Picture Books for Inferring

The following are useful picture books for modelling Inferring:

1.   Dancing in the Wings - Debbie Allen 
2. Peppe, the Lamplighter - E. Bartone 
3. Journey to Ellis Island:How My Father Came to America - Carol Bierman
4. The Table Where Rich PeopleSit - Byrd Baylor 
5. Winter Fox - Jennifer Brutschi
6. Dandelion - Eve Bunting 
7. A Day’s Work - Eve Bunting 
8. Fly Away Home - Eve Bunting 
9. Going Home - Eve Bunting  
10. How Many Days To America - Eve Bunting 
11. The Memory String - Eve Bunting 
12. The Wall - Eve Bunting 
13. The Wednesday Surprise - Eve Bunting 
14. Stellaluna - Cannon 
15. See the Ocean - Estelle Condra 
16. Getting’ Through Tuesday - Melrose Cooper 
17. Click, Clack, Moo: CowsThat Type - Doreen Cronin 
18. Carl Goes Shopping - Alexandra Day 
19. Frank and Ernest - Alexandra Day
20. Frank and Ernest Play Ball - Alexandra Day 
21. Frank and Ernest on theRoad - Alexandra Day
22. Good Dog Carl - Alexandra Day
23. Charlie the Caterpillar - Dom DeLuise
24. Shoes from Grandpa - Mem Fox 
25. Possum Magic - Mem Fox 
26. Oink - Arthur Geisert
27. Teammates - Peter Golenbock 
28. Grandpa’s Face - Greenfield 
29. Tight Times - Barbara Shook Hazen 
30. Creatures of the Earth,Sea, and Sky (book of poems) - Georgia Heard 

Picture Books for Determining Importance

The following books are useful for modeling Determining Importance:

1. Medieval Feast - Aliki
2. Animal Shelters - Ron Bacon
3. Save Our Earth - Ron Bacon
4. Exploring the Titanic - Robert Ballard
5. The Important Book - Margaret Wise Brown
6. The Great Kapok Tree - Lynne Cherry
7. Hungry, Hungry Sharks - Joanna Cole
8. The Cloud Book - Tomie de Paola
9. Aunt Isabel tells a Good One - Duke
10. Cross a Bridge - Hunter
11. Into the Sky - Hunter
12. Helen Keller - Hurwitz
13. The Unhuggables - National Wildlife Federation
14. Anasi Goes Fishing - Kimmel
15. Nessa's Story - Luenn
16. Book - Lyon
17. The Lady and the Spider - McNulty
18. Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad - Faith Ringgold
19. Sierra - Siebert
20. Should there be Zoos? - Tony Snead
21. Sophie's Masterpiece - Spinelli
22. Tops and Bottoms - Janet Stevens
23. Two Bad Ants - Chris van Allsburg
24. Encounter - Yolen

Picture Books for Questioning

The following picture books are useful for modelling Questioning:

1. Charlie Anderson - Barbara Abercrombie
2. Ameila's Road - Linda Altman
3. Grandfather Twlight - Barbara Berger
4. Grandmother Winter - Barbara Berger
5.  If Sarah Will Take Me - Bouchard
6. Lost in the Storm - Carrick
7. Monarch Butterfly - Gail Gibbons
8. How Smudge Came - Nan Gregory
9. Why is the Sky Blue? - Sally Gindley
10. Tight Times - Hazen
11. UFO Diary - Satoshi Kitamura
12. Knots on a Counting Rope - Bill Martin, Jr.
13. The Three Questions - Muth
14. My Freedom Trip - Park
15. Wump World - B. Peet
16. Pink and Say - Patricia Polacco
17. Best Christmas Pagaent Ever - Robinson
18. All I See - Cynthia Rylant
19. An Angel for Solomon Singer - Cynthia Rylant
20. The Van Gogh Cafe - Cynthia Rylant
21. Grandfather's Journey - Alan Say
22. Mailing May - Tunnell
23. Tuesday - Wiesner
24. Sector 7 - Wiesner
25. The Mary Celeste - Jane Yolen
26. Nettie's Trip South - Turner
27. Freedom Summer - Deborah Wiles
28. How Come? - Kathy Woolard
29. Brave Irene - William Steig
30. Gorky Rises - William Steig

Picture Books for Making Connections

Picture books are wonderfully useful when teaching students to make connections. The following books were contained in the Teaching In Action document released by the Nova Scotia Department of Education.


Some picture books you may find useful to teach connecting are:

Text-to-Self Connections:

1. The Pain and the Great One - Judy Blume
2. Tornado - Byar
3. Frog and Toad All Year - Arnold Lobel
4. Days with Frog and Toad - Arnold Lobel
5. Sol a Sol - Lori Marie Carlson
6. Oliver Button is a Sissy - Tomie de Paola
7. Getting Through Thursday - Cooper
8. Relatively Speaking - Fletcher
9. Chester's Way - Kevin Henkes
10. Chrysanthemum - Kevin Henkes
11. Sheila Rae the Brave - Kevin Henkes
12. Pumpkin Jack - Hubbell
13. The Snowy Day - Ezra Jack Keats
14. I Hate English- Ellen Levine
15. I Want to be a Police Officer - Liebman
16. Mirette on a High Wire - Emily A. McCully
17. Mrs. Mack - Patricia Polacca
18. Mrs. Katz and Tush - Patricia Polacca
19. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - Judith Viorst
20. Ira Sleeps Over - Bernard Waber

 Text-to-Text Connections:

1. Piggie Pie - Margie Palatini  and Zoom Broom - Margie Palatini
2. Oliver Button is a Sissy - Tomie de Paola, and Max, the Stubborn Little Wolf by Judes, William's Doll - Charlotte Zolotow (boys who like "girl" things)
3. Julius, the Baby of the World and  Owen - Kevin Henkes
4. My Rotten Red-Headed Older Brother - Patricia Polacco,  The Pain and the Great One - Judy Blume, and Brother - Mary Ann Hoberman, (sibling rivalry).
5. The Two of Them - Aliki and Now One Foot, Now the Other - Tomie de Paola
6. Best Friends (poems) - Hopkins and  Two Close Friends - Lambert, and Why Are You Fighting, Davy? - Weninger. (friends)
7. The Jolly Postman and Other People's Letters - Janet and Allan Ahlberg (folktales)
8. The Gingerbread Man and The Runaway Rice Cake - Ying Chang Compestine
9. My Best Friend Moved Away - Carlson and The Lost and Found House - Cadnum (friend that moves)
10. The Surprise Wednesday - Eve Bunting, Jeremiah Learns to Read - Bogart, and Thank you, Mr. Falker - Patricia Polacco. (illiteracy)

Text-to-World Connections:

1. Fly Away Home, Gleam and Glow, and A Picnic in October - Eve Bunting
2. Someday a Tree - Eve Bunting
3. Smokey Night - Eve Bunting
4. The Wall - Eve Bunting
5. The Great Kopak Tree - Lynne Cherry
6. The River Runs Wild - Lynne Cherry
7. To Every Child, A Better World - Kermit the Frog/United Nations
8. Baseball Saved Us - Kevin Mochizuki
9. New York's Bravest - by Mary Pope Osborne
10. Night in the Country - Cynthia Rylant
11. The Butter Battle Book - Dr, Seuss
12. Lorax - Dr. Seuss
13. Red Fish, Blue Fish - Dr. Seuss
14. What a Wonderful World - George D. Weiss and Bob Thiele
15. The Other Side - Jacqueline Woodson

Picture Books for Visualizing

Here are some picture books with great sensory images:

1. Painted Words/Spoken Moments - Aliki
2. Old Black Fly - Aylesworth
3. Zoom and Re-Zoom - Istvan Banyai
4. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - Barrett
5. I'm in Charge of Celebrations - Byrd Baylor
6. Tangerine - Bloor
7. Fireflies - Julie Brinkloe
8. The Sailor Dog - Margaret Wise Brown
9. Voices from the Wild - Bouchard
10. Smoky Night - Eve Bunting
11. See the Ocean - Condra
12. Miss Rumphius - Cooney
13. Fishing in the Air - Sharon Creech
14. Good Dog Carl - Alexandra Day
15. Big Blue Whale - N. Davies
16. The Cloud Book - Tomie de Paola
17. Here We All Are - Tomie de Paola
18. The Popcorn Book - Tomie de Paola
19. Everybody Cooks Rice - Dooley
20. Morning Girl - M Dorris
21. Abuela - Arthur Dorros
22. The Chocolate Chip Cookie Contest - Douglass
23. Arctic Memory - Normee Ekoomiak
24. Sailboat Lost - Leonard Everett Fisher
25. Twilight Comes Twice - Ralph Fletcher
26. Pizza - Gelman
27. Winter at Long Pond - George
28. Honey I Love - Eloise Greenfield
29. An Octopus is Amazing - Patricia Lauber
30. My Little Island - Lessac

More Reading Lists

It is easy to find great reading lists on the Internet. These are always helpful when trying to find new books for the classroom library.

InfoPlease Kids' Top 100
Top 100 - Childrensbookguide
Scholastic
Oprah
Teachers First
Books for Tweens

Kids Reading Lists

I recently visited the Bedford Public Library which is the library my kids and I visted regularly when they were little (actually, until we all bought Kindles). The librarian, who used to work in the libraries in my school board, shared little book-marks titled, "Great Series for Grade __". There was one each for each grade from Primary to Grade 6.

There is also a brochure titled "100 Great Picture Books for Preschoolers","Books Boys Love (Grades 1-3)(Grades 4-6). Each of these can be found by clicking the link below.

Kids Reading Lists - Halifax Public Libraries

Literature Circles - Role Sheets

As a classroom teacher, I used to enjoy doing Literature Circles because each student had a role to prepare for, and a responsibility to someone besides me to read their section. Not everyone read all of their passages, nor did they always come prepared, but MORE of the students came prepared MORE often.

Fast forward a few years when all of the buzz in ELA classrooms became about The Big Six comprehension strategies. All teachers were in-serviced on the finer points of Connecting, Visualizing, Determining Importance, Questioning, Synthesizing and Inferring.

I decided to re-vamp the traditional role sheets to fit the new strategies. Click on the links below to have a look.

Connecting
Visualizing
Determining Importance
Questioning
Synthesizing
Inferring