ES Literacy Grade K: Falling In Love with Reading

At SA, we believe that if a child loves reading and reads exceptionally well, she can teach herself anything! There’s nothing more important to our scholars’ lifelong success and happiness than inspiring their passion for reading.

In this unit, you will fuel scholars’ passion for reading.

You will inspire their love of words, characters, and knowledge. Through modeling, you will help them achieve that lost-in-a-book, engaged sort of reading that makes reading fun. You will give them the most priceless gift of all—time to listen to their favorite books read aloud!

Model your passion for reading and books throughout the day. Enthusiastically recommend books to your scholars and show your passion every time you read aloud!

If you do your job well, scholars will love to read, and families will be committed to reading to and with their scholars!

Building a strong reading culture and partnership with parents is critical to scholars’ lifelong personal and academic success. It is imperative that ALL your scholars are being read to at home and at school. Meet with the parents of any students who are not being read to at home. If you cannot persuade the parents to follow through on this work at home, you need to manage up to leadership.

It is your responsibility to ensure that ALL your scholars are being read to six days a week at home!

Modeling Great Reading: Every day you will model either Emergent Storybook Reading* or Oral Storytelling.**

These two types of reading showcase your passion for books, highlight funny and engaging characters and plots, and ignite scholars’ curiosity and excitement. Your reading should be enthusiastic and genuine! See the below “Lessons” section for details on how to execute this type of reading.

*Emergent Storybook Reading is when you read aloud a beloved book many times and invite scholars to join in on repeated phrases and gestures.

**Oral Storytelling is when you tell stories based on the pictures in a wordless picture book.

Book Shopping Using Book Bins: SA’s classroom libraries are unparalleled, full of world-class literature hand-picked for scholars. For the first few weeks of school, we have selected especially engaging Emergent Storybooks and wordless picture books. Both the Emergent Storybooks and the wordless picture books include engaging plots, emotional content (including humor!), repeated refrains, and highly supportive pictures. It’s your job to bring these to life in your reading!

Kids will not retain the books you’re reading in school unless they also hear them at home. Therefore, they will take home one book a day that their parents can read to them.

Your classroom library contains half-class sets of each Emergent Storybook and one copy of each wordless picture book.

After reading Emergent Storybooks and wordless picture books for one to two days, put them in book bins at the center of each table, along with three to four Read Aloud books. Add new books as you read them, and switch bins from table to table so scholars are seeing different books each day. Scholars will take home one book per day, to be switched daily.

Partner Share: Get kids talking about the books you read! Make it clear that scholars should be continually listening as you read, forming ideas and thoughts to share with their partners. Scholars must present their own ideas clearly and listen to their partners well enough to say back what they heard. Listen in to partnerships to hold scholars accountable for talking to one another about the book you’re currently reading.

Give clear directions for partners to position themselves facing each other (knee to knee and eye to eye) so they can see and hear each other.

Closely monitor partnerships as they talk. Once the whole group is back together, call on a scholar to share what his or her partner said. Scholars must know they are accountable for having thoughtful comments to share with their partner and for listening and responding to their partner!

Switch off daily between these two types of reading:

Emergent Storybook Reading: Read an Emergent Storybook aloud with expression, inviting scholars to join in on repeated phrases and gestures.

Read these Emergent Storybooks in this order:

• The Carrot Seed
• The Three Billy Goats Gruff
• Caps for Sale
• The Three Bears
• The Little Red Hen
• Milton the Early Riser
• Harry the Dirty Dog
• Corduroy

Oral Storytelling: Read a wordless picture book by telling a story based on what’s happening in each picture.

Read these wordless picture books in this order:

• A Ball for Daisy
• The Lion and the Mouse
• My Friend Rabbit
• Trainstop
• The Boys
• Tuesday
• Wave

What Does Success Look Like?

Read an Emergent Storybook aloud with expression, inviting scholars to join in on repeated phrases and gestures.

Success is when scholars are so excited to listen to your Emergent Storybook reading that they join in to say repeated words, phrases, and gestures.

Emergent Storybook Reading

Lesson Engage — 1 minute

Spend 1 minute studying the book cover and saying the title of the book, thinking aloud about what the title and cover picture tell us and what the book may be about.

Read Emergent Storybook — 5–7 minutes

Read the Emergent Storybook verbatim at a steady, adult pace. Make it engaging by:

• Using exciting and varied character voices.
• Creating gestures to accompany different phrases or actions throughout the story and inviting scholars to do these with you. For example, pinching your fingers and pushing them into the carpet to demonstrate a character planting carrot seeds in the ground.
• Inviting scholars to join in with you when reading repeated phrases in the book. For example, “Caps, caps for sale!”

Partner Share — 3–5 minutes

• After reading, set expectations for partner talk on the carpet.
• Have scholars turn their bodies to face each other silently, knee to knee and eye to eye.
• Direct partners to speak in whisper voices and to listen silently while their partner is talking. Organize the class by “naming” the partnerships so you can easily direct who goes first. For example, one partner in each pair is a cat, and the other is a dog.
• Ask scholars to retell their favorite page to their partner. Partners must listen to each other, asking questions for clarification. Both partners must be able to share what their partner said.
• Listen in to choose a scholar or partnership to share during the whole-class share.

Whole-Class Share — 5 minutes

• Choose two scholars to share what they said in their partnership.
• Highlight scholars who faced each other, spoke at an appropriate volume, listened to their partner respectfully, and responded with a question or comment.

Book Shopping — 5 minutes

• Scholars return to their tables and select one book from the table’s book bin to take home for the evening in their book baggie.
• Each book bin should contain a selection of Emergent Storybooks and wordless picture books that you’ve previously read, as well as books from your Read Aloud Library.

What Does Success Look Like?

Read a wordless picture book by telling the story of what’s happening in each picture.

Success is when scholars understand that the story you tell connects directly to the pictures on the page.

Engage — 1 minute

Spend 1 minute studying the book cover and saying the title of the book, thinking aloud about what the title and cover picture tell us and what the book may be about.

Read Wordless Book — 5–7 minutes

• “Read” the wordless picture book at an adult pace by telling a story based on the pictures.
• It should sound like you’re telling a story, not like you’re describing pictures.
• For example, “Daisy was a dog who had one favorite thing in this world, and that was her shiny red ball.” Your reading should not sound like, “On this page, I can see that Daisy has a ball.”
• The exact words don’t need to be the same each time you tell the story, but the action, characters, and plot should remain the same.
• Give the characters fun names and voices, make the problem and solution clear while reading, and use an exciting tone to engage scholars.

Partner Share — 3–5 minutes

• After reading, set expectations for partner talk on the carpet.
• Have scholars turn their bodies to face each other silently, knee to knee and eye to eye. Direct partners to speak in whisper voices and to listen silently while their partner is talking.
• Organize the class by “naming” the partnerships so you can easily direct who goes first. For example, one partner in each pair is a cat, and the other is a dog.
• Ask scholars to retell their favorite page to their partner. Partners must listen to each other, asking questions for clarification. Both partners must be able to share what their partner said.
• Listen in to choose a scholar or partnership to share during the whole-class share.

Whole-Class Share — 5 minutes

• Choose two scholars to share what they said in their partnership.
• Highlight scholars who faced each other, spoke at an appropriate volume, listened to their partner respectfully, and responded with a question or comment.

Book Shopping — 5 minutes

• Scholars return to their tables and select one book from the table’s book bin to take home for the evening in their book baggie.
• Each book bin should contain a selection of Emergent Storybooks and wordless picture books that you’ve previously read, as well as books from your Read Aloud Library.

Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of Unit 1: Falling in Love with Reading!

As a result of teaching this unit, you, as the teacher, have:

• Created a classroom reading culture of passionate readers.
• Excited scholars about the beginning of their reading journey by giving them access to great books through book shopping.
• Engaged scholars’ minds by getting them to envision and talk about their books with a partner—reading is thinking!

Your scholars can:

• Choose books from their book bins that they are interested in.
• Enthusiastically join in on portions of your reading with words and gestures.
• Talk about books with partners in order to discover meaning.

Celebrate your scholars’ successes by acknowledging what they can now do as readers as a result of their work over the past several weeks. For example, scholars can use pictures to tell stories and remember words and gestures from each Emergent Storybook.

Invite scholars to share how much fun they’ve had listening to and talking about books.

Reflect on your successes and stretches, as well as those of your scholars. Have your scholars’ engagement and passion for reading grown exponentially? Did you identify scholars who are not yet being read to consistently at home? Have you addressed this with parents to get the scholar on track?

Scholars must be read to at home, as well as in school. Are 100% of your kids being read to six days a week at home? Make sure at-home reading is happening, and meet with families who are falling short to recommit them to this team effort. They may not understand how to read to their kids yet. Invite them into your Read Aloud, Emergent Storybook reading, or Oral Storytelling time and model this for them!

Going into the next unit, make specific reading goals for yourself. Set a percentage goal for how many children you will move in the next 15 days. Set a goal for children who are not being read to at home. Whom will you get to consistently be read to at home?

If you are having trouble meeting your goals, do not wait until you have NOT succeeded. Consult your colleagues. Consult your leaders. ASK FOR HELP so you can meet your goals!