The Mystery Reader!
Coming in to Kindergarten to be the Mystery Reader!
My younger daughter is in Kindergarten and in an effort to bring families into the classroom, the Kindergarten team invites parents into the classroom on Fridays to read a few books to the class. The books can be the child’s favorites. I never told my daughter when I was signed up to be the Mystery Reader (that would defeat the purpose!), but well in advance, she had given me the book titles that she wanted me to read. Here are her choices:
This is a limited word book, which means that the pages have very few words on them. And, all of the words included have the letter pair OO – for example, “Look,” “Zoo,” “Shampoo.” The story is about two kids – a brother and sister who take a special trip to the zoo. The story begins with them waking up to eat breakfast and putting on their “Boots” to head to the zoo. They see many different animals at the zoo – including a “Baboon” and a “Kangeroo!” After they eat ice cream and see many, many balloons, the siblings return home to get ready for bed and reading a good “Book” At the end of the book, a full “Moon” came out!
The kids seemed to enjoy this one and participated quite a bit as I was reading. Many of them asked why I was making up my own story. This is one of the reasons why I love wordless or limited word books – the reader can co-construct the text with the author. In an effort to make the book more interactive, I invited the kids to read some of the words with me – like “Zoom” when the car was driving off to the “Zoo” and “Woof Woof” for the picture of the dog.
This is a great book to read with kids after teaching the letter pair OO. It can be read as a shared reading text where the kids read the words along with the teacher. Julia Lindsey, who wrote Above the Fray: Reliable, Research-Based Routines for Developing Decoding Skills advocates for including phonics instruction into shared reading so that the kids can have practice and the support from the teacher when learning new phonics features.
This book is written in the form of haikus. Each page has a haiku! The book is about a dog who is found by a family. After they take him in, he gets into some mischief, so there is a time when the dog, who they name Mooch, is not sure if he will be staying or leaving for the pound.
When I read the book to the class, I asked them to make predictions about whether or not they thought Mooch would be adopted by the family. The class was pretty mixed with their thoughts. But, in the end, the kids were very happy when they saw the Dad come home with a dog bed and dog food.
In terms of skills, this is a great book to use when teaching predicting or inferring. It is also a great mentor text when teaching poetry. My older daughter really appreciated how the book was written in the form of many haikus and gave her many examples of this type of poem.
The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak
This was the favorite! It’s a perfect read aloud for Kindergarten. I probably could have read this book a few more times and still kept their attention. This is the book that does not have any pictures and, therefore, makes adults say very silly things! I like to read this book in different voices – one for the narration and another for the funny words that I am being forced to say because of the book.
After reading this book, one of the kids told me that it was more fun than watching YouTube! Success!