Some of Ms. Pierson's Favorite Books!

This is a fun story about a little boy that they call "a wild thing." He gets in trouble for being a little too wild and is sent to his room without dinner. As the story goes on, his room turns into a forest and takes him where the wild things are and he becomes the king. Eventually though, he decides he wants to go back home. When he gets back to his room, he finds his dinner there and still warm. This story uses a lot of imagination. I would like for my students to draw a picture and write a story about if the classroom where to turn into the forest and what would happen. They can be creative and silly with this! 

Lexile: AD740L 

I loved this book way back in kindergarten and still love it today! I would like to have the students in groups and have a basket of letters and a tree. As we read through the story, the students can find the letters and can lay them in the top of the tree. When they all fall they can use their arm to sweep them all back off. 

Lexile: AD530L 

I remember reading this story in elementary school and loving it! It is about a little fish in the ocean and he is so beautiful and all the other fish wanted to look like him. He refused to give the other fish his scales so they all left him alone. He is sad about this and later comes around and decides to share with his friends. A cute activity I would want to do would be have the students create a rainbow fish out of construction paper and write qualities of a good friend on the scales. I would display these in the classroom to remind the students to be kind to their classmates. 

Lexile: AD610L 

This book was a very cute way to introduce point of view/perspective to students. I would use the story and make a chart and let students see the different perspectives by listing out what they see on a chart. Maybe doing this before reading the story and pointing out that we see things differently even though neither of them are necessarily wrong. 

Lexile: 650L

This is a cute little story about a caterpillar and his journey into eating his way into becoming a butterfly. An activity that I used for kindergarten was to have a paint stick painted Green with a caterpillar head glued at the top. I had clothespins with each of the foods glued to the end of it. We read through the story once and then as we read it again, the students would clip the food to the paint stick (caterpillars body.) I think it turned out really cute and definitely something I would want to use again to introduce sequencing or retelling. 
Lexile: AD460L

This is such a cute little book. I found a cute little activity I would like to try out with Kindergarten or first grade maybe. The students would have pictures of what the bear saw throughout the story. They would be whole punched in the corner and as the students retell the story, they can put the cards on a string to create a little necklace of the order in which they appeared in the book. Then the students could flip through and would be able to summarize the story for you. 

Lexile: AD200L 

This is another one of my absolute favorites. It goes along with If You Give a Moose A Muffin! I love every one of those books. Kids enjoy the silly little story. I would use this as a sequencing story. The students would be able to retell the story by remembering what the mouse wanted next. This is the same kinda thing I would do with all of these similar books within a unit.

Lexile: 660L 

A favorite of all favorites!! This is one of those books that everyone needs to read at some point in their school years! It is a sweet story about a little girl who lives on a farm. They have piglets and she is determined to save this little big from being slaughtered. She babies this pig as much as she can. She goes to visit the barn and sit with the pig every day. As the pig gets older he makes friends with this spider in the barn. The spider makes webs with words that describe the pig. The farmers decide to take this amazing pig to the fair and put him in a contest. I think this book would be great to do character traits and character webs. There is so much personality in each character.

Lexile: 680L

Because of Winn Dixie is a story about a little girl who moves to a new town with her father. She takes a trip to the grocery store and finds this stray dog. She decides to save him and take him home. Throughout the story she ends up being loved and becoming good friends with people in the community. When reading this in my classroom, I would like to do a book study/interactive notebook. As the class reads through the story together, they could break up into groups and fill out some charts and notes about the chapters. 

Lexile: 670L 

This is a cute little story about a bear that wants to find a home. He realizes one day that he is missing a button and is on the search to find it. A little girl that has been wanting Corduroy saved up all of her money and the next day she came and bought him. She took Corduroy home and gave him a brand new button and a new home. For my classroom, I would like to have my students create a character web of words that describe Corduroy. 

Lexile: 600L

As a student I feel like this book can be relatable. Some of the events that Alexander is faced with, may be some of the same things that the students face. Everyone has a bad day every now and again. An activity that could be used would be getting the students to sequence the events in the story, or to write about a time that they had a bad day and how they felt, and then write about how they overcame that bad day. 

Lexile: AD840

This book is one of my favorites! It is the sequel to If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, which is also one of my favorites! This would be a great way to implement some sequencing. Reading these books together in the same unit would be a great idea! I would love to have the students maybe come up with their own version of the book. This would be a great writing activity! 

Lexile: AD590L

Kids LOVE Pete the cat! You can take this book in many directions in the classroom! One way that I thought I would use it would be to connect the story to a writing activity by letting students draw or create their "school shoes" and write about what they do when they wear them. 

Lexile: AD430L

I would like to use this book in the winter months to connect it to the seasons. I think this story could be used for retelling. I also think you could do some beginning, middle, and end to be more specific in the order of the events and what happened. I think kids would really enjoy the illustrations throughout the book as well! 

Lexile: 600L

Dr. Seuss is always a good read! This book is a great example of seeing things from a different perspective. The Lorax is trying to look out for the animals and trees and protect them, while the Once-ler sees how the business is growing and how many people want their products that they are creating using the trees. I think this story would be a great way to show that their are different perspectives and they both could be right in their own ways. For older students they could look at the different perspectives of the characters and create a list of ways that each are correct or incorrect. 

Lexile: 560L 

This would be a great book to implement in the classroom! There are so many ideas that come to mind when thinking about reading this to my kiddos. One activity that I think would be great for younger students is to break down their names into syllables, number of letters, and number of vowels, etc.. Also I feel it is important to make sure every child knows their name is perfect and picked just for them. I would love to read this to my class.

Lexile: 570L