Reading Group Updates

We are focusing on a great many things during reading groups.  We talk about the current book we are reading, but we also discuss the books I read out loud in class.  This week, I have been reading several picture books.  When I read a picture book, we do the same sort of things we do when we read a longer chapter book, but in a shorter amount of time.  I pause, ask the kids what a specific word or phrase means, and we dig deeper into the book itself.  Why did the author write this book?  Was there a lesson to learn?  What was it?  We also learn a lot from the illustrations and are so important.  What did we learn from the illustrations alone?  Would the story be the same without them?  Why or why not?  I also use picture books to enhance a lesson (we have been reading a lot of great books about monsters lately!), but we also read books to learn specific things we are focusing on (inferences, vocabulary, comprehension, visualizing, etc.) in our reading.  And…some exciting news…I just started reading a graphic novel with a group – and will read one with EVERY group!  WooOooT!  We just started reading The 39 Story Treehouse by Andy Griffiths.  This is a fantastic book.  I had the chance to meet the author at Nicola’s last year.  He was hysterical.  His books are too.  My goal to reading a graphic novel is to slow them down and teach them how to delve deeper into both the limited text and illustrations.  Both of which are more complicated than they appear.  I’m just as excited as the kids! 

We started a new novel this week too.  Matilda by Roald Dahl, is one of my favorite books.  I love the strong characters that Roald Dahl has in his books and Matilda is one of my favorites.  It’s so fun to read books to your kids.  They hang on every word and LOVE to talk about what we are reading.  It’s dreamy.