Louder, Lili: A Little Gem Of A Back-To-School Book!

As I said in my previous post, I'm always on the lookout for
new books (or ones I haven't yet discovered!).
 Especially those I can use at the beginning of the year.
(I'm still waiting for Natasha Wing to write 

The Night Before Second Grade ha!). 

Last year I discovered this precious little gem of a book called

  Louder, Lili by Gennifer Choldenko. It is so perfect for those back-to-school 

discussions on friendship, kindness, and noticing how what we say 

and do makes others feel. Lili is so shy and soft spoken that her voice 

is never heard until one day she finds the courage to speak up to help a friend.

  My class really connected with this character last year and we had 

some great discussions about respect, standing up for what is right,
being a good friend, and finding your own voice.  

I found this great little book trailer on YouTube

made as a class project to give you an idea of
what it's all about.

This book lends itself to so many different teaching points and this summer 

I put together a book companion unit with all of the things we did with it plus 

LOTS of things I plan to do this year.  

I thought I would do something a bit different this time.  We all have such 

varying teaching styles, student abilities, and let's face it district mandates, 

that I wanted to create a unit that was extremely flexible with several formats 

that could be used in multiple ways.  Whole or small group, in literacy 

centers, or included in interactive notebooks. I've included work

with story vocabulary as well as a comprehension and vocabulary 

assessment with answer keys.  Each color activity also comes in a

blackline version and I've added printables not pictured here for story mapping,

working with synonyms, abc order, and a fun little "Hamster Hop"

to get your kids moving while reviewing or practicing parts of speech.

Many of the activities can also be compiled into a booklet 

and used as an assessment or an open house display.

I try to work smarter, not harder so I'll be using some of these over 

the first few weeks of school to introduce how we use our supplies, begin to 

establish our routines and procedures for working whole group and in our 

literacy centers, as a back to school writing baseline to keep in student portfolios, 

and  as skills review from last year. 

Week three we begin to focus on characters.  Their traits, relationships with 

other characters, how they respond to events in the story, and
how they change because of these events. We also begin

to really work with our kids on providing evidence and explanations for

 their thoughts and answers.

Feeling "chart challenged"?  No worries! I've included 

all the chart parts you need plus a graphic organizer for students to use.

I've even included  retelling and complete sentences crafts to practice 

or review these important skills. I'll be using the retelling craft

to focus on important details in the beginning middle and end of the story 

with special attention paid to writing complete sentences and using punctuation.

I know I won't have time to do this in one fell swoop so I'll 

save the hamster craft for some Friday afternoon fun then add

it to our writing.

Here's a little peek at the whole shebang...

for big Back to School Sale coming soon on TPT!