Reading

This week's read aloud books have been connected to UOI and have helped practicing visualizing.

You Can Go Home Again is a fascinating family story about a Canadian girl who hears a story about her mom's childhood and has an idea to visit her mom's childhood home in Prague, Czech. This journey results with finding something special from the past.

In My Momma's Kitchen were sweet family stories that allowed us to visualize sight, touch, smell, sounds and feelings. We already know that our images are based on our previous experiences but it was still fun to hear what scenes evoked the strongest images and how differently we pictured some them.

We have enjoyed Patricia Polacco's stories about her childhood. All her stories have shown us her relationship with her family members, her values and life-lessons she has learned. As a master at choosing words she has kept us engaged. When I have tried to stop in the middle, the students have begged me to continue.

I read out loud every day. I also make sure that we find time to read independently every day. The students have become very good at filling the pockets of time with reading.

I like that sometimes the students change my plans because they have a better one. A group of students thought of forming their own little literature circle group where to read together and later they decided to make a poster as a story response.