Soft & Warm Reading!

One of my favorite things to do is curl up with a good book . . . so to encourage my students to do the same, I have pillows and stuffed animals for them to use during independent reading time.  I even keep a few hidden in the closet and bring them out later in the year to delight my students with new choices!

There are an assortment of colors, textures, and animals in our bins so that everyone can find the right fit for them.  I have different textures of pillows for students who may have sensory needs.  Some pillows are soft cotton while others are slippery polyester.  I also have different styles of stuffed animals for students to read with . . . some students really like to read to a stuffed buddy!

And since we all know that every kid fights over whose turn it is, we have a schedule for what days students may use the pillows and stuffed animals:

I have organized the schedule using numbers so that it can be reused every year (each students has a number assigned to them for the year).  This cuts down on the arguments and tension surrounding getting to the pillow bins first!  The only thing that still gets us is deciding whose turn it is when there is a snow day . . . 

Literary Themes

Here is a set of posters I've made to help students recognize themes.  It includes many recurring literary themes.  I also accompanied each word with a symbol to help drive home meanings.  My students use this set of posters often as they are searching for great words to describe the theme of a passage or book. 

I created this set of posters to help my students realize the common themes among books.  Theme can be a difficult, abstract concept to grasp, and I've found that these posters help students communicate a book's theme more readily.  Oftentimes, the theme of a book can encompass many of these ideas, but these words act as a springboard for brainstorming themes!

Get a FREE download of my Literary Themes Posters!  It is a google.doc in PDF format.