Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Title: Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Author: Bill Martin Jr. was born in 1916. One of the most famous books that he wrote was Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See. Bill was a writer for 30 years. During his life he wrote over 300 children's books. In 2004 Bill passed away. 

Genre: Picture Book/Fiction 

Grades: K-2

Subject Area: ELA

Summary: This book follows a class when they go to the zoo on a class trip. Students talk about what type of animals sounds they hear well at the zoo. Students learn how to make animal sound throughout the story. It is a great way to learn about animals and the sounds they make. 

Pre Reading Activity: Create a graph that documents the different types of sounds children hear both in and out of the classroom over the course of a week. Create categories for each column, such as transportation, human sounds, machines, animals, and weather. Invite children to list the types of sounds they hear. Compare the different categories. Which column on the graph had the most sounds? Which had the least? (http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3746658)

Post Reading Activity: Have students make a puppet of their favorite animal in the book. Put the kids in order of the animals in the story and act out the story and noise there animals make. Students will say Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you see? Polar Bear puppets will say I hear a lion roaring in my eye...this will continue for the whole story. 

M is for Music

Title: M is for Music 

Author: Kathleen Krull has written over sixty books. However, writing was not always her dream. In college she got her degree in Music. From her love of music she decided to start writing children's books about music. Once she started writing she found a new passion, so she started writing about all different things. 

Genre: Fiction 

Grades: K-3

Subject Area: Music 

Summary: This book gives children words that have to do with music from a to z. Some of these words are new vocabulary that has to do with music. It gives children a way to learn music terms in a book. This way the child can see pictures to go with the terms and introduce new terms. 

Pre Reading Activity: On the white board think of words that might be in the book? Have students try and come up with one word for al least every letter on of the alphabet. If the students are struggle with a letter skip it an move on. This gets the children think about words that have to do with music. 

Post Reading Activity:  Have print out of pictures of some of the most popular vocabulary in the book. Have students write on the lines of the worksheet about the vocabulary word and define the picture in there own words. Have students color the picture. Then come up to the the front of the class and explain what they learned about the word they picked.  

Which Way to Witch School

Title: Which Way to Witch School 

Author: Scott Santoro started writing in his school for the schools new paper. Not only did he write articles for the school paper but he also had a cartoon stripe too. Besides writing Scott has work for Disney and Dreamworks as a storyboard writer. In 1999 his first book was published. 

Genre: Poetry/ Fiction 

Grades: 1-3

Subject Area: Holiday 

Summary: This story is about a school where witches go. Throughout this story there are many lessons to be learned for young witches, sometimes witches have to learn their lessons the hard way. Some lesson the witches learn included how to make a potion and how to fly on a broom. 

Pre Reading Activity: Explain what on homophone is. This is a word that has different meanings. An example is which and witch. Explain that these are the same words but the mean different things. Have students make there own list of different homophones. Then have the students count how many they came up with after five minutes. Create a class list of all the different homophones the students came up with.  

Post Reading Activity: Have students write their own story about Halloween using homophones.  They should try and use as many homophones as possible while the story still makes sense. They should at least include ten different homophones. They will complete a graphic organizer , a rough draft, and a finial copy. The final copies will be hung around the room. The final copies should also included a picture that relates to their story. 

The Snowy Day

Title: The Snowy Day 

Author: Ezra Jack Keats loved art from a young age. Keats spent much time learning about art at the local library. The first book written by Ezra Jack Keats was The Snowy Day. Keats introduced multiculturalism into children's literature. This was the start of something new in children's literature. 

Genre: Fiction

Grades: K-2

Subject Area: ELA 

Summary: One little boy named Peter wakes up on a winter morning and realizes that there is snow everywhere. He decides he wants to go outside and explore. After he is outside he notices that things are different when the snow has fallen. He does different things in the snow like making a snow angel and building a snowman. When he decides to go inside he brings in some snow but over night the snow melts because the house is too warm. 

Pre Reading Activity: As a class make a list on chart paper of the kids favorite things to do in the snow. Then discuss why they are their favorite things. After that pick four of the classes favorite things to do in the snow. Tell the students to vote for one things they like doing in the snow the best. Get chart paper graph their favorite things. Then talk about which thing to do in the snow is the class favorite Have the students draw a picture of the activity they voted for. 

Post Reading Activity: Explain what order of event are, and how events happen in the story. This is the order things happen in the story. Give an example when Peter woke up he saw snow, then he ate breakfast, and got dressed so he could play in the snow. Have the students talk about the order of events in the story we just read. Draw picture of the things the boy Peter did in the snow. Make sure you have a picture is in the order that they happened. This way it reinforces what we just talked about. But in a way little kids can understand. 

Amazing Grace

Title: Amazing Grace

Author: Marry Hoffman from a young age loved to read. Due to the influence of her two older sisters she taught herself to read before entering school. After high school Mary got her degree in English Literature for Cambridge. Throughout her career as a writer she has written over ninety books for children and teens.    

Genre: Fiction

Grades: 1-4

Subject Area: Character Education  

Summary: This story is about a little girl who loved stories. Grace always acted stories that her nana would tell her. She loved adventure the best.  She wanted to play the part of Peter Pan in her school play. When she raised her hand to play the part of Peter Pan even though she didn’t “fit” the part. The teacher gave the kids line to learn for an audition. Grace’s grandmother tells Grace she can do anything she wants if she puts her mind to it. 

Pre Reading Activity: Have the students do a pre-reading journal sentence/ paragraph starter in their journal. Have five different sentence starters up on the board and have the students write about one they like. Once students have finished writing their journal response and have drawn a picture about what they wrote about. Have them read aloud what they wrote to the class. 

Post Reading Activity: Have the class view the video film of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin as Peter Pan. Point out to the class that the role of Peter Pan is being played by a woman. Point out also that the part of Tiger Lily is not being played by a Native American. Encourage children to discuss whether they think that these parts should always be be played by a boy and a Native American? Why or why not? (Students might be interested to learn that hundreds of years ago, all the roles in Shakespeare's plays, for example, were played by men—even the roles of women—because women weren't allowed to be actors.) Why does the class think that Grace wanted the role of Peter? Have the students imagine which parts they would each like to play and tell why. (http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collateral.jsp?id=397_type=Book_typeId=77.

You Are Special

Title: You Are Special 

Author: Max Lucado has written over fifty books since he began writing. Besides writing books Max also works as a preacher in Texas. Max has sold more than eighty million copies of his print throughout his career. He believes that it is important for children to feel good about themselves and tries to make them see that they are perfect just the way they are through his writing. 

Genre: Fiction 

Grades: K-6

Subject Area: Character Education 

Summary: This is a story about not caring what other people think about you. It is important to be yourself and not care if other people don’t like you. As long as your true to yourself that is all that matters. This is a lesson the Punchinello learns after he talks to the person who made him. Punchinello meets a girl who has no stars or dots and wants to learn why dots and stars can not stick to her. He doesn’t want dots to stick to him. He goes and talks to Eli and learns that he is special.

Pre Reading Activity: I want you to use a graphic organizer provided to organize your ideas on what you think makes someone special. Students should come up with six to eight different things that make someone special.  If the kids are too young to make the graphic organizer by themselves we will make it as a class. They will give me the words and I will write it on chart paper. 

Post Reading Activity: Talk as a class about how it is important to be yourself and not change for other people.  We are the way we are for a reason. People are all different and it is important to understand that our differences make us special. Life would be boring if we were all the same because there would be no differences to us. We would not be individuals. As a class come up with ideas how to make each other feel special if someone is having a bad day. Discuss how important it is for everyone to feel special and not put each other down. Like the Wemmicks did when they handed out the dots. We want everyone to feel like a star!  

The Polar Express

Title: The Polar Express

Author: Chris Van Allsburg is a winner of the Caldecott Medal twice. Once for The Polar Express and once for his book Jumanji. For both of these stories he was the author and the illustrator. Both Caldecott winning books were made into movies which was a great honor. He has also written many other books throughout his career.   

Genre: Fiction 

Grades: K-4

Subject Area: Holiday 

Summary:  On the night before Christmas a little boy is unsure if Santa is real or not. When he tries to go to sleep he hears a noise out in front of his house. The hops on the train and is in for a wild ride. They go through a magical experience. When they arrive at the north pole Santa chooses the little boy to get the first gift of Christmas. After that night the little boy always believes in the magic of Christmas.   

Pre Reading Activity: We are going to talk about bells. I will first ring a bell and ask the kids if everyone one can hear it. I will have different sized bells and ring them or have the children ring them. I will ask the kids to explain how the different bells sound different. Then we will talk about why different bells can sound so different. 

Post Reading Activity: Put the the main events of the story on sentence strips and ask the students to put the story in order. Allow the students to work in groups or with a partner. After they put the story in the right order give them a ticket. Which will have to be turned in, in order to watch the movie The Polar Express the next day. 

Owl Moon

Title: Owl Moon 

Author: Jane Yolen has written many children stories. Before she became a writer she was a teacher of literacy and writing. Jane has written many other stories including How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, and The Devils Arithmetic. 

Genre: Fiction 

Grades: K-2

Subject Area: Science  

Summary: The story is about a father who takes his daughter owling for the first time on a cold winter night. They walk from there house to the edge of the woods then they continue through the woods. The little girls father tries to call the owl. Finally the owl call works and they see an owl face to face. 

Pre Reading Activity: I will ask the class if anyone knows what cause and effect is? From there I will explain what cause and effect is. I will give examples of cause and effect. Then the class will do a cause and effect work sheet. It will give them a cause and they will have to say the effect and then say the effect and they will have to give me the cause. 

Post Reading Activity: I will ask the class if anyone knows what cause and effect is? From there I will explain what cause and effect is. I will give examples of cause and effect. Then the class will do a cause and effect work sheet. It will give them a cause and they will have to say the effect and then say the effect and they will have to give me the cause.