Simple STEM Stories will help you merge literacy and STEM with fun and engaging, hands-on STEM challenges based on a children's book.

Are you looking for diverse read alouds? Are you looking to celebrate a variety of languages, customs, and traditions? If so, this book list is for you!

Throughout the day, students experience various emotions. Sometimes, they feel light and happy. However, other times they feel like they have a giant animal on their chest. Expressing emotions isn't something students naturally understand. When students are young, they have no idea what it means to process their emotions appropriately. They need lessons and activities

Simple STEM Stories will help you merge literacy and STEM with fun and engaging, hands-on STEM challenges based on a children's book.

Teachers are always on the hunt for good book recommendations! Here you will find read alouds for upper elementary students that can be used for a variety of occasions in the classroom+ FREE reading printables. *This post contains affiliate links to Amazon for your convenience. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, which

Help students understand the importance of courage in the classroom. This post shares a wide variety of tools you can use to teach courage.

Throughout the school year, students will work on numerous projects and assignments. Honestly, they will face new challenges each day. While they may want everything to be smooth and straightforward, this isn’t the point of education. So, they will experience frustration, anger, and disappointment. When this happens, students must understand the importance of a growth

Learning about peer influence with A Bad Case of Stripes will create an inspirational unit that teaches students to be true to who they are.

This spring is presenting new challenges for teachers all across the country. Some of us are getting ready to go back to the classroom for the first time this year. Some of us have been in person all year, but we are about to get new virtual kids. Some of you have been in the ... Read More about Classroom Management and Expectations

Check out these Mr. Peabody's Apples activities, lesson plans & read aloud ideas to engage your elementary students.

Load up your Character Education Perseverance month with this bundle of activities, lessons, bulletins, charts and more!

Back to school read alouds are great for the first week of school! Here are the best back to school read alouds and how to use them in your classroom!

This time of year is so perfect for cozying up with a sweet read aloud book. I love having lots of seasonal books available to read aloud and for my students to read. Check out this list of our favorite cozy books for fall! This post contains affiliate links. Apple Cake: A Gratitude by Dawn ... Read more

Every school year is different. Different students, different needs, different plans. But one thing always remains constant: The need for engaging, SHORT novels. Maybe you're filling a shorter amount of time. Maybe you're dealing with short attention spans. Maybe you just need a quick read! Today I’m sharing 10 books your students will LOVE. These books are all 120 pages or less, making them an efficient read. BONUS: You'll also find 4 books that are 140 pages or less that I just couldn't leave off. Explore the list below of the BEST short novels for your school year. Let me know in the comments what I’ve missed and which are your favorites! Engaging Novels under 120 pages: 1. The Tiger Rising by: Kate DiCamillo Rob and Sistine's surprising discovery of a tiger gives them the courage to face past trauma. >>View my read aloud companion for this title on Teachers Pay Teachers!<< 2. Frindle by: Andrew Clements Join Nick Allen as he sparks a language revolution by inventing a new word, 'frindle', and learns about the power of creativity in the process. >>View my read aloud companion for this title on Teachers Pay Teachers!<< 3. Sideways Stories from Wayside School by: Louis Sachar Explore the eccentricities of Wayside School, a thirty-story building with a classroom on each floor, and encounter its quirky students and teachers. >>View my read aloud companion for this title on Teachers Pay Teachers!<< 4. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by: Judy Blume Peter Hatcher navigates the challenges of sibling rivalry and growing up with his mischievous younger brother, Fudge. 5. My Father's Dragon by: Ruth Stiles Gannett A resourceful young boy named Elmer sets off on an adventure to rescue a baby dragon. 6. The Chocolate Touch by: Patrick Skene Catling A boy named John discovers the consequences of his insatiable love for chocolate when everything he touches turns into chocolate. 7. Sounder by: William H. Armstrong A young African American boy and his dog, Sounder, face hardship and injustice in the rural South as they strive to reunite their family. 8. Sarah Plain and Tall by: Patricia MacLachlan A widowed farmer and two children eagerly await the arrival of Sarah, a kind-hearted woman from Maine, as they hope she will become their new mother. 9. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by: Betty MacDonald Enter the whimsical world of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a magical woman who helps parents solve their children's misbehavior. 10. Fantastic Mr. Fox by: Roald Dahl Mr. Fox outsmarts three mean farmers who are determined to catch him and his family by relying on his cleverness and love for adventure. Engaging Novels under 140 pages: 11. Number the Stars by: Lois Lowry Two young Danish girls, Annemarie and Ellen, display bravery and resilience as they help Ellen escape the Nazis during World War II. >>View my read aloud companion for this title on Teachers Pay Teachers!<< 12. Tuck Everlasting by: Natalie Babbit A young girl named Winnie Foster discovers the Tuck family's secret of immortality and must decide between eternal life and the natural cycle of life and death. >>View my read aloud companion for this title on Teachers Pay Teachers!<< 13. Stuart Little by: E.B. White A small and adventurous mouse named Stuart Little embarks on a series of daring escapades in New York City, searching for his friend Margalo the bird. >>View my read aloud companion for this title on Teachers Pay Teachers!<< 14. Mr. Popper's Penguins by: Richard and Florence Atwater Mr. Popper's life takes a chaotic turn when he unexpectedly receives a penguin as a gift. >>View my read aloud companion for this title on Teachers Pay Teachers!<< Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. The compensation received will never influence the content, topics, or posts made in this blog.

Check out these What the Road Said activities, lesson plans & read aloud ideas to engage your elementary students.

Today, I want to share my lessons and goals for the first few days in reading workshop with you. It is going to be the first day of school real soon {maybe some of you are already back in the swing of things!} and you are going to be busy! You will surely have a list a mile long of the thi

Use science read alouds to help your students master science content and vocabulary. Get a FREE list of science read alouds with 100+ books by topic.

Today I wanted to share some of my favorite books to support your lessons on respect. Having strong read-alouds makes it so much easier to introduce and reinforce social-emotional skills. […]

Here are some of my favorites STEM books for kids that you can add to your collection today! Before starting a STEM or building challenge, I always read a book with my class. I love connecting literacy, sitting together on the carpet, and engaging my students in discussions. There are so many amazing books that ... Read more

Teach responsibility in your classroom through the use of intentional activities. Continue refining what responsibility means to your students all year.

Teaching upper elementary students to be responsible is important for their academic success, for building strong character, and for helping them be successful in life. Get teaching tips, lesson ideas, and done-for-you social emotional learning activities to help your students become more responsibl

Check out these Sick Simon activities, lesson plans & read aloud ideas to engage your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade students in their learning.

20 Back to School Read Alouds with Free Printables. Perfect books for the first week of school in the library to set the stage for the year!

Looking for Constitution Day activities for your elementary classroom? These lesson ideas, read aloud and projects will engage your students

If you love the book Enemy Pie, here are some great reading and writing lessons that go great with this story. Enemy Pie is one of my students' favorites.

I used to spend so much time looking for the perfect read aloud books each month to read to my students. I have finally compiled a list on this blog post to save you so much time searching for books your students will love. I have even created FREE book companion activities you can pr

Ready to build your STEM library with the best picture books? Start Here! Check out my Top 10 all time favorite read alouds for elementary STEM

Check out these Llama Llama Misses Mama activities, lesson plans & read aloud ideas to engage your elementary students.

Check out these Pigsty activities, lesson plans & read aloud ideas to engage your elementary students in their learning.

This blog post has helpful information on how to teach character in elementary grades. There are activities and ideas for teachers!

Load up your Character Education Perseverance month with this bundle of activities, lessons, bulletins, charts and more!

Check out these Clark the Shark activities, lesson plans & read aloud ideas to engage your elementary students in their learning.

*This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links. By clicking on the links and making a purchase, we may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. 5 Read Alouds and STEM Challenges for Back to School Back-to-school STEM read alouds are a fun way to engage in STEM and maker learnin

This post shares 15 read alouds for teaching story elements with brief summaries and the specific story element skills each read aloud addresses.

A teacher’s guide to teaching social-emotional learning in the classroom. This guide has articles, children's book suggestions, videos, and a program filled with lessons and activities.

As teachers we are constantly REINVENTING THE WHEEL!! Although it can be time consuming, one thing I love about my job, is that I get the opportunity to learn, grow, create, and RECREATE year after year!! I have been using Reading Response Journals in my classroom for over 10 years, and each year I make…

Check out this list of picture books for upper elementary! Use them for interactive read alouds and as mentor texts! Such great picture books for older kids in third, fourth, and fifth grade. #readalouds

math read alouds, math reading, math readiness, math reading books, math read alouds for 5th grade, math read alouds for 4th grade, math readers, math read alouds for 3rd grade, math read alouds for middle school, math read alouds for elementary students, math read alouds for 6th grade, math reading books for middle school, math reading list, math reading center, math reading passages middle school, math reading worksheets

In the world of education, storytelling is like pure magic. And guess what? When it comes to teaching math, there's this awesome trick called "math read

Storyline Online is one of the best sites for viewing children's book read alouds. Let me share some details you might not know yet, and I'll throw in a helpful Freebie you'll use again and again. If you've looked on YouTube for kids books being read aloud you've found thousands of them. Any given children's book title usually has several different uploaded read aloud videos to choose from and there is a wide range in quality. I found Storyline Online this very way, while looking through all the YouTube videos for read alouds. Storyline Online is made possible by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, SAG-AFTRA. It is absolutely free to use. As I write this they have over fifty children's picture book read aloud videos available. Here's a sample. Each video starts with the actor, or actors, holding the book and giving a book introduction before beginning to read. The camera zooms in on the illustrations, where often little parts of the pictures become animated. Throughout the story you go back and forth between seeing the illustrations and the actor reading the book, so kids never forget they are being read to. Fully animated video movies of children's books are great, to be sure, but it is easy to forget those cartoons come from books. I think when kids watch books being read by live people there is added value and emphasis on reading. Because I had always viewed the Storyline Online videos directly on YouTube, I didn't realize that there are activity guides written for each story, which you can only get on the Storyline Online site. The activity guides, written for teachers mostly, but some with activity guides specifically for parents, are chockfull of ideas– some suggest before, during and after the story discussion points, themes, writing ideas, art, movement, even cooking activities... all sorts of things to choose from. You can find them by going directly to StorylineOnline.net under the All Books tab. You can watch the Storyline Online read aloud videos on YouTube, but when watching on YouTube it is pretty easy to get to other videos and ads, some of which you wouldn't want your kids to view. You can also watch Storyline Online videos directly on StorylineOnline.net, with options of watching via YouTube or SchoolTube, with SchoolTube being the safer option. Either way you choose to watch on the Storyline Online site, when you get to the end of the video, other Storyline Online videos will pop up. That isn't a bad thing, unless you want kids to only watch one particular story, or you want other kids to use the same device and watch that one particular story. So to keep kids on the correct story I created QR codes for the stories through Safe YouTube. Click to download Safe YouTube QR Code cards for Storyline Online videos Safe YouTube is better than safe mode on YouTube, and it takes away all those many buttons and videos that cause distractions and allow kids to click and end up anywhere on YouTube. No online connection is completely safe and kids seem to find a way to other things no matter what, so always keep an eye on what they are watching. I created one for each story on Storyline Online, currently fifty three in total. You can print out the QR Code cards in color, or they come out crisp and clean if you choose to print in black and white. Laminate, cut apart, and you'll have a set of cards for kids to use on any device with a QR Code reader. It will take them to that story and no other. These work great in classrooms as centers, Daily 5 and Readers Workshop stations, and independent reading choices. If you're a parent you'll find them useful at home or on the road with devices. To get this Freebie just click on the picture of QR code cards above. There are six pages in all. I will update as I see new stories appear on Storyline Online. Be sure to Pin this post so you can get to updated pages. I suggest you cruise by StorylineOnline.net to see the full list of read aloud titles. I found many good books there, books I hadn't heard of before. I like to have actual copies of the books the kids are going to listen to, and I like to read the book to my students first, so I can make the most out of that read aloud– focusing on vocabulary, story problem, characters, etc. But if I'm low on cash, Storyline Online is a way to let my kidpeople hear quality books at no cost to me. Many of my favorite Flashlight Press books are there, too, and if you are a regular reader you know how I love Flashlight Press. (News Flash– I'll be giving away another Flashlight Book soon!!) Storyline Online has won lots of awards and that is for very good reason. Good book selections, VERY well read! Hope you found this post about Storyline Online and the activity guides helpful. And I hope you'll download the QR Code cards and find them useful with your kids. I am not being paid or getting any perk for telling you about Storyline Online. I just wanted to share a great resource. See you next time!

Add these integrity read-aloud options to your classroom to bring character education to life and prompt meaningful discussions.