Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

Reading Comprehension and Writing Nonfiction

Teachers, here are FREE Leap Year worksheets written by a National Board Certified Teacher. I hope you and your students enjoy them!

The first one is a reading comprehension worksheet about Leap Year.  It’s a good, basic introduction to the concept of Leap Year that is appropriate for third grade and up.

Next is a writing worksheet about how and why Julius Caesar created Leap Year and rearranged the calendar. To shake things up a little, this worksheet challenges students to write a newspaper article about the event. The article gives “notes” our fictitious reporter took at the press conference—in a handy who, what, where, when, why format.

Stay tuned for Free Leap Year Worksheets Part Two: Leap Year trivia reading comprehension and Leap Year math!

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home.   The Kindle is so wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do the Kindle justice in just one blog post. Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part four: building a classroom Kindle library

1. Browse books by cost: when you browse Kindle children’s books, you can search by age group and cost.  You will find interesting Kindle books for under four dollars.  The Kindle books are offered on special every so often, so you might be able to find a famous title at a super-low price.  Low-cost Kindle books can be a good way to try new and independent authors.
2. Borrow from Amazon:  If you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can borrow many Kindle books for free.  (My books are available to Prime members to borrow for free!)  You join Amazon Prime for $79: the first month is a free trial—it’s an especially good deal because Amazon Prime includes free 2 day delivery and streaming movies and TV shows.  If you just have one or two Kindles in your classroom that you paid for, you can use your account to borrow books for them.
3. Borrow from the library:  Public libraries are now making e-books available for download to your Kindle.  You usually search through your library’s online catalogue, click the link, then follow directions to download to your Kindle.  This is a great way to stock classroom Kindles.
4. Read free books: Kindles let you read public domain books for free.  Through Amazon, you can reach a variety of websites with free classics.  This is excellent for high school students who are required to read these classics.  Many classics are hard for elementary students to read, but Beatrix Potter is accessible.  So are lesser-known books by A. A. Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh.
5. Read series books:  Series pull kids in because they don’t have to get bogged down in the exposition.  Download Kindle books of classic and new series.  I think the Boxcar Children are due for a renaissance.  They are longer (and a little cheaper) than Junie B. Jones or Magic Tree House, so you get more for your money.  Whatever series you research, be sure to sort by price so you buy the bargain installments first.

Bonus Tip: Don’t forget the Corey Green Kindle books!  I wrote them, so I know they’re good.  Check out the first three books in my Buckley School Books series.  The characters are just like kids in your class, and kids will love the action and comedy.

Corey Green Kindle books fit the tips for stocking your Kindle library: they’re good series books, they’re low-cost Kindle choices, and you can borrow them for free using Amazon Prime.

Zapped!
Kyle creates a fake student named Stan to take the blame for a prank gone wrong.  Kyle and his friends learn that inventing Stan was easy, making him behave is impossible.  Stan takes on a life of his own, getting the kids into more trouble than they ever imagined.

Brainstorm
Brian is very smart—so why do his brainstorms backfire?  His homework help website was supposed to help kids and make Brian cool—but when it becomes famous, everyone is jealous.  Brian tries to distract his classmates with a mystery about a heist at the art museum—but then it turns out the heist is real!  Can the kids stop the robbers?

Double Switched
Connor knows he will be a baseball star—if he can just make it through sixth grade.  But life is so switched around!  Switched team position: now Connor’s not the star shortstop.  Switched class at school: how can Connor do the work if he can’t even read the directions?  Switched baseball field: what is that strange odor over where the workers are smoking?  The bases are loaded with problems for Connor.  Can he find a way to make things right?

Kids and Kindles, an occasional series at the Class Antics blog.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you, or Part 2 about how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home.  The Kindle is so wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do it justice in just one blog post. Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part three: the no-budget Kindle

The Kindle is great for teaching reading, but it’s not cheap.  However, you can download a free Kindle reader to your classroom computer or computer lab workstations.  Then you can let your students use a no-budget Kindle.

Your no-budget Kindle doesn’t have bells and whistles, but it’s enough to get your class started.  You can teach speed reading.  You can motivate reluctant readers to read.  You can get some results and build a case for buying actual Kindles in the classroom.  (Document results, get some students to write testimonials, and submit to administration or charitable organizations that might give you a grant.)

For your no-budget Kindle startup, you’ll mostly stick to free classic books available through Amazon, Internet Archive, Open Library, Project Gutenberg, and other free e-book sites.  (They all have directions on how to download).  If you teach older students, many will be able to read classic stories like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  For younger students, there are still options, like classic Beatrix Potter stories.

If you are lucky enough to have a projector in the classroom, you can teach students about the Kindle app before you turn them loose in the computer lab.  Load a free e-book, then project your screen as you show students how to play with features that enhance readability.

Click on the Aa at the top of your screen to adjust the text display.  You can increase the font size, making any book seem easier.  Adjust the brightness so the background is gray rather than white.

What really helps speed-reading is to decrease the words per line (an option found by clicking the Aa).  This helps because students’ eyes don’t have to travel so far across the screen, so there is less opportunity for the eyes to lose their way, so to speak.  Check out my blog posts on Speed Reading and Kindle Speed Reading for more information.

Click on the blocks to format your Kindle text in columns.  Students will see how the narrow band of text enhances their ability to read quickly—just like in a newspaper.

Click here for Amazon’s free Kindle apps for a multitude of platforms: PC, Mac, iPod, and various smart phones.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you, or Part 2 about how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home. So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do the Kindle justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part two: how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading

For a full lesson on speed reading, read my blog entry on the topic.  Here are the Cliffs Notes:

1.  Speed read by tracking with your finger.  Yes, just like you did back in first grade.  Build up speed by sliding your finger more quickly under the text and challenging your eyes and mind to keep up.
2. This helps because it focuses your eye.  Without imposing focus, your eyes will just wander over the page, re-reading, skipping along, and generally wasting time.
3. It also teaches you not to read in your head.  You know how little kids read aloud?  Well, us older folks enunciate the words in our heads.  As you learn to track your finger faster and read faster, you will read much faster than you could talk.  Once you break the reading-aloud-in-your-head habit, you read much faster.

How does Kindle help kids with speed reading?

1.  It focuses the mind.  With the Kindle, you are looking at a single page at a time, not a double-page spread.  It feels like you are cutting your distractions in half.
2. The eye doesn’t have to slide so far.  With a traditional Kindle—the ones that are about 6” wide, the text is a little narrower than in many books.  Your eye doesn’t have to slide so far, and you take in many words at once, naturally scooping them into phrases.  This makes a huge difference in how quickly you read.  Think about a newspaper, and how those 3” columns are built for speed reading.  Your eye takes in several words at once.
3. Kids get a feeling of accomplishment as they click through the pages.  You know how kids who are just learning to read chapter books stop constantly to brag about how many pages they have read or what chapter they’re on?  Kindle brings back that exhilarating feeling of accomplishment.  For some reason, it really is fun to click through pages.  This encourages kids to read faster—faster—faster!  (My advice to you: allow some time for goof-off clicking through pages to let kids get it out of their systems.)
4. You can enlarge the font size.  This addresses many problems facing kids.  For example, a poor child might wait forever for new glasses while you and the school nurse try to secure a pair.  With a Kindle, you can enlarge the font size so the child can read without headaches.  Enlarging the font size also makes any book seem easier.  This can decrease the intimidation factor for struggling readers.  Click here to read comments about Kindle and kids on Amazon—there are some persuasive testimonials.
5. Kindle is new.  Like any skill, you get better at reading—and speed reading—through practice.  Although it’s been around a while, Kindle is still a novelty.  Kids who don’t like to read will want to use the Kindle.  They’ll practice more than they would have otherwise.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.  Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

Kids and Kindles, an occasional series at the Class Antics blog.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle can be a wonderful classroom tool.  So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do it justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part one: harnessing the text-to-speech feature

The short version: the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.

The long version:

Kindle parents taught me this tip.  Over and over, parents say that Kindle has not only encouraged children with learning disabilities to read, it has practically taught them to read.  Click to read about how the text-to-speech feature has helped many Kindle users who have learning disabilities!

Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

The text-to-speech feature will read any English language content to you.  This is extremely helpful for kids with dyslexia or a learning disability.  The kids can follow along as Kindle reads aloud—or not.  Either way, they are building their vocabulary though exposure to the richer variety of words found on the printed page compared to everyday conversation.

I think the read-along-while-I-read-aloud aspect of the Kindle is really valuable.  It hearkens back to Teddy Ruxpin and his books on tape I loved as a child.

Audiobooks, while higher quality than Kindle’s text-to-speech because they’re read by actors and not machines, are expensive.  If you want to follow along with an audiobook, you have to own the actual book, too.  That can get really expensive.

With Kindle, you can listen to any book read aloud.  The deal is especially great when you consider how many free books are available.  Kindle has an extensive collection of public domain books you can download for free.  Many classics are written at quite a high reading level, so even kids without learning disabilities might like the text-to-speech feature.  How nice for new technology to expose kids to classics like the Oz books, Beatrix Potter’s collection, or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!

I always thought I was a fast reader—until I met my mentor teacher.  She puts me to shame!   I thought it must be some natural talent of hers, not something that I could learn.  True teacher that she is, my mentor wouldn’t let me off so easily.  Speed reading is a skill you can acquire.  My mentor learned it as a child from a teacher who had a speed reading machine.

It was years before I figured out what a speed reading machine was—more on that later.  But that summer, I took a course in speed reading through my local university.  On the first night, we learned to track our reading with our fingers, just like a first grader.  Then we practiced all summer.

And I consider it $350 well spent.

Yes, sliding your finger under the words like a first grader really will make you a faster reader.  Our eyes wander all over the page, slowing down our reading.  We reread sections and don’t even realize it.  Tracking with your finger combats this human frailty.

People tend to vocalize the words we read.  Little kids actually read everything out loud.  Most older kids (and adults) tend to read silently, but we pronounce the words in our heads.  By tracking with your finger, you can move faster than your mind can pronounce the words.  With a little practice, you’ll get to the point where you feel like you’re reading with lightning speed—because you’re flashing past the words, absorbing their meaning but not pronouncing every phoneme.

In addition to just getting faster, there are unexpected uses for speed reading:

• It keeps you focused (and awake).  Speed reading will help you pull an all-nighter.
• It gets you through boring text.  Focus on the skill of speed reading, not the dull text you are required to read.  College kids and those working on master’s programs, take note!

I found an online speed reading machine that teaches you how to focus your eyes.  You can let your students use it individually in the computer lab.  I like to project the online speed reading machine using our classroom computer-projector hookup.  Then the whole class can practice together.  The strong readers pull everyone else along.

You have to input your own text into the online speed reading machine.  Use free books from Project Gutenberg or just pull text from online encyclopedias and articles for kids.  My class and I had the best time doing that.  I let the kids suggest topics for study.  In this manner, we learned about everything from sea turtles to Justin Bieber.  The kids had so much fun learning about a variety of topics that they forgot they were improving their reading fluency.

Want to learn more about speed reading?  Click here for an article about speed reading from the Four Hour Workweek Guy.

Mouse on the Mayflower is a good movie for teaching the classic Thanksgiving story—the kind that’s as much story as history.  As the title suggests, it’s a mouse’s eye view of the experience, from leaving England to the first Thanksgiving.  The movie focuses more on education than entertainment, so students will learn plenty about details like how the pilgrims repaired the Mayflower en route while still enjoying cartoonish fun.

Songs by Tennessee Ernie Ford are sprinkled throughout the movie.  On the whole, they are very good, but watch your kids snicker during the love song!  You might wonder why the pilgrims were singing love songs when the Puritans objected to such frivolity.  Oh, well.

The movie is definitely pro-pilgrim, which makes sense because William the mouse did sail across the Atlantic with them.  Conflict with the Native Americans (Indians in this movie) is presented with the view that there are buffoonish instigators on both sides.  The mice help to bring everyone together, of course.

Enjoy this for what it is—a nice 50 minute movie that effectively dramatizes the Thanksgiving story.  Your students will like it!

Note: this movie is currently not available on DVD, but you can buy it cheap as a used VHS.

This year, try a New Orleans theme for your Halloween/Fall Festival party.  You can work in geography, history, culture, and Halloween fun.

I did this last year and I can tell you that both the kids and parents just loved it.  It was a nice modification of traditional Halloween-at-school activities.  Parents appreciated the educational angle and they learned something, too.

I grabbed everyone’s attention by showing them that the Disney Haunted Mansion is in New Orleans Square.  I told them that the Disney Haunted Mansion movie is set in New Orleans, too.

Once I had everyone’s attention, I showed them a New Orleans PowerPoint I created.  You can click to download & share it, too (large file: 3+ MB).  It shows pictures of New Orleans to help get everyone in the mood.  I downloaded the Disney “Grim Grinning Ghosts” Haunted Mansion song along with some classic New Orleans jazz to play while we looked at the pictures.

Everyone loved learning about the New Orleans jazz funeral.  I told the children how it evolved from African funeral customs.  A New Orleans jazz band plays a sad song or dirge on the way to the cemetery, and happy tunes for the procession out.  Click here to learn more about the New Orleans jazz funeral.  Here is a sample:

Eileen Southern in The Music of Black Americans: A History wrote, “On the way to the cemetery it was customary to play very slowly and mournfully a dirge, or an ‘old Negro spiritual’ such as ‘Nearer My God to Thee,’ but on the return from the cemetery, the band would strike up a rousing, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ or a ragtime song such as ‘Didn’t He Ramble.’  Sidney Bechet, the renowned New Orleans jazzman, after observing the celebrations of the jazz funeral, stated, “Music here is as much a part of death as it is of life.”

Because I teach third grade, I don’t explain how the New Orleans above-ground cemeteries are necessary so that the bodies don’t wash out on the streets during floods.  This would be very interesting to older students, though.  For third graders,  I  show  pictures of the beautiful New Orleans cemeteries, famous cultural landmarks of the city.

Make sure to teach the kids about New Orleans food, like jambalaya and po’boys.  Explain that po’boy sandwiches can be any simple filling in bread, but that most people think of a shrimp po’boy.   My mom said that when she lived near New Orleans, red beans and rice was everybody’s Monday dinner because Monday was laundry day and the mother was too busy to cook something difficult.  Practical details like that help history and culture come alive for students.

Parents and students alike are very interested in my story about the New Orleans streetcars.  I explained that if you ride the car to the end of the line, the driver will have everybody stand up so he can reverse the seat backs.  In that way, you always ride facing forward.  Click here to see the concept.  The picture is part of my New Orleans PowerPoint presentation.

For a literacy connection, I recommend reading the New Orleans Magic Tree House book A Good Night for Ghosts.  Your students will enjoy learning about New Orleans and Louis Armstrong.  The book touches very, very lightly on segregation.  You can expand on that or wait for another learning opportunity, your choice.   (If you like, teach your students that Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans.)  A Good Night for Ghosts shouldn’t be too scary for your class.  It has a mild ghost scene that turns out not to be ghosts after all, but Louis’s friends.

Happy Halloween!

In third or fourth grades, many children begin to need eyeglasses.  It’s not unusual for a third of the class to be wearing glasses by the end of the school year.

If you think a student might need glasses, call the nurse to schedule a convenient time, then send the child to the nurse for a vision screening.

If the child fails the vision screening, the nurse will send a note home to the child’s parents indicating that the child should be taken to an eye doctor.  In many cases, often the very next day, the child will tell you she has an appointment at the eye doctor.  If this doesn’t happen, remind for a day or two, then wait a week to see if the child brings it up again.  If not, go back to the nurse.

Let the nurse remind parents.  If you get the feeling (or know for sure) that affordability is an issue, make sure to tell the nurse.  School nurses have a few resources for free eyeglasses, but quantities are limited.  You can tip the balance in your student’s favor by advocating and staying in contact with the nurse.  Remember not to promise anything to the student, and don’t tell the student about your efforts to secure free glasses.  You might not succeed.

A heartbreaking scenario is when a child has glasses that are clearly many years old and inadequate for the child’s current vision needs.  Sometimes the tip-off is that the glasses are too small for the child’s head. Send this child to the nurse and go through the vision screening procedure.  If the parents can’t or won’t get the child new glasses, work with the nurse and social worker.  Always, always involve the nurse as the primary case manager.

At many schools, families bring items from the school supplies list to Meet the Teacher Night.  Nowadays, most supplies are collected by the teacher to be used by the whole class.

I highly recommend that you implement a system for dealing with these goods.  If you don’t, you will spend hours dealing with school supplies.

Cubbies are ideal.  You can make quick labels saying things like “paper,” “Kleenex” or “pencils” and families will sort the supplies for you.  The kids really enjoy it, and parents are happy to help.  Set aside ample room for bulky supplies like tissue, reams of copy paper, and Clorox wipes.

If you don’t have cubbies, designate bins, countertops, bookshelves, student desks, tables, or just patches on the floor for various supplies.  You’ll be glad that the supplies are at least sorted.

You can put the supplies away before school starts—or not.  If school starts the day after Meet the Teacher Night, don’t deal with the supplies after families leave.  Just go home and get some sleep!  The kids can help you put them away.  It’s a fun team-building activity.  Really.

Veteran teachers: showing new teachers how to do this is probably the number one thing you can do to help short of assisting in actual classroom setup.  Last year I showed our new kindergarten teachers how to do this, and they all said I saved them hours.

Kids and teachers know: back to school is the real New Year. Kids are full of nervous jitters at this exciting time. You can really help by reviewing key concepts before the first day of school.

Ideally, you followed some sort of program to combat summer slide, that significant decline in skills over the prolonged time off. Regardless, a concerted effort the week before school starts can make a difference.

Review basic math facts! I can’t stress this enough. Your child needs to get the same (correct) answer every time. Quick test: ask your child what 5+8 is. If your child doesn’t answer immediately, she needs to study. If your child was super-slow to solve 5+8, back up with easier problems like 3+2, and, last ditch, 3+1. The results might horrify surprise you.

Use flash cards, math games, drill worksheets from Dad’s Worksheets, or my free software: Best Times Tables Practice EVER! and Best Addition Practice EVER!

My latest shipment from The Great Courses, producer of audio and videotaped lecture series, prompted me to write this post.  They came up with an innovative marketing/thought provoking technique: Think Inside the Box.

As you can see from this picture, the inside of the box is full of facts and anecdotes from various lecture series.

“Rossini wrote all of his operas before he turned 37, and then he retired.  He started at the age of 18, and 19 years later he had written 35 operas before he put down his pen forever.”  –How to Listen to and Understand Opera

“During his secret negotiations with Zhou Enlai in Beijing in 1971, Henry Kissinger wore an oversized, borrowed shirt with a label that said “Made in Taiwan.” –The Fall and Rise of China

“Beethoven’s favorite foods were oysters, blood sausage, and head cheese.”—The String Quartets of Beethoven

“In the late 1800s Georg Cantor proved mathematically that there can be more than one infinity, an idea that seems conceptually impossible.  He showed that there are infinite infinities.”—Zero to Infinity: A History of Numbers

I developed an interest in The Great Courses when I bought my parents a lecture series about the Louvre since they were interested in visiting Paris.  I ended up watching the course myself and have ordered many more since then.  Between the cool anecdotes in the shipment box and the constant supply of enticing new catalogues, I just keep ordering and learning!

I mostly like the arts-based Great Courses, but you might like the business, scientific, mathematical, philosophical, historical, or health-themed lecture series.  My favorite course is The Genius of Michelangelo—truly fascinating whether you have a passing or significant interest in the man.  I’ve ordered several surveys of art and have branched out to Understanding the Human Factor: Life and Its Impact (about the implications of man’s transition from hunting and gathering to the domestication of plants and animals) and Myth in Human History (a lot easier to explain).

If you want to learn but don’t like dealing with papers, commutes and professional development credit, The Great Courses are for you.  They make daily tasks more fun and educational.  I actually look forward to laundry and ironing because it’s such a good time to watch a course.  I imagine that an audio course would be nice to listen to on a summertime cross-country car trip or just bumper-to-bumper traffic.

I am not affiliated with The Great Courses, except as a satisfied customer.  I don’t receive any benefit from this post.  I just wanted to tell you about how these courses enhance a lifelong-learner lifestyle.

P.S. About pricing of The Great Courses:  Courses go on sale all the time, so watch for sales.  If you like a course but it’s three to five hundred dollars, just wait for it to go on sale.  Once you buy a course, they tell you about all the sales and send you coupons.  The courses are more affordable than you’d think.

Despite what you may hear, I still believe that worksheets are fun and educational.  They’re efficient and give a nice sense of accomplishment.  Doing worksheets for a student is kind of like doing calisthenics for a Marine.  It’s just something you do.  You know it’s beneficial, you enjoy it, and you don’t question it.

You know the great feeling of opening a brand-new box of crayons?  That’s how a lot of kids feel about a brand-new workbook.  You can hear the binding crack as you open it.  The pages smell like paper and ink and promise.  This workbook hasn’t been messed up yet, there are no doodles and ripped pages, and every sheet offers the promise of a nice fat A+.

Lots of kids really would welcome a summer workbook.  You can buy them at teaching stores like Lakeshore Learning, office stores, discount stores like Walmart and Target, dollar stores, grocery stores, book stores (Barnes & Noble has a large workbook section near kids’ books), club stores like Sam’s Club and Costco, and drugstores.  Once your eyes are opened, you’ll start seeing workbooks everywhere.

Here are some recommendations:

Spectrum series: they have a workbook for every subject and grade level.  The primary level Little Critter series are the most fun.  Click here to learn about the wonders of Little Critter Reading, a workbook so great that I won a grant to buy a copy for each of my students.

Evan-Moor also creates workbooks for every subject.  They have a great poetry series, and their fiction and nonfiction workbooks are both educational and interesting.  The science workbooks are fun because they teach nonfiction reading skills and science, a topic that is now taught mostly through activities, so kids don’t have much actual science knowledge like you’d get from a book.  Teachers love the Daily Math Practice and Daily Language Review books.  I also like Daily Paragraph Editing, but most kids have trouble with it since grammar isn’t taught explicitly anymore.

Brain Quest workbooks cover all subjects for one grade.  This is a good all-summer-long review/preview of everything.

Scholastic Success With…is similar to Brain Quest and covers all subjects for one grade.

Summer Bridge Activities is another good review/preview book and is available at teaching stores.

And, of course, Best Multiplication Workbook EVER! is great for all you math buffs.   It covers multiplication, from learning the facts to mastering long multiplication and word problems.

Going to the library is like shopping without the buyer’s remorse. Wait, scratch that. The library can still offer buyer’s remorse if you check out too many books, the wrong books, or just plain lose stuff.

Here are my tips on organizing your library haul.

1. Keep a dedicated library basket (or bag) in the car and at home. The basket at home is so you don’t lose books. When you’re not reading the book, it goes in the basket. When you’re checking out dozens of books at a time, this becomes important. Keep a basket in the car for already-read books so you can drop them off whenever you’re nearby. If you wait for a scheduled trip to the library, you might end up with overdue books.
2. Teach your child how to select books. Librarians and teachers try, but it might mean more coming from you. Kids pick the strangest books. My third graders will show me their latest library picks and I’ll say things like,“Have you read the first five books in this series that is two grade levels above yours? No? So why did you pick this?” “This book is about the Russian Revolution. Do you have any interest in that? Then why did you pick it?”“This is a tender coming-of-age story about a girl and her horse. You like Transformers and anything about war. Why did you pick it?”Teach your child to really think about whether there is anything he can relate to—the cover, the title, the author, or the first page. If not, pass. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s for you.
3. Use the five-finger method. At school, books are labeled with their AR levels. Not true at most public libraries. You can check on ARBookfind.com, or you can just use the five finger method. Encourage your child to read the first page aloud and hold up a finger for each word that’s too hard. If your child finds five too-hard words on the first page, the book is too hard. Put it down.
4. Ask the librarian for advice. Librarians read more than anyone and they know what kids like. You can trust them to help you choose. Just make sure your child understands that while he doesn’t have to read everything the librarian recommends, he has to read enough so as not to annoy her and make her not want to help him next time.
5. Feel free to take and check out the display books. Librarians set books out on display, like at a bookstore. You’re allowed to borrow these books. The librarian can always find something new to set out. (Hint: for picture books, sometimes it’s random. I’ve found some cool books by reading the random picture books librarians set out.)

If your child likes one book in a series, encourage him to read all the books in the series.  Your child will feel more like he chose the book and he will be more vested in reading.  Teachers, librarians or booksellers can advise you on a series at the right age and reading level. 

My high readers in third grade loved the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, Children’s Choice Book Award Winner: Author of the Year. Their  enjoyment inspired other students in the class to raise their own reading levels so they could read the five books in the series about Greek mythology set in modern-day America.  More than 20 million copies of the books have been sold in more than 35 countries.

Available at Amazon.com:
The Lightning Thief (Book 1)
The Sea of Monsters (Book 2)
The Titan’s Curse (Book 3)
The Battle of the Labyrinth (Book 4)
The Last Olympian (Book 5)

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney started on Funbrain.com in 2004, appearing  as blog posts.  Now, the series tops the New York Times best seller lists.  My students love Poptropica, the online game that Jeff Kinney produces during his day job at an Internet company.  There are popular movies out for the first two books.  Share them with your kids!

Available at Amazon.com:
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Rodrick Rules (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2)
The Last Straw (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #3)
Dog Days (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #4)
The Ugly Truth (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5)

And of course, the Harry Potter series and movies are magnificent (available at Amazon.com).  I have read that series countless times, and before each new movie is released, my family watches all the old movies again so we don’t miss anything. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will be released on July 15, 2011.  I’ll be there! 

A bit of self promotion: my Buckley School Books series has 2 volumes available now.  I plan to write one book for each kid in Mr. Hoker’s class!

Zapped! (Buckley School Books #1)
Brainstorm (Buckley School Books #2)
Double Switched (Buckley School Books #3 coming soon)