Big Book Station

Now, our Big Book Station is pretty straight forward as you might imagine! It consists of an big book easel, a tall laundry basket to hold the books, a Common Core "I can" statement, writing paper with pencils and crayons, and big books. Yep, you guessed it! Our big books WERE purchased by those lovely donors of DonorsChoose.org!! It's like I said....DonorsChoose is THE BOMB!!

Before the students visit the big book station, we spend LOTS of time reading and rereading the big books as a class. Even in the whole group setting, I will call students up to point to the words as we chorally read them aloud. When the students visit, they choose a book and take turns reading it and pointing to the words with their partner. This station helps increase reading fluency and comprehension.

To add another element of choice to the station, I included clip boards with paper, pencils, and crayons. The students have the opportunity to write a response to the stories they read. Many of the students will choose to do this, especially during the third and fourth nine-weeks. I also print the sentence, "I like the part when ______________." on sentence strips and place them at the station. Students with language differences or with special needs can use this support to help them write about their opinion. The students that need the support use the sentence strips, and the students that do not need the support use their own inventive spelling.

The students feel so proud that they are able to read these books, and they love visiting this station! Thanks for stopping by for a peek into our happy, little classroom!