you read to me

I'll read to you!

I am a huge fan of shared literary experience. Some of my favorite activities with kids in the classroom and library when I was teaching were choral readings, reading buddies, plays, and partner readings. There are so many great things about sharing a story with a friend!

Here are a couple of my favorites:

The whole You Read to Me, I'll Read to You series is just great! They are written by Mary Ann Hobermann - a fabulous author who probably deserves another post entirely. The original one was Very Short Stories to Read Together, followed by Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together, and then Very Short Scary Stories to Read Together. The text is written in three colors - one for each person reading, and then one for them to read together. The illustrations are very appealing to kids, and the stories are short and sweet. Very fun for kids. My son found the book on the shelf, and even though he can't read them with me (yet!) he was very interested in taking the book down so my husband and I are going to try and find a time SOON to read it with him!

My other favorites are written by Paul Fleischman. They are definitely for a little bit better reader, but still enjoyable when I did them with second graders during their bug unit. His first one was called I am Phoenix, the second one was Joyful Noise. I am Phoenix is a collection of poems about birds, Joyful Noise is about bugs. The layout of the page is a little different than You Read to Me... but the kids still figure it out. I just love it because they are animals, he can really use the reader's voices to portray noises/ actions that the animals make.
Here's the good (&bad) thing about Amazon - they're always recommending more books when I go there to get the links for the ones I write about. Has anyone ever read/ seen Big Talk? It's also by Paul Fleischman, and is for four voices. Sounds like fun!!!