Transcript

Every year in my class, we celebrate reading aloud 100 books together.  And these are some of the details of that project that goes on for many, many months.  Every time I read a book to the class, which is at least once a day, we track them by writing the name, title, and the author on a little colored slip, and I paste them up all the way around the classroom and we come back all the way around almost to the end by the time we get to 100.  If you notice, I also do it in a pattern, a repeating pattern.  And every time they hit a particular colour, I usually use a five pattern, so they can count by fives.  So we can keep track of how many books we've read so far.  

The books I choose are personal favorites, favorites of my children, books that I find new in stores that I'm excited about.  I love to show that and model that to my children to say, I just bought this book on the weekend, and I couldn't wait to share it with you.  I also make sure that I have a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and other curriculum-related themes like math.  

So for example there's Stone Soup.  I read that usually around Thanksgiving because we usually cook soup around that time.  Ive got Marilyn Burns book, The Greedy Triangle, for when we do Geometry.  And, Gail Gibbons books are always wonderful for non-fiction.  This ones The Reason for This Season.  When we get to 100 books, which is usually two to three weeks after 100 days of school.  That's strategic on my part because children love to celebrate 100 days of school with math activities and we usually celebrate it as a whole school.  I didn't want to have that on top of that other celebration.  But also, in these early grades, we still read chapter books, which take more than one day to read.  So usually around the end of February or March we hit the 100 books mark.  At that time to celebrate, we have a party in our classroom where we celebrate by inviting the whole school.  

The children pick their favorite of the 100 books, they write a book report on it, and I usually have them do an art-related activity based on their book.  We also, by that time, have done a poetry book, which we also showcase.  The children put this information all on their desks.  We make a lot of food.  Cookies shaped like letters, brownies with little jokes and riddles on them.  Anything that has literacy-based on it, I'm up for that idea.  The children love this activity, they look forward to it every year, and its always very, very successful.

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