If you’re not comprehending and understanding what you read, then you’re not really reading. why reading comprehension is so important. The science of reading is more than phonics and sounds; it includes vocabulary and comprehension. Keep reading to see how we use some of our favorite winter read-alouds such as Snowmen At Night, Tacky The Penguin, Snowy Day, and Bear Snores On to build comprehension skills!
With Read It Up we’re providing students complex texts with the scaffolding and support to allow them to be successful. We’re building their oral and written comprehension skills with multiple opportunities to speak about the books and write and draw in response to literature. Our Read It Up creations are interactive and involve the reader and the text. They are strategic and give readers a purpose and a variety of strategies to comprehend the text, and they are adaptable so students can change strategies as they read and build comprehension!
Snowmen At Night: Comprehension
Making predictions is a great way to engage readers and excite them about the book. We started Snowmen At Night by predicting what we think snowmen do at night. After we read the book, we listed what the snowmen actually did!
Next, we sequence the story using pictures. As we are sequencing the story, we are orally retelling the story. The kids are talking, using transition words and building language skills.
Next, we brainstormed what we would do if we were snowmen at night and created a class chart of our ideas. This made a great turn-and-talk lesson where the kids shared their ideas with one another and built their oral language skills.
The students then did independent writing and drawing about what they would do if they were a snowman at night!
As part of our science of reading-aligned Read It Up creations, we always include a grammar lesson. The idea of including grammar is that we will see these grammar skills start showing up in our students’ writing.
For this story, we focused on singular and plural nouns. We learned what singular and plural meant and sorted our nouns as we sorted the nouns, we had to explain why they were singular or plural.
Snowmen At Night Snack And Art
For our snowman art project, we used paper squares to create a melted snowman because the snowman in the story melts a little from his night of fun!
And, of course, you need a snowman snack, so we built a snowman with marshmallows and used icing pens to make the face!
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
Ezra Jack Keats is one of my favorite authors and The Snowy Day is a perfect winter book that we can all relate to!
One of our favorite activities was thinking of things we do on a snow day and things we don’t do on a snow day! This is a great activity to help students make those important text-to-self connections! This is also a great turn-and-talk activity to build oral language skills!
We also include a graphing activity in our Read It Up creations so we graphed our favorite snowy day activity! These graphing resources also help build language skills. Students have to share their vote. Maybe why it’s their favorite, etc.
Tacky The Penguin
Another favorite is Tacky The Penguin! I love this book because it encourages kids to be themselves and not conform. We are all about being unique and standing out so this is a must-read book!
We start with predictions and then after reading the book, we discuss what actually happens. Making predictions is a great comprehension strategy because it helps students monitor for comprehension. By making the predictions they’re focusing more on the story!
We also discuss what Tacky sees, does, feels and thinks. We use this as a turn-and-talk activity. Students turn and talk about what Tacky does. Then they share out!
Finally, students use a variety of art materials to design a shirt for Tacky! They can then write about their design. They can also share their design with the class to build oral language skills.
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