Beatrice Potter's Books

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Beatrice Potter's Books
By Kelly Mc

Hi Patty,

I teach using Open Court with a very disadvantaged group of second language learners in Santa Barbara, CA. We have been very successful with Open Court reading and now I have second graders who can actually read
Beatrice Potter's books!
After we read Peter Rabbit together, I checked out as many copies of as many titles written by Beatrice Potter as I could from our school library. Open Court has a strategy called, "Reading Roundtable". I made the books available and then asked the children to choose a book they wanted to read and allowed them to read the same book with a group of friends.

They decided how long it would take them to read it, and then read it alone or together. If they needed to take it home to finish by their own deadline, they did.

When all of them had finished the book, they discussed it. We have guildlines for a discussion that I will share with you if you are interested.

So.. lots of little groups were all reading different books by Beatrice Potter. When all groups had finished we had a Book Share. The whole class sat with their group in a circle made with their chairs. Each group had a chance to tell about their book. The goal was to make it interesting so the others will want to read the book too.

The children loved hearing about the same characters over and over from the different books Ms. Potter wrote. They were really excited to pick another book to read with their Reading Roundtable group after the book share.

I hope this will help. We sure had a great time! Kelly