Would you could you read a book?

If you aren't as reading/Seuss obsessed as I am you may not know that Dr. Seuss' birthday is coming up very soon. So I thought what better way to encourage my emerging readers than with some Seuss inspired "art" I use that term loosely as I'm less of a Davinci and more a "hey who spilled the paint all over this thing" anyWHO I created this guy to encourage my friends to pick a book to explore:

If you aren't sure, that is supposed to be the Lorax and a Truffula tree. I took some creative license with his talking bubble which says "Unless some like you will crack open a book, you'll miss all the adventure I dare you...JUST LOOK!" Then I included the dust jackets from some of our favorites books and some we haven't yet read.

Then today I added our very own "critic's corner" I created a form that the students can use to rate and review books that they have read. When they bring them back we will hang them up on the wall and as they read more and more books they can rate them as well.

This is where we will hang the completed reviews: 

I have a problem and it's called I love terrible puns.

 Yes that wonky little guy is supposed to be Horton the Elephant. 

The kids were impressed so I have that going for me.

My goal with our critic's corner is that this will become a way for the students to find new books that will interest them, which we will then do our best to find in the school's library for them to read.

Some of my friends are very eager readers in fact Timothy read a whole book to our class today before we started our math lesson.

Kira, who is a little more shy, read to just me during her free time.

Of course we did have to do some actual work today too.

This is our new approach to phonics, rather than just writing the words we WERE the words.

Here are 3 of my lovely assistants helping us make the word Cap. Jasa had a very important job to do, she had to decide which vowel sound should be in our word.

Here A makes the short sound because it's alone.

Here A says it's name because "when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking".

We did this several times with different vowels and including our special sounds (sh, fr, st, ck, e as in me. y as in fly) and each student got to be a part of the word making experience. This is such a fun way to practice reading because we get to move around instead of all that sitting and writing. 

I am so proud of all these guys and gals for all their hard work. I can't wait to see what the future holds!!

"Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." Psalms 119:18