In
today’s classroom, there is a lot of focus on fluency! Children are supposed to
be able to read to us as if they were talking to us. So we begin in the primary
grades to focus on fluency using easy text.
In
my room, I wanted my children to read fluently but not just fiction books. I wanted them
to read nonfiction books as well. This is why
I love the ZooZoo series by Hameray Publishing!
This
series have a nonfiction section as well as a storytellers section. This allows
us to bring in various texts that will peek their interests and ones that we
can use during our guided reading groups as well.
The
books we read were Zebras, Oh Zebra, Frog and Frogs Play.
As
usual, we began by reviewing the vocabulary! Each book had some awesome words
to review with my kids! I love having my kids come up with synonyms for the
vocabulary words. They always surprise me with their ability to inference! I will review vocabulary two ways: just give them the word and allow them to try on their own and then build on to what they are saying or I will use the word in a sentence and have them use their context clues to figure out the meaning!
I love using fiction and nonfiction books together. It allows them to compare and contrast. They are also able to tell the difference in fiction and nonfiction using the texts as examples. These are common core standards in First Grade.
So before we read the fiction books, the kids made inferences! They looked at the cover and told me
what they thought would happen. We would then read the stories to see if their inferences were correct.
With the nonfiction stories, they shared all
that they thought they knew about the animal. We completed can, have, and are
charts using the nonfiction texts.
The
text in both the fiction and the nonfiction books were perfect for my small group and my low readers! But all
of my kids gravitate towards these books! They love the pictures and the easy
to read text!
As
I read the text to them, I stop and ask them questions. I also allow them to
ask questions and to talk with a partner throughout the book.
I
love these pages!!!!!!!!! Look below and click on the picture for the link to
the series!
The
Nonfiction Texts
The
Fiction texts
I
love how we can compare and contrast the two series. That is a common core
standard for first grade. Comparing and contrasting two texts about the same
topic. But we could also compare the texts against each other frogs and zebras.
They were able to discuss the differences in environments and storylines as
well as diet and life cycles.
After we discussed the books we then
completed some activities! The pages that we completed are below! click on photos for link to worksheets
Have an awesome day!
