Making Big Books

Hi everyone!  It's been awhile since my last post, but school has been really busy and it doesn't seem like it will be slowing down anytime soon.  Usually it seems like this time of the year usually goes by soooooo slow, but not this year.  My chickadees and I will be practicing for the SAT 10 that we will be taking next week as well as getting ready for field day, FAIR testing and ORF testing.  I feel swamped :(  Anyone else feeling that way??

I wanted to share with everyone a class made big book.  Do you make big books with your students?  My students love it.  We read many different stories that had the same overall theme:  "The Enormous Turnip", "The Enormous Potato", and "The Enormous Carrot".  Then my chickadees created their own story following the story line but gave it a new twist.

Hence, the birth of The Enormous Apple!

Their story had a cowboy, cowgirl, tiger, and an alien (to name a few) trying to pull an enormous stubborn apple off a tree.  To make this big book each team in my class worked cooperatively to choose a character, write their page of the story, and create the illustrations.  I find creating big books, that are based on multiple stories with the same theme very helpful to my ESOL students.  I usually store my classmade big books and ones that I have purchased in a hamper.  The big books are available for students to read during their rotation through Read to Self during our literacy workstation time.

I hope everyone has a great start to the new week!  I can't believe it will be May in a few days!!!