Traveling Suitcases

I have recently put together traveling suitcases and sent them on their way to be shared with students and parents. They have benn going around for about a week now and the studnets are very eager to get a turn. Due to the fact that there are 24 kids in our class I decided to use three bags. Each of these bags has the same notebook with the same directions, only different books.

My focus for these bags were for children to spendsome quality time reading with their families and to also build on comprehension strategies. In each of the bags there is a book related to social skills. I figured that these books are interesting, fun to read, adn every child can connect in some way. The directions ask that the student reads the book with someone and then they write down conncetions they had to the story. They are to write three different types:1. Text to self 2. Text to text 3. Text to world. There are descriptions of each type of connection.

So far, I have found that children have the most trouble with connecting to the world. This is something that seems abstract to young children although I hope we can build on this.

It has been fun to read childrens connections and see how excitied they are when they get picked to take a bag home! I do use popsicle sticks to decide so that it is fair. I am going to send the bags aaround so that each child gets to read each of the 3 books. This was a suggestion from a student! Happy Reading!

Kyla :)