wall story has a separate card that matches the text on that page. Students match the cards with the pages of the text, ensuring they attend to the print. Various text and print features can be emphasized when students match text, depending on the teacher’s focus and the level of the students. Another example of a wall story is an innovation on the book Tortillas los domingos by Christine Jojola, another big book in Hameray’s Colección Caleidoscopio. Tortillas los domingos is a story about a group of siblings who make tortillas with their abuelita every Sunday. A fun and easy wall story that kindergarten and first graders love to make and read after enjoying Tortillas los domingos has a simple text pattern: Mis amigos y yo nos comemos (insert #) tortillas. ¡Estamos llenos! / My friends and I ate (insert #) tortillas. We are full! Like before, the teacher has control over the level of text difficulty and can ensure that the complexity of the wall story matches the needs of her learners. In this example, students create the tortillas by tearing circles from construction paper, repeatedly crumpling the paper, and using crayons to color the tortillas. Shared reading is an integral component of the primary classroom, and wall stories are a creative text resource that students of all literacy and language levels eagerly engage in. These stories often become class favorites and are revisited countless times throughout the year. Teachers can create wall stories that support and challenge their learners while simultaneously building a love of reading. ~~~ Colección Caleidoscopio comprises 180 wonderfully diverse Spanish leveled readers, both fiction and nonfiction, with 30 big books to choose from. Various authors and illustration styles keep the content fresh as your student moves to higher levels. Guided reading levels A–K. Also available in English. ~~~ Marisa Morales has been teaching for over 25 years. She has spent the last 14 years as a Reading Recovery/Descubriendo la Lectura Teacher Leader in Washington State. Marisa started her teaching career as a K-5 Special Education teacher and taught bilingual first grade for several years. She is passionate about teaching struggling readers, particularly students learning to read in Spanish.

Grandparents can significantly influence children's vocabulary by fostering a love of reading. In today's blog post, I'll share three ways to promote family literacy and celebrate Grandparents Day with leveled books for kids.

By Laura Scott Beginning readers use pictures to make sense of a new book. The illustrations and photographs help bring the story to life and make reading fun. At times, however, it is beneficial to draw students’ attention to the words of a story. This helps them realize the story comes not only from the pictures but also from the words! It encourages students to pay close attention to print and offers opportunities to practice various reading skills. An effective way to draw attention to the text of a book is by typing out and printing just the words of the story, excluding pictures and pages of the book. After reading a book several times, encourage students to read just the typed text of that same story on a separate sheet of paper. This puts the familiar words of the story in a new place, encouraging students to focus only on the text and recognize words from the story outside of the book. This blog has an activity packet that includes isolated text from two books typed out on separate sheets of paper. Click here to download the activity packet in English. Click here for Spanish. Isolated Text Activity: 100th Day of School During whole or small group, practice reading the fiction-nonfiction pair One Hundred Animals and Hundredth Day of School from Hameray’s Kid Lit Series. Once students are familiar with the books, practice reading the isolated text from the books located in the activity packet. Remind students that they are familiar with the words and encourage them to read with confidence, fluency, and expression. Use the isolated text to practice word work, decoding, or concepts of print, like counting how many words are in a sentence or discussing the meaning of quotation marks. After students read both books, they will have read more than 100 words! Use the last page of the activity packet to draw and color a picture of students or a class reading more than 100 words. Click here to download the Activity Packet. To celebrate the 100th day of school, One Hundred Animals and Hundredth Day of School are available to read online for a limited time. Click here to read the books online. This activity is also available in Spanish, with Lecturitas books Cien animales and El centésimo día de clases. Click here to access the reading activity packet in Spanish. Access the online books Cien animales and El centésimo día de clases by clicking here (available for a limited time). More Ways to Practice Reading with Isolated Text Model fluent and expressive reading. Read the story while students read the isolated text on separate sheets of paper. Invite students to repeat after you as you read each sentence. Focus on expression, pausing at punctuation, and reading at an ideal pace. Invite students to practice reading the books’ isolated text independently or with partners. Remind them to read fluently and with expression. Play the game “Find That Word.” Say a word from the story and challenge students to find that word in the isolated text. Practice concepts of print with the isolated book text. Identify the beginnings and endings of sentences, count how many words are in a sentence, and find the longest word. Drawing students’ attention to the book's text reinforces the critical role of words in a book. It offers opportunities to practice fluency, concepts of print, and word identification. ~~~ Kid Lit is a unique series for beginning readers featuring fiction stories highlighting meaningful childhood moments matched with companion nonfiction to support comprehension, build knowledge, and boost vocabulary. Ideal for beginning readers and grades K–1. Reading levels A–D. Also available in Spanish. ~~~ Laura Scott taught English Language Learners of all ages for twelve years and spent three years as a bilingual coordinator and co-teacher in dual language K-1 classrooms. She is a part of the Hameray team. Laura values giving a voice to all students by supporting teachers as they bravely try new approaches to learning in their classrooms.

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By Margaret Tsubakiyama Reading is hard work, especially for young readers. It’s easy for them to get off task. How do you keep your students engaged during independent reading when you need to meet with others in small groups? I have some tried-and-true ideas to share with you. Sight Word Scavenger Hunts My students can't wait for this activity! You can make a list of the high-frequency words your students have learned, or you can have them make their own list from the word wall; they can always use more practice writing sight words! Explain that they will be going on a scavenger hunt during reading time. If your students have a book box of guided reading books, these are great resources. Leveled books such as Joy Cowley's Wishy-Washy Garden are packed with sight words! Each time they find one of the words on their list, they make a tally mark. This can easily lead to a discussion about the most common sight words or a math lesson graphing these words. We love interdisciplinary learning! Sticky Notes Sticky notes are a teacher’s best friend; I use them all the time because they make any activity more fun. I start by showing my students a book I have read and annotated with sticky notes. I tell them that readers think and make connections as they read. For young students, “annotating” can be as simple as making a smiley face on a page they like. More advanced students will write labels or simple sentences on their sticky notes. Give them each a stack of ten sticky notes, a pencil, and off they go. Speech Balloons and Thought Bubbles Speech balloons and thought bubbles help with comprehension and keeping students on task. You can make these yourself or have your students make them. I believe in students making their learning tools as it gives them ownership and is something they can make repeatedly. Have each of your students make an empty “thought cloud” on one half of an index card and a “speech bubble” on the other half. Attach the cards to either end of a popsicle stick (the larger size stick works best). As students read, they can use their thought cloud/speech bubble sticks to think about what the characters might be thinking, feeling, or saying. Partner Game “What Comes Next” is a fun game during partner reading time. In this game, one student reads a page, then stops to ask their partner what they think the next page might say. It’s a wonderful way to build prediction skills. A book like Joy Cowley’s Roll Call would be perfect as it has a predictable pattern and reinforces letter sounds and names. Keeping students enthusiastic and focused with activities they repeat daily, like independent reading, can be challenging. Putting fun and simple spins on the same activity helps students stay engaged and excited about reading books! ~~~ Bring Joy Cowley’s humor to beginning readers with Joy Cowley Early Birds. Students look forward to reading stories about the adventures of recurring characters such as Mrs. Wishy-Washy and Little Rabbit. Big Book versions of the Mrs. Wishy-Washy titles are perfect for shared reading! There are 60 leveled readers and 15 big books. Guided reading levels C–G. ~~~ Margaret Tsubakiyama is a kindergarten teacher in California. She has a master's in Literacy and Language Acquisition and is a National Board Certified Teacher.

Reluctant readers exist at every grade level, from kindergarten to twelfth grade. While they are plenty of lower-leveled guided reading books in the educational market, it can be difficult to find higher-leveled books . This problem is especially difficult for middle school English teachers, where the school literacy program may not be as robust as their elementary school counterparts. Hameray offers leveled books from Guided Reading Level A through Y. The two highest-level book series are the Download Series and the Extraordinary Files —together, they make a great combination of nonfiction and fiction books for your classroom! Best of all, every book in the series is clearly leveled, so you never need to guess about the textual complexity of a book. Extraordinary Files is a fast-paced fiction series, where two FBI agents tackle various supernatural mysteries. The titles in the series range from Guided Reading Level T–Y, allowing students to continue enjoying the series as their reading skills develop. The relationships between characters are complex and contain romantic elements that will appeal to a middle school audience. With 48 pages in each book, the Extraordinary Files series offers a substantive and accessible option for teen students. The Download Series titles range from levels Q to T. Each title focuses on a high-interest topic, such as Motorcycles (level T) and Basketball (level S). In addition to informational facts, the books also contain fictional stories featuring older characters—the protagonist in Cool Brands (level T) uses aftershave, something that older students can relate to. Other Hameray series like Underwater Encounters and Hameray Biography Series contain titles up to Guided Reading Level S. Look no further for middle school leveld books! ~~ Click the left image below to download information about Extraordinary Files . Click the right image below to download information about Download .

This is part two of a three-part series on tutoring by guest blogger Geraldine Haggard, author of our Kaleidoscope Series books Helpers , Four Seasons , Seeds , and What Is a Friend? To see her other posts, click here ! 12 Tips for Tutoring Older Students 1) Use independent level reading material to help student focus on the comprehension strategy. 2) Always include vocabulary modeling and released responsibility activity (context clues, base/root word, affixes, multi-meaning word, figurative language, etc.). Use a dictionary and/or thesaurus when needed. Teach the student how to use these tools. 3) Before reading nonfiction, ask the child to share what he knows about the topic. Remind him that he may have to use some of that knowledge to understand the text and make inferences. 4) Begin the session's reading by asking the child to read the first and last paragraphs, scan the sub-headings, and study any graphics. The child can then predict what he or she will probably learn from the story or nonfiction selection. This will help the student monitor his or her reading. 5) Include some oral and some silent reading. This will help you define any special needs of the student—fluency, rate, structural analysis, syntax, etc. 6) Emphasize only one or two comprehension strategies per session. Modeling by you and then released responsibility to the student are keys to success. You talk through the strategy, telling the child how to use the strategy. The child then uses what you modeled as he or she reads further. 7) Include fiction and nonfiction. Poetry and plays can also be included. The last two genres are now part of many states' testing programs. 8) Use subtopics to model and help student search for answers and work with sequence, details, and main idea. 9) Rereading parts of the text to check comprehension and/or look for special information is important. Help the student see when this is important and how to scan. 10) As you conclude the session, select one strategy that you modeled and then use it to guide the student later in the session. Ask the student to put into his or her own words how the strategy was used. 11) Gradually increase the reading level of the passages as the student demonstrates an ability to successfully use the strategies of comprehension. 12) Massive amounts of private reading by the child at the independent level are still needed. This time spent with reading can increase the rate and fluency of the student's reading. Both are essential to success as a successful reader. ~~~ Dr. Geraldine Haggard is a retired teacher, Reading Recovery teacher leader, author, and university teacher. She spent thirty-seven years in the Plano, TX school system. She currently tutors, chairs a committee that gifts books to low-income students, teaches in her church, and serves as a facilitator in a program for grieving children. ~~~ To learn more about the Kaleidoscope Collection series of books, which includes four titles written by Geraldine Haggard, click here to visit the Kaleidoscope page of our website , or click the image below to download an information sheet with highlights of the series.

Women's History Month is right around the corner, so I'm excited to share a three-part blog post series that you can use to help students practice reading and writing strategies while they learn about women in history. In today's blog post, I'll explain how students can analyze and write about information in a level N biography about Sacagawea and a level O biography about Jane Goodall.

Spring has sprung! Because spring is a transitional season, the weather outside often changes drastically from day-to-day—even if it’s sunny and pleasant today, it could be windy and raining tomorrow. Unpredictable weather fluctuations might be frustrating for your students, who are ready to play outside on the playground. On the other hand, though, since it’s possible to experience a vast range of weather during a short amount of time, the spring is the best time of the year to teach lessons about the weather. Hameray offers a multitude of books, both narrative and informational, that discuss the weather and the changing seasons. On a rainy spring day, keep students engaged by reading narratives about puddles and umbrellas from the Kaleidoscope Collection : In Puddles , a young boy frolics outside in the rain by jumping into puddles—he even sees a rainbow! Whose Umbrella? traces a rabbit’s quest to find the owner of a lost umbrella. On a sunny day , teach your students about the importance of sunlight with these titles from Fables Real World : The Sun describes how the sun is so hot that “nothing can even get close to it without melting”! Sun and Wind Energy discusses how the weather can be used for sustainable energy and for generating electricity. On windy days , mix up the genres with one informational and one narrative book: Wind , from Fables Real World , discusses the different words that we use to describe wind (breezes, gusts, gales, hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards). Students will be enthralled by the power of wind! Hurricane Dog , from Kaleidoscope Collection , follows a dog that looks for a new home after a disastrous hurricane hits his town. Selecting reading materials based on that day’s weather keeps your lessons relevant and engaging. Happy spring! ~~~ For more information about the Kaleidoscope Collection and Fables and the Real World , click the images below.

By Rhonda McDonald, Reading Specialist, Guest Blogger When teaching reading for fluency and expression, you need to look for material that will engage your students. Reader’s theater is an exciting way to motivate struggling readers. When kids fulfill a role in a play, they immerse themselves in rich opportunities to strengthen their reading skills. In today's post, I'll explain how you can engage students with reader's theater with books at reading levels I through M. Kindergarten and first grade students come to school with fertile imaginations. They can easily get into the heads of characters, especially animals. After reading a narrative text aloud, ask children to retell the story as if they're one of the characters. You may want to ask them to invent a new ending to a familiar story. You'll discover many familiar traditional tales, such as Three Little Pigs , Cinderella , The Gingerbread Man , or Little Red Riding Hood , within Story World Real World . These leveled readers range from levels I through M. To help students get into the mood of acting and into the characters' heads, have students make character masks or headbands. You'll immediately see how much fun students have as they plan decorations for their masks and use recycled materials found around the classroom or at home. You can have them attach their mask to a craft stick or use string to wrap around their heads and attach to the ends of the mask. Use a box or crate to store a variety of masks for students to reuse when acting out different stories. It's amazing to see a shy child transform into the character they're portraying. If this is a regular part of your classroom routine, kids will quickly become familiar with theatrical retelling of stories. For older students, a series called SuperScripts is a great resource you can use to engage striving readers with stories written in a play format. The interest level for these plays spans third through twelfth grade for students who are reading at guided reading levels M–P. Truth or Dare is a level M story from this collection about children attending a summer camp. While practicing skateboarding tricks, one of the children brags about his skills. He dares the others to try a dangerous trick. They reluctantly agree, but the trick goes wrong when the braggart falls off a ledge. In the end, he admits to the others that he can’t do the trick either. You can introduce the play with a discussion about bragging and bullying. Talk about how it is wrong for someone to dare another person to try something that they know is dangerous. Assign parts and read the play all the way through for the first time. Ask students to describe their assigned characters. Spend some time discussing how students can solve an instance of bullying. Then ask students if they have suggestions for props to act out this story. The next day, have students read the play again, but ask them to listen to the flow of the words and focus on where they need to read the lines of their characters. Encourage them to add expression while reading the script. If there are troublesome words, practice the correct pronunciation. With repetition, students will become confident with their parts in the play while participating in engaging reading comprehension practice. It is important for kids to know that the result of so much practice will be a performance in front of an audience. This sets a purpose for the activity and gives them a reason to give their best effort. As the process becomes a normal activity throughout a school year, you will be pleasantly surprised at the acting abilities of your students. Fluency and confidence will grow with each play. Practice sharing positive comments to encourage constructive feedback between students, such as I like the way ___ did the voice of his character. ___ did a nice job of ___. The group did a nice job making props for their play. I thought ___ was funny when she ___. You may also want to create a reader's theater review form to use after each performance. Students and their audience could record their feedback on the form, which gives everyone an opportunity to be engaged with every performance. This could also be helpful for you to monitor participation. One suggestion to manage the rotation of reader’s theater within a classroom would be to assign a play every fourth week. On the other weeks, the students can participate in their usual guided reading groups. It may be interesting to assign the same play to two groups of students, and then let their creative interpretation guide their practice and performance. The rest of class could compare and contrast the performances, which gives incentive for students giving their best efforts. One of the key elements of reader’s theater is to make it fun! Students who are motivated to put forth their best efforts will be engaged in the entire rehearsal and performance process. Be sure to return to our blog often for great ways to engage your students as they develop a love of reading! Rhonda was a Title 1 Reading Specialist in Botetourt County Public Schools, Virginia. She now substitutes and visits schools and libraries to lead writing workshops, story time, and parent workshops. She is also an author of children's books and several titles in our Kaleidoscope Collection and Zoozoo Animal World series. If you like what you read here, you can enjoy more by Rhonda on our blog .

Hameray is excited to announce

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Geraldine Haggard, who is a retired teacher, Reading Recovery teacher leader, author, and university teacher. She spent 37 years in the Plano, TX school system. She currently tutors, chairs a committee that gifts books to low-income students, teaches in her church, and serves as a facilitator in a program for grieving children. To recap from my previous post on literature standards for grade two, the national standards for grade two require the use of the genres of fiction and expository informational texts. In this set of two posts, I use the Story World Real World series: The Lion and the Mouse from Story World and Lions from Real World. The labels before each standard begin with

Today's blog post is the third part of a series that is written to help kids practice reading and writing strategies while learning about women in history. Keep reading if you're looking for ways to inspire kids to overcome obstacles and help others by reading biographies at levels O and S.

By Paula Dugger, M.Ed. Reading aims to understand the meaning of or comprehend the message in print. Marie Clay defines reading as “a message-getting, problem-solving activity, which increases in power and flexibility the more it is practiced.” This blog will provide a variety of comprehension activities that can be used before and after reading to help beginning readers develop comprehension. I will share activities using two books, That is Big and Help Me Up, from Hameray’s new Kid Lit Series. An activity sheet for these titles can be downloaded here. Before Reading Book Introduction and Picture Walk As with any new story, teachers should provide a supportive book introduction and shared picture/book walk before diving into the print. This will help readers activate prior knowledge regarding the topic, thus starting the comprehension process. To learn more about creating a supportive book introduction, you may view one of my earlier Hameray blogs, Using Formulas to Give Powerful Book Introductions. Another helpful blog is Increasing Language Comprehension with Supportive Book Introductions by Liz Armstrong. After Reading Cut-Up Sentence #1 This activity has its roots in the writing portion of a Reading Recovery lesson in which the student is asked to compose a written sentence. It allows the teacher an opportunity to teach while the student practices skills that are often new for beginning readers. The student composes a “story” or sentence about the targeted text and writes it on a blank piece of paper. The teacher gives assistance and instruction when help is required. The teacher writes the sentence on a sentence strip. The student reads the sentence aloud from the sentence strip as the teacher cuts each word apart. The student arranges the words back into a sentence and rereads it once completed to check for accuracy. The teacher provides an envelope with the sentence written on the front, creating a way to self-check and store the words/sentence for future use. For illustrations and more in-depth information about the student-generated sentence, you may view one of my earlier Hameray blogs, The Power of the Cut-Up Sentence. Cut-Up Sentences-Text Generated For a small group, I will describe a similar way to incorporate this activity by using text-generated sentences that can be prepared ahead of time. The teacher writes several sentences from the text, each on a different sentence strip so that students in a small group will have individual sentences. Student(s) will read the sentences aloud as the teacher cuts each word apart. Student(s) will rearrange the words and reread the sentence to check for accuracy. Place the words of each sentence in prepared envelopes (that can be done ahead of time) with each sentence written on the front. This allows students to self-check and stores the words for future practice with rearranging the sentences. Rereading cut-up sentences leads to expanded conversations about the book. For example, after reading cut-up sentences from the book, Help Me Up, students can begin to think deeper about the text and relate it to their own experiences. When do students ask for help from a parent, sibling, or friend? What are some examples of how students help others? Effective pre-reading and post-reading activities help early readers understand that reading is fun because you gain knowledge and share stories. Students excitedly view books as sources of information and entertainment, reinforcing comprehension as the end goal. I hope you and your students find these comprehension activities fun and helpful. Click here to download my FREE comprehension sheets for That Is Big and Help Me Up, from Hameray's Kid Lit Series. ~~~ Don’t forget to check out the new paired text series, Kid Lit, designed for beginning readers and composed of themes kindergarteners will easily identify with in their everyday lives. Each pair consists of an illustrated fiction text and a related nonfiction text. ~~~ Paula Dugger has a B.S., M.Ed., and Reading Specialist Certification from The University of Texas at Austin and Reading Recovery training through Texas Woman’s University. Paula spent 35 years in the public schools teaching children to read in grades 1-12, including 23 years as a Reading Recovery Teacher and Teacher Leader. She also served as a Reading Recovery Teacher/ Teacher Leader and the reading coordinator for her school district in Texas, overseeing district-wide reading programs spanning all grade levels. In addition, she has been an adjunct professor in reading at Texas Woman’s University and Dallas Baptist University. Paula and her husband Neil enjoy raising Texas Longhorns and are parents of two daughters and five grandchildren. She has authored over 40 blogs and 22 early literacy books for Hameray. She finds it personally rewarding that her books are the starting point of her grandchildren’s journey to becoming successful and proficient readers.

This is a guest post by blogger Laureen. If you like what you see here, you can check out her blog, Teach with Laughter , for more of her writing. Hi there! It’s Laureen again, excited to share with you an activity you can use with many of the Mrs. Wishy-Washy books. If you look at my past posts, you’ll see that I am a huge Mrs. Wishy-Washy fan! While reading one of the Joy Cowley’s Early Birds books, Wishy-Washy Ice Cream , I thought about the long and short vowels in the title and that my students needed some practice differentiating the two. I made two headers one that reads long vowels and the other short vowels. Then I created some picture cards that can be printed out, cut apart and sorted as seen on this student instruction card. I keep this instruction card at the literacy center to remind students what they should be doing. Since I am usually doing guided reading with another group while students are working on word work, I like to include a recording page so I can check for understanding and keep students accountable for their work. I hope you and your students enjoy this activity and if you don’t have any books from Joy Cowley Early Birds in your classroom, be sure to check them out. I think they’re a must for every classroom! ~~~ Laureen is a first-grade teacher in Canada. She has been teaching kindergarten and grade one for more than twenty years. Laureen loves to make learning fun and you can find her at her blog, Teach With Laughter . ~~~ To learn more about Joy Cowley Early Birds , click the series highlights image below to download information sheets with key features . To get today's free activity download, click the image to the right below!

Blog Series: Prep Your Library! With back-to-school around the corner, we are excited to share a series of blogs offering valuable tips and thought-provoking questions about building and organizing school/classroom libraries. This blog was previously published; we are re-sharing it today as part of our series. By Susan Bennett-Armistead, author of the informational texts in our My World Series / Colección Mi Mundo. Selecting Nonfiction with Diversity in Mind I recently came back from a trip to an African country. While there, I had the opportunity to visit a few shops. I discovered that it was impossible to find a doll with dark skin. All the dolls were white. In a country where the population is 99% black, a child could never find a doll that looked like him. What message does that send about what is valuable and desirable? It got me thinking about how we represent diversity in our own country. Many of us have designed our classrooms to be more responsive to the variety of diversity represented by the children in our program. The National Association for the Education of Young Children’s accrediting process and individual programs such as Head Start and YMCA’s child care programs insist that diversity be addressed in early education settings. (For this discussion, diversity is broadly defined, including gender, racial, economic, linguistic, educational, body type, ability, family structure, and ethnic diversity.) For most of us, this translates to actions such as making sure we have baby dolls of more than one race, books that have representations of families that look like our children’s families, and more than one language represented on our classroom posters and labels. When we think about the books in our classroom, we tend to select our story books with diversity in mind, but we must do the same with our informational texts. Here are some tips for examining informational texts and their use with an eye toward diversity: Select Topics that Appeal to Various Groups Some topics are part of the universal experience: family, friends, insects, transportation, clothing, etc. Everyone has a relationship with these topics; no one is excluded, even if there is variation by community or region. On the other hand, some subjects, such as holidays, can leave children and their families behind. Choose topics to include rather than exclude while broadening everyone’s experience and content knowledge. Choose Content-Based Books with an Eye Toward Diversity Whatever topic you choose to address, you will reinforce it with books throughout your classroom and day. When selecting informational books, look for books depicting people of color, families with non-traditional structures, and people using assistive devices. Include informational texts written in more than one language. You might wonder how much to do this. In our series, My World / Mi Mundo , we used the ratio of people of color in the US to guide our selection of photos. For example, in the US, approximately twelve percent of the population is African American. In our series, approximately twelve percent of the images show African Americans. If most of your class is one racial group, you might use that as your guide for selecting materials. Beware of representing one group at the expense of another. Even if all your children have the same racial background, family structure, or ability level, there is value in having more than one group depicted. Supporting Materials Can Represent Diversity When children have the opportunity to make concepts their own through play, such as dramatic play and art, be sure to include materials from various cultures. If you are talking about nutrition and setting up a grocery store in the dress-up area, include foods that may come from other places or might not be familiar to all the children in your group. Start with what they know and add more novel material. A great way to do this is to encourage families to contribute materials for your theme. The foods one family eats may differ significantly from another family’s diet. Sharing their empty containers to use in the dress-up area grocery store gives your class an excellent opportunity to talk about foods from different families. Look For Experts Who Reflect Diversity If you are studying insects, you may talk about scientists who study insects. Strive to select scientists of more than one race and from different countries, including both genders. Guest speakers who visit you should be held to the same standard. Similarly, authors of books on topics you read ideally represent diversity. Discussions of Stories Can Turn into Informational Analysis A good friend of mine teaches a unit on Cinderalla stories each year. She uses the traditional French tale, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, The Rough Faced Girl, and some goofy ones like Cinderella Penguin . Each comes from a different culture with its own clothing, customs, and way of talking. After the children have heard many different Cinderella stories, they analyze what is the same and different about the stories. While the stories themselves are not informational texts, the analysis of the text is similar to how we analyze information about any topic. This works well with older children working independently in small groups and with little children in a whole- or small-group setting with adult support. The world of information is vast. We can design our classroom materials and experiences to help children learn new information while seeing the diversity of the world around them. Through content and depictions included in books, we can help students see themselves as part of a larger, gloriously diverse world…where not all dolls are white. ~~~ Susan Bennett-Armistead, Ph.D., is an associate professor of literacy education, the Correll Professor of Early Literacy, and the coordinator of literacy doctoral study at the University of Maine. Before her doctoral study, Dr. Bennett-Armistead was a preschool teacher and administrator for 14 years in various settings, including a brief but delightful stint in the Alaskan bush. ~~~ For more information on the My World series by this author, you can visit the series page on our website or click the image below to download an information sheet. You may also view our teacher guide and 48 free activity sheets under My World Collection.

By Paula Dugger, M. Ed., Guest Blogger Marie Clay concluded that readers and writers use common skills and strategies that each contribute to both areas in the development of literacy. Using a balanced literacy framework helps young children simultaneously grow as readers and writers. Keep reading because I'll provide some easy and fun ways for you to help individual students and small groups improve writing skills. Children have been learning to write from the moment they grabbed a crayon to begin scribbling on a surface. Often, kids lose confidence in writing when they begin formal education because of rules and expectations. Children go through developmental stages of writing according to their age, experience, and exposure to writing. This is why it's important to express to children that their early attempts at writing are valid. Try some of the following ideas to help students with writing in your classroom. Drawing and Scribbling: One way to help children develop their writing skills is by allowing them to draw pictures or make marks on the page to convey a message. Start by reading a story, such as Little Rabbit's Story , and ask them to draw a picture of their favorite character or part of the story. Invite each child to tell you about their picture, and what they would say in words about the picture. You can record each child’s message by writing their words on the page and then help them read what was dictated. Writing with a Shared Pen: As you help children build confidence and skills with writing, allow them to share a pen to add known letters in words they recognize. If a child wants to write about a dog and knows the letter D , allow him or her to write that letter on the page and then share the pen with other kids. Over time, you can adjust the amount of letters that students write according to their mastery of letter identification and writing. Retelling Narrative Texts in Groups: You can have a small guided reading group practice retelling a narrative text, such as My Noisy House . While reading the story with the group, you can model specific reading skills such as where to start reading on a page, using punctuation to determine inflection, and rereading a sentence for accuracy. Then you can have students practice retelling by drawing pictures that correspond to the main events of My Noisy House . Once this is completed, you can encourage kids to take turns rereading their illustrated stories. You can do this with additional fun narrative texts from the Kaleidoscope Collection , Joy Cowley Early Birds , or the Joy Cowley Collection . Using Alphabet Books as a Template: Phonics and phonemic awareness are necessary components of reading and writing because kids need to learn what sounds match the letters they see in print. You can teach these explicitly in a planned mini-lesson or when an opportunity arises during guided reading or writing. A great way to help children with learning letter sounds and writing is by associating letters with particular words in Letter Buddies Starters . You can make sheets with similar sentences seen on each page and provide a space for students to illustrate and make meaning for a sentence like Here is a ball . Making Animal Books for Kids: Helping kids make their own animal alphabet book is another fun activity to use to help improve writing. To make an easy animal book, have each child find the words of animals whose first letter corresponds with the letters of the alphabet. To encourage practice with sight words in sentences, you can encourage students to repeat a simple sentence structure while changing the name of the animal as they move through the alphabet. For example, I see the anteater. I see the buffalo. You can use animal books for kids within Zoozoo Into the Wild or Zoozoo Animal World as anchor texts. Having Fun with Names: Focusing students' attention on proper nouns, like a child’s name, or common nouns, such as cat or dad , is an easy way to introduce children to how words work. For instance, my grandson’s name is Blake. Although he is only 3 years old, he can verbally spell his name and makes attempts to write his name by copying from a model. With uppercase and lowercase magnetic letters , I have shown him how he can make other words that rhyme with his name to help pave the way for him to develop a list of words he can read and write. By replacing the letters B and L with different consonants, the chunk -ake can be made into new words, such as bake, lake, cake, make, take, etc. You'll see how much fun kids have with activities like this because they are in control of building new words from known words and word parts. You can easily motivate children to write when they see how much fun they can have with fun and vibrant narrative and informational leveled readers. If you're looking for a professional resource about writing across the curriculum, workshops, assessments and more, you'll want to explore Kid Writing in the 21st Century . Don't forget to visit our blog soon for more tips to help your students! Paula is an educational consultant who has previously served as a Reading Recovery Teacher/Teacher Leader, first grade teacher, Title I and high school reading teacher, and a Reading Coordinator. If you like what you read here, you can enjoy more from Paula on our blog .

Today we explore the world of the Crocodile! These amazing creatures have mouths full of teeth and are closer in genetics to birds and dinosaurs (extinct, of course!) than any other animals on Earth! Crocodiles like to live in tropical climates where they can swim in fresh water. Because of this, crocodiles can be found in multiple parts of the world that meet these requirements, including Asia, Australia, Africa, and America. Crocodiles use the natural camouflage of their thick, muddy-colored skin to blend in with their surroundings, while their smooth underbelly, streamlined body, and webbed feet help them swim quickly. A crocodile won't chase his meal too far. They are

Have you read Joy Cowley’s Little Rabbit series yet? Leveled from C-D, this all-new set from the Joy Cowley Early Birds series will bring joy and laughter into your early childhood classroom. Apart from the charming humor and adorable illustrations, the Little Rabbit series offers a multitude of opportunities for your students to improve literacy skills. The main character’s name, Little Rabbit, already includes two examples of double consonants--

Today's blog post is the second part of a series that is written to help kids practice reading and writing strategies while learning about resilient women in history. Keep reading if you're looking for ways to help students determine main ideas and key details with biographies at levels O and P.

As classrooms across the country become more linguistically diverse, you may be looking for strategies to support a multiliteracy approach to language arts instruction. Today's blog post will answer the following question: How do we support the growth of the English language with a multiliteracy approach?

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Geraldine Haggard, who is a retired teacher, Reading Recovery teacher leader, author, and university teacher. It is the second post in a series of posts on using books for building inference skills. You can see the first post here . In this series of blog posts, I have been looking at the use of guided-reading-leveled books in the early grades to develop problem solving and inference skills in young readers. I gave one book as an example in my first post , and today we will look at two more examples. You'll be able to easily generalize from these examples how to apply similar strategies to the books in your classroom library. Book Two: Knock, Knock The second book that I have chosen as an example of how to teach these inference skills is Knock, Knock by Susan C. Jensen . This book can be used for guided reading and can also be a take-home book to read. Before reading, display the cover page and ask the children how they could get the door to open. Invite them to 'knock' as you open the book to the cover page. Then walk them through the book, inviting them to make inferences along the way. Cover Page: Encourage students to ask questions as they study the pages. Prompt questions and answers. Why do you think the picture of the boy and the dinosaur are on this page? Pages 2 and 3: Why does the boy say,

....Lucinda Reeves!!!!!!!! Lucinda is a Kindergarten teacher at Frances Slocum Elementary School, so she is well acquainted with the Mrs. Wishy-Washy series. She will be receiving the book, Wishy Washy Card , which tells the story about when the animals decided to make Mrs. Wishy-Washy a special Valentine's Day card. Thanks to everyone who participated in Hameray Publishing Group 's