Read Aloud Literacy: 2017

Narrative Writing Charts, Units of Study, Kindergarten

Native Americans in Picturebooks

The day before mama gets paid is the hardest day of the week, and sometimes results in a broken heart. What happens when you've been promised a celebration for a hard earned report card with top grades that you might not get after all? Report card day falls on a Thursday, the day mama doesn't have any money left. Melrose Cooper and NNeka Bennett have provided readers with a narrative that includes concepts around economic inequality and access for children to engage in critical discourse around economic diversity.

Access and exposure to diverse narratives in picture books offer children opportunity to learn about their familiar communities and their unimagined, unexplored world. Words and illustrations on the pages invite the reader to participate, with exposed characters and their personal experiences lived. Thus, there is a great need for a variety of representations of family, school, and life. As children deepen their own sense of self through the portrayals they connect too. Bishop said:

Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however a window can be a mirror. (1990, as cited by Harris, 2007, p.153)

Economic Inequality in Picturebooks

Patrick Jennings

Patrick Jennings, We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes

Call me Tree

"Some sing songs, Some sing along, All trees have roots, All trees belong"

With no gender specific pronouns, this beautiful book about connecting to nature, allows for all readers access to a child who is not about socially created stereotypes. It also just might nudge a conversation about gender conceptions. This book is part of a trilogy, and I have read them to kids as young as kindergarten (who quickly started unraveling their social understandings about gender).

K-2 Summer Reads


Kate & Chris nailed it with their Mercy Watson series, and now old fans, and new fans alike, will fall in love with their Deckawoo Drive series. Read it it to, or with your child, or let the budding chapter book reader in your life- read it to you.


So many different Phonics Comics titles to chose from. Graphic Novels are a popular genre with young readers and its so great to have the perfect choices for our K-2 readers.

Read this one to your child, because you deserve a good laugh and to be engaged while you are teaching empathy, vocabulary, text structure, love for reading, all while defeated summer slide.

Insectarium & Writer's Workshop

Collecting insects for our Insectarium (they were hiding all over the playground). Learning to label collections for further study.

Kindergarten science writers chose one of their insects to write about. The illustrations were made with homemade Eric Carle paper and inspired by his work we learned about during one of our illustrator's workshops. Weaving in Lucy's Units of Study (Opinion).