Recently students have started picking up the nonfiction big books during silent reading. Interestingly enough, our classroom now operates at a much noisier level during reading workshop time when this happens. These books promote a sense of community among young readers that small chapter books like Junie B. Jones and the Magic Tree House series do not. There have been up to five students circled around one big book at a time pointing out various things in the books. They like to use the pointing finger wand when they do this to show each other new findings or favorite pictures.Favorite books often include maps, especially of other continents such as Africa. Because the books have been such a big hit these past few weeks, we will hopefully be spending a lot more time reading them in the future. I'm also considering opening up a DonorsChoose project fundraising for big books and other nonfiction picture books about the human body. Based on student interest, that is going to be our next big unit of study after the Authors' Tea for our biography writing.
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