Let's Talk About Books! Linky PLUS a Book Study!

Hey friends!

Let me catch my breath. *BREATHE*

Ahhhhh...sweet summer, how I have longed for you and missed you!!!!!

We finished a week ago today and I couldn't be more excited!  I've gotten the chance to celebrate some family birthdays, clean house, read, sleep, work out, and just BE.  Summer is so revitalizing and rejuvenating!

I'm joining up with Deanna Jump today for her "Let's Talk About Books!" linky!  As a teacher who LOVES reading, books are just my absolute favorite.  I love going to the library or a bookstore and just perusing for hours upon hours.  I sure hope my children inherit my love of reading!

I have 2 books I want to share with you today.  Maybe you've heard of them, maybe you haven't.

The first book is called, Exclamation Mark by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  It's about an exclamation mark who learns that being different from others can be exciting!  It's a great way to tie in punctuation with a deeper meaning.  It's such a fabulous little book!

The next 2 books are books that I got from a little bookshop in Oxford, MS.  I just did a search for them on the Internet and there aren't a whole lot of options.  But it looks like they are available from different sellers on Amazon.  I'm telling you, if you are up to trying to order from them, DO IT!  They actually look pretty cheap, even for new ones!  These are the funniest books I've ever read!  I think I laugh more than my students.  They're both from the "Bang on the Door" series.  The two I have are called, The Story of Pea Brain and The Story of Slug.  Both are written by Jackie Robb.  There are also other titles including, The Story of Armadillo, The Story of Cat, and The Story of Plankton.  There are so many of these books!  I wish I would've bought all of them when I lived down there.  I'm going to make it my mission to order all of them!  These are great little read-alouds for a day when you just need to laugh and take a break.  They would also be great mentor texts for writing humorous stories!

Now, if you're wanting a recommendation on a professional read, I recommend The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson.  This book is for teachers K-8.  I just ordered it off Amazon and it arrived today!  

Guided reading is always one of those things that I feel I could get better at.  Maybe it's because of the number of groups that you have to plan for.  Maybe it's because of the wide range of skills that you need to cover within your classroom small groups.  Whatever it is, I'm always looking for ways to improve my guided reading groups.  I asked around on my Facebook page and my Instagram to see if there would be any interest in having a book study for this book.  I had a few responses from people who were all about it, so I decided to jump in and go for it.  I'm always a fan of Amazon, so that's where I would suggest to get the book.  If you have Prime (it's soooo worth it!), it will arrive on your doorstep in 2 days.  

So here's how this little book study will work.  I'm actually teaming up with Teaching with Grace to do this.  We're still ironing out the details, but our study will start on Monday! 

I came up with 5 basic questions for each week's reading:

1.  What part of the reading caught your attention?  Maybe it's something you never thought about.  Maybe it's something that you've been trying to get a grip on.  Maybe it's something that you've never heard quite they way it was put.

2.  How do you already incorporate this into your guided reading routine?  There's probably at least some part of the chapter that you're already doing!  Tell us about it!

3.  What is something new you want to try next school year?  How do you want to make your guided reading time better or what new things do you want to try?

4.  What are some resources that you ALREADY HAVE that you can use to teach what you read about in this chapter/section?

5.  What are some NEW resources that you want to get or try to use to teach what you read about in this chapter/section?

I think this will be fun!  I always love learning from other people, so I think it will be great to have discussions to see how we are each doing guided reading!  It might spark some ideas!  It will be great to have some different perspectives from teachers across grade levels.  :)  Are you ready???  I know I am!  See you next Thursday for our first discussion over the Intro and Chapter 1!

COMMENT BELOW TO LET ME KNOW IF YOU'RE IN!