Read alouds are such a great way to work on so many literacy skills, but it can be difficult to differentiate them for students in special education. Book companions take the guess work out of read alouds! I’m going to share some winter book companions you can use in your classroom.
Teacher Planning Guide
I’m going to give you a walk through of the winter book companions. The first component included in each book companion is a teacher planning guide. When I said this will take all the guess work out of read alouds, I really meant ALL the guess work. The planning guide will walk you through every activity you need to do each day of the week so you can be prepared without a lot of prep.
Book Companion Visuals
Next up in the book companions are visuals. Music to a special ed teacher’s ears, right? These visuals will help you teach the elements of the story as you’re reading whole group, and they will serve as a great tool when working on the story map worksheets later.
Story Map Worksheets
Remember all those story elements you taught with visuals during your read aloud? Next up, you have story map worksheets. These are perfect for checking your students’ learning after you read the story and reviewing what happened in the story.
Vocabulary Cards and Independent Work
The next thing included are vocabulary cards and other vocabulary independent work. These vocab activities will help practice and review the vocabulary from the story. These make for a great independent center with vocab matching cards and clip cards. These are leveled to meet the needs of all your students,
Visual Craft
A fun component to each book companion is a visual craft that aligns to the book! These are fun, easy crafts that will extend your students’ learning of each story. For example, for the story Tracks in the Snow, the visual craft in the book companion is making animal prints on paper and using a sentence builder to write about the animal tracks.
Sequencing Worksheets
Sequencing is one of my favorite literacy skills to work on, so I’m thrilled to see dedicated sequencing worksheets included in each book companion. These are also leveled to meet the needs of all your students!
Leveled Comprehension Quiz
What would a book companion be without a comprehension quiz? And a leveled quiz? Sign me up! The best way to check for comprehension is a quiz, so use these at the end of the week to see what your students learned!
The best part about the book companions, you can purchase the bundles for 4 per month so you have book companions to go along with your read alouds all year long! What book companion would you like to see? Let us know in the comments!
Purchase winter Book Companions on TPT.
Puchase winter Book Companions in the SSE Shop.
If you’re wanting to add more books to your classroom library, check out Arielle’s blog post here!
