Three for Thursday

   Welcome to my first Three for Thursday. Every Thursday I'd like to post threes of anything....thoughts, teaching tips, books, lesson idea...and so on. For this post I'm talking about three of my favorite Read Alouds. Really, it's hard for me to narrow it down to three, there are so many good books. 


Anyway here they are with the literature standards they can be connected to. 


1. The Lemonade War

 The children LOVE this book. The book alternates between Evan's point of view and Jessie's point of view. They are siblings with their own lemonade stands competing against one another to reach one hundred dollars in sales. It's a great example of two different viewpoints of the main characters and my students like to discuss who's viewpoint they agree with. (CCCS RL 7)

  In addition the literature connection, this is an excellent book for the economy aspect of the Social Studies standards.


2. Because of Winn-Dixie  

This book pulls at your heart strings. Told from the main character's point of view, this story tells about a girl's desire to know her mother. She lives with her father and develops friendships with people of various ages and backgrounds. The first and most important friendship is with a dog named Winn-Dixie. 
   This story is an awesome example of character's feelings changing throughout the story.(CCCS RL 6)

3. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes  

 If Because of Winn-Dixie pulls at your heartstrings, this story yanks at them! This is story I read toward the end of the school. It's about a real girl who dies from leukemia as a result of the atomic bomb dropped on Japan. I don't want to give too much away if you haven't read this. The story opens up serious discussions and really can be used with any of the RL standards. The RL 1 is probably the one I tend to gravitate toward as the students have so many questions. 

There are my three read alouds for my first Three for Thursday. See you next Thursday! 

                                 Tammi