Weekly Picture Book Recap #2

It’s time for my 2nd weekly picture book recap and this one is for all you nonfiction lovers out there! Y’all know I struggle with NF, but let me tell you-my class has been LOVING narrative nonfiction here lately. It started when we began our unit on biographies. I always tend to shy away from these types of read alouds because they are lengthy and can be information overload at times. Because of these two factors I decided to use Epic so all my kids could have a copy of the story to read along with me AND I broke the read aloud into two parts so we wouldn’t be sitting and reading the entire story at one time. We read the first part at the beginning of class and finished the book at the end. This really helped! Here’s what we read this week 🙂

A 116 year old learns to read for the first time?? My kids couldn’t wait to read The Oldest Student when I told them what the story was about. They LOVED this one! They were fascinated by Mary Walker and her life’s journey of learning to read. Now, this one is on the longer side and it isn’t available on EPIC, so they did struggle to stay engaged at parts, but overall they loved it! Such an amazing story!

I’ve never had a group of kids who enjoyed Salt in My Shoes as much as this group did. We LOVED this story about Michael Jordan as a child. This is the perfect book to read if you have the same reservations about nonfiction read alouds as I do. It’s not written in an overwhelming way, nor is it incredibly lengthy. It’s a good one! Plus you can show Michael Jordan highlights on Youtube after reading the book Instant engagement:)

We did take a break from all the serious read alouds and we had some fun with The Book With No Pictures. I am always surprised by how much upper elementary kids love this one. I thought it would be wayyyyyy too silly for my 5th graders, but they always loved it. So did my 4th graders. LOL

I know Enemy Pie isn’t NF either, but we reviewed plot last Friday and I used this book to do a quick recap of the summarizing strategy SWBST. Enemy Pie is just magical. I don’t know what it is about this story, but every single time I have ever read it to a class, the kids are fascinated. It is probably one of the most consistent engaging read alouds I’ve ever done. I mean, every single group has just been mesmerized by this story. And it’s perfect for teaching plot!

Another narrative nonfiction for the win! Philip Reid Saves the Statue of Freedom is on Epic, so all of my kids were able to have their own copy. They loved learning about the man who saved the Statue of Freedom. This was a great text for introducing the genre “narrative nonfiction” because it was really easy to see the narrative storyline. It wasn’t too overwhelming either. We also looked up pictures of the real Statue of Freedom at the US Capitol and they kids loved seeing that!

We learned about Georgia Gilmore when we read Pies from Nowhere and how she wanted to become a part of the Montgomery Bus Boycott but she didn’t use the bus. She decided to feed the people who were boycotting the bus company and then after she was arrested and fired from her job, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr encouraged her to start her own business. Such an amazing story about getting involved in a cause you support. This one is on Epic!

Check out the first weekly picture book recap here