The Salmander Room

 The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer is about a young boy named Brian who finds an orange salamander in the woods. Brian takes the salamander home. When Brian brings the salamander home his mom asks Brian many questions, like where will the salamander live, where he will sleep, what he will eat and so on.  Brian comes up with responses to all of his mother's questions. His imagination eventually turns his responses into a fantasy story. He goes on and on about all of the things that the salamander will have and about how his bedroom will turn into a big beautiful forest.





The Salamander  Room is a great book for teaching visualization because the text is very descriptive. When Brian describes the things he would do to his room to make the salamander comfortable he uses very descriptive language. For example when Brian says “I will carpet my room with shiny wet leaves and water them so he can slide around and  play.” The   reader can  picture  a  room  with  shiny  wet leaves  on   th e floor . To   teach students  how   to  use  visualizing  as  a  comprehension  strategy  you  could  read  the  story  aloud  to  the  students  and   share   the   pictures   until   you   come   to  a quote  you   have   already   picked out. Then, stop! Don't  show  the  picture....yet.  Have the students stop and think   about  what   they see  in  their minds   and   have   them   to   share  their  mental   picture   with   the   class . You   could   also  add   some   of     the   ideas  that  the   students   come up with  to  a chart  with   one   side   labeled  quote   from  text   and  our  mental  image.
We enjoyed this book. The illustrations in this book are very nice and we think students would enjoy both the book and the illustrations.

Here's a link to a read aloud of The Salamander Room:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZrtzCA9pmY
The   link  to  our   visualizing  activity : http://theteachingthief.blogspot.com/2012/07/visualizing-beyond-text-with.html

Smoky Night

Smoky Night is about a young boy named Daniel. The book Smoky Night is about this young boy's perspective of the Los Angeles street riots. He watches the riot from his window as people steal TVs, shoes, clothes, and food. Although they're neighbors, Daniel's cat and Mrs. Kim's cat don't get along. Nor do Daniel and his mother shop at Mrs. Kim's market. ``It's better if we buy from our own people,'' Daniel's mother says. But when Daniel's apartment building goes up in flames, all of the neighbors (including the cats) learn the value of bridging differences.The writer Eve Bunting doesn't explicitly connect her message about racism in the story, but it can be inferred through the text.

 The book Smoky Night is a great book to teach inferences because the author's message about racism is not explicitly connected in the story, but it can be inferred through the text. An example of an inference that can be made through the text is when Daniel says, "Ms. Kim yells at Jasmine( Daniel's cat) in words that I don't understand." The inference that can be made from this part of the story is that Ms. Kim speaks another language and that she may be a different race. To teach making inferences using Smoky Night  we would read the book aloud and while we are reading we would model inferring by doing a think aloud.While doing the read  aloud we would make sure we use phrases like, I know______ information from the book, and I know______from my brain, so_____ must be true. While reading we would have the students to raise their hands to share inferences they made about the story.

 We believe this is a great book to use in the classroom to teach inferences, because the theme of the book has to be inferred. We also think that this book would also teach students important life lessons. 


Check out this read aloud of Smoky Night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThsWi-yHf9g
We found our activity at http://www.tips-for-teachers.com/inferencing_mini_lessons.htm
                                           http://www.ehow.com/how_8231535_teach-inference-fourth-grade.html  

Carrer Day

The book Career Day by Anne Rockwell is about a class that is having a career day at school. The children in Mrs. Madoff's classroom take turns introducing their family member for career day. Every visitor has an interesting job to talk about and together the class learns about all of the different jobs people do.  This book gives the reader a first person view on what younger students think about career day.




This book is a good book to teach the making connections reading strategy because many students can relate to having career day at school. This book could be used to teach text to self because text to self is a connection between the book and the readers feelings or life experiences. To teach students how to make text to self connections the teacher could have a chart with three questions and the students could answer the questions on their own sheet of paper. The questions are What does the story remind me of, has something familiar happened to me, and have you ever had the same feelings as the character. When students are asked these type of questions it allows them to make a connection with the characters in the story.
Here's an example of a chart that could be used to help students make connections. We found this activity at this text to self activity at this website http://www.pinterest.com/pin/215680269628546782/.

We believe this book would go along very good with this activity because most kids can relate to career day and thinking about what they want to be when they grown up.

A Home for the President

Do you know when the White House was built?  In the book The White House by Jennifer Silate you will learn the answer to this question and many more interesting facts about the White House. For example, the White House was designed by an Irish born architect and President John Adams was the first president to live in the White House. This book also talks about how the White House was destroyed in the War of 1812 and it was rebuilt in 1817. When you read this book you will find many other facts about the White House, which is the home of our president.



The book the White House can be used to teach standard SSKH2f which states that the student will identify important American symbols and explain their meaning. While working on this standard one of the important American symbols is the White House. Before reading the book The White House you could have the students ask questions about the White House and see if their questions were answered in the book or have the students guess when the White House was built, who was the first president to stay there or has it ever been destroyed. This book goes along with the standard SSKH2F because it teaches the students the importance of the White House. For example, this book states that, "The White House is more than the president's home and workplace it is an important part of American history and a symbol of America's place in the world."

We believe this book goes along with the standard very good. This book goes along with the standard SSKH2, because it is one out of a series of books that teaches students about important American symbols such as the American Flag, the Bald Eagle, and the Statue of Liberty. This book also teaches a lot of interesting facts about the White House.

Rocks and Minerals

When you go outside, do you notice the differences and similarities between rocks? The book Rocks and Minerals helps you identify the different kind of rocks. This book explains to the readers that rocks can be many different colors, such as black, brown or tan. Rocks can also have different textures such as being smooth or rough. This book also talks about how all rocks are made of their own special mineral ,and how they are formed. For example, this book talks about how "each mineral
has its own special shape, called a crystal (KRIS-tal)."

                                                               

This book goes along with the standard S3E1 that states students will investigate the physical attributes of rocks and soils. In this standard
 the students will explain the difference between a rocks and  minerals. Students will also recognize the physical attributes of rocks. The book Rocks and Minerals would be a good book to go along with this standard because it explains to the reader what rocks and minerals are on a level that is easy enough for younger readers to understand. This story also keeps the readers interested because of all of the pictures.


We believe this book is good to teach students about rocks because it is easy to read and understand. This book also has rock jokes throughout the book that kids would find very funny. A fun activity that students could do to check their understanding of identifying rocks and minerals,is to have the students bring in rocks and try to identify the type of rock that they brought in. This book also has a quiz at the end of it took check the students understanding of rocks and minerals. We both enjoyed this book because it contained a lot of engaging activities and pictures.

Slower than a Snail

     Are you slower than a snail? In the story Slower than a Snail the little girl in the story measured many different objects to prove to her brother that she was not slower than a snail. For example, she said "I'm smaller than an elephant. I'm bigger than a poodle." In the story the little girl also talks about how she was bigger a noodle, bean, fly, and monkey, but she was smaller than a rocket, truck air plane and a tree.


This text could be used to help students learn about measurements. This text can be used to teach standard MCC.K.MD.2 which states to directly compare two objects with a measureable attribute in common, to see which object has “more of”/”less of” the attribute, and describe the difference. To use this story in the classroom while reading the story you can get the students to point to items in the book  that are bigger or smaller than the little girl. As a classroom assessment you could have the students compare two things in the classroom. For example, ask the student to find something in the classroom that is bigger than a pencil.



We both enjoyed this story because it is a good way to teach students how to compare two objects based on measurements. We think it is very appropriate to use in the classroom along with the activities that are provided in the book.

Did You Steal Grandpa's teeth?

       Did you steal grandpa's teeth? In the story Grandpa's Teeth that's exactly what grandpa thought. In this story grandpa woke up and his teeth were missing. The glass container that he kept them in were still on the dresser beside his bed, but his teeth were missing. Grandpa had the whole family looking for his teeth. They even called the police and Officer Rate did a full search of the house. Officer Rate took the whole family down to the station so the police artist could draw a picture of the missing teeth. He even had the family call the a crime scene investigation show. After a few days Officer Rate realized that no teeth had been found and no thief had been caught. Grandpa suspected everyone, especially the people who didn't smile. After a while everyone in the town started to smile all the time so Grandpa wouldn't suspect them of stealing his teeth. The town started to lose business because tourists were afraid to get out of the car because of all of the smiling people. Since everyone started losing business because of Grandpa's teeth the town decided to have a town hall meeting so people could express their complaints. Pastor Butter came up with a solution to the problem, he suggested that everyone could put a dollar in a basket to buy Grandpa a new set of teeth. Grandpa was happy with his new teeth and smiled all the time the dog started smiling also and they realized that the dog stole Grandpa's teeth.
      This story is considered to be contemporary fiction, because the events in this story could really happen even though the story is made up. Grandpa would be the protagonist in the story because during the story you are routing for Grandpa to find his teeth. The dog would be considered to be the antagonist in the end of the story he was the one that stole Grandpa's teeth. This story is told in first person because the little boy is telling the story. The setting of this story was mainly in the house because they spent a lot of time looking for Grandpa's teeth.
     We both enjoyed the story because it was funny and it kept us entertained. This book has a great surprising ending that would be very entertaining for kids and adults. We think this book could be used in the classroom because the students could write about who they think took Grandpa's teeth before reading the whole story.


Here's a link to the story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snOH1QZ0JTM