Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Apple Trees

From Learner Publications, there is a life cycles series on their First Step Nonfiction books. It is a wonderful series that has all I love in books for English Language Learners. The pictures are beautiful uncluttered and specific. This series is great for all Levels. I like to use it for levels 1and 2 students in the 4th and 5th grades. It is a great way to give them rich content in a simple and straight forward way. The Glossary is very well explained but, most of all, I love the facts page that help the students research further. Also, the cycle pictures are excellent for them to practice re-telling and sequencing words. We just finished studying the Apple Life Cycle and the students had a blast! We've practiced simple present tense/third person as well as past tense verbs in particular. Sequencing, Verb Tenses and Literary Skills - nonfiction. Three birds with one stone!


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/apple-trees-lerner-publishing-group/1013821861?ean=9780761340713&itm=2&usri=apple+trees

8 comments:

  1. I am pre-service teacher looking into ideas for my future classroom. I have found throughout my education, reading has been very important. I have broadened my vocabulary and speech immensely through reading and being read to by my parents. Do you find that reading to ELL students and in turn having them practice reading is most effective for learning the language?

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    1. You are right, reading and also writing are the most important things for our students to be successful specially when they are learning a new language, having a vast range vocabulary will help them academically.

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  2. Thanks for visiting my blog and commenting. I do find that reading aloud to students regardless of their language is a must for all teachers. In my instruction, oral language development must take the bulk of my time with my students. However, I make sure to set aside sessions where I read to them. Most of the time is to introduce a theme. The books I write about are those I have used and have been very useful to me. Thanks for visiting!

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  3. For the last two weeks, I've been working in the guided reading library at my school. Many titles are in English and Spanish equally. Our most recent acquisitions from Pioneer Valley are books in which the characters and stories start from the emergent up to advanced levels. The nonfiction books provide our bilingual students with the use of cognates which help them to connect prior knowledge acquired in their first language. The continue used of high frequency words which accumulate to reach the advanced levels is a+. The glossary provides definitions written in children terms. Definitely these books are helpful for guided reading and small instruction.

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    1. This sounds like a great set of books. Are the books bilingual? Are they leveled in both languages? It would be interesting to see how the levels compare in both languages. Thanks for sharing and posting.

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  5. I like the idea of sahring tips. I'm doing the tool #2, I saw different blog, but I have some issues to make/post comments about some blogs that I realy like. I guess it's work in progress.

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    1. Yes! Sharing is key for a teacher. At my district we work through PLC (Professional Learning Communities). It's hard to fit in the schedule but the one thing that I always look forward to is learning and hearing what my colleagues have been working and how they've done it. What worked and didn't work. It's like a mini Teacher's Conference. I love it. I'd love to learn the name of the blog you mention so I can check it out. Thanks for visiting and posting.

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