Shared Reading

Book: Apples for Everyone

Author: Jill Esabaum

Level: Kindergarten/1st grade

“Apples for Everyone” by Jill Esbaum is a nonfiction book about apples. This book explores how apples can be prepared in many different delicious ways. This book discusses the many different kinds of apples, the different colors of apples, and the different shapes and sizes that they can appear. While reading this book, students will learn information about apples and will perhaps want to learn more about different fruits. This book gives true illustrations for students, it contains nothing but factual information. This will help students be practical when they are predicting what will happen in future stories. This book will activate their awareness of sight words. This book provides different words throughout the story that will enhance their phonemic awareness. Alphabet knowledge and the importance of tracking their reading will also be present when reading this book aloud to the students.

Focus 1 - Alphabet knowledge

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.D:

Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

An activity that will help students with alphabet knowledge is called Letter Matching with Stickers. The materials needed to create this activity are notecard, foam letter stickers, and a sharpie. Shops such as dollar stores and Walmart will have all of the material needed for this activity. Write each uppercase letter of the alphabet on a notecard using the sharpie. The students will look at each notecard and their jobs are to look for the lowercase version of the letter and stick it on the notecard next to the uppercase letter. This is a great way for children to recognize uppercase and lowercase letters. This activity also helps students with their fine motor skills because they are constantly peeling the stickers themselves.

Focus 2 - Phonemic awareness

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2

Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

An activity that will help students with Phonemic Awareness is called The Bean Bag Sound Toss. This activity requires teachers to create a chart. On the left-hand side, a row of words and the right-hand side, how many sounds do each word contains. Use words that contain 1-5 sounds for this activity. The words can come from shared reading. For instance, “Apples for Everyone” contains words such as orchards, apple, Halloween, Fuji, and bloom. Have students count how many sounds they hear in each word and write that number down on the appropriate column. Give the students 5 bean bags and place a basket in front of them. Students are to throw bean bags in the basket for each sound that they hear in a given word. As the students are throwing the bean bag into the basket, be sure to closely monitor their interactions to ensure that they are saying each sound as they are tossing the bean bag. When they are finished, have them count up how much bean bags are in the basket. This activity is a fun and immersive way for students to learn about sounds and enhance their phonemic awareness.

Focus 3 - Sight words

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.C

Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).

An activity that will teach sight words to students is called Roll and Write. This activity will require teachers to buy jumbo foam dices. Teachers write sight words and tape them around the die. Each face of the die should have one sight word. Students are to roll the die, the sight word that they land on will be written down on a piece of paper. Each round, students can roll the dice 'X' amount of times. At the end of the round, each student can count how many letters they have on their paper. The student with the highest amount of letters wins. The book “Apples for Everyone” uses words such as red, apple, tree, sweet, and smell frequently. These words can be written on the dies for students. This game will help students recognize and read sight words fluently and accurately. This game can also be played using a pair of dice. Students roll a pair of dice instead of one die. The rules are the same but this will increase the sight words that students are writing and seeing. Teachers should closely monitor their students to ensure that they are saying the word as they are writing them down. The possibilities are endless with the sight word dies. They can be used for games such as tic-tac-toe and bingo.

Focus 4 - Analogizing words

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.D

Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

An activity to use to help students with analogizing words is called The Snowball Toss. The materials needed for this activity are ping pong balls, small containers, and a marker. Use the marker to write words in specific word families on individual ping pong balls. For instance, write words that are in the same word families as ‘_at’, such as bat, cat, fat, and hat. Use a dry-erase marker to write the rimes of each word family on the containers. Have the student choose a ping pong ball and read the word by saying each sound. Then have the student throw the ping pong ball (snowball) into the corresponding container. This is a fun way for students to practice analogizing words. The shared reading book “Apples for Everyone” uses words that can be applied to this activity. Words such as red, honey, and sweet, which are present in the book, can be written on the container as ‘_ed’, ‘oney’, and ‘eet’. The ping pong balls (snowball) can have words such as fed, bed, and ted, money, boney, looney, feet, and beet.

Focus 5 - Phonics

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3

Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

An activity that will help students with phonics is called Guess Who. The objective of this game is for students to guess whose name in the class begins with the sound as the three words that a teacher says. For instance, there is a student in the class whose name is Lauren. The teacher would say, love, life, and light. The student will recognize that the sound of each word makes the ‘L’ sound and would guess the student is Lauren. Teachers should say the word slowly, sounding out all of the sounds. Be sure to have the student repeat the word as well, to ensure that they are sounding out the sounds of each word. The shared reading book “Apples for Everyone” can be used to play this game with the students. In the book, they mention different types of apples such as Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, Johnathan, McIntosh, Pink lady, and the Red Delicious. The name of the game can be changed to Guess What type of Apple. The concept of the game is the same. For example, if the students were to guess that the apple is the Gala apple, the words that the teacher can say are gallon, galaxy, and gastronomy.

Conclusion:

The activities that are presented in this shared reading plans are important because it will help shape students to become better and more confident readers. With these activities, students will have the ability to sound out words, identify sight words, and make new words by breaking them down. All of the activities in this shared reading plan will allow students to be more capable of reading a book independently. These activities will increase their reading level and enriched their vocabulary.

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