Poetry Friday: Emphasize rhythm and rhyme with audio clips
Audio performances of books, like this dramatic Book Reading of Bear Feels Scared (S&S, 2008), are a fun way to explore rhythm and rhyme with younger students.
Listen now with students and ask them to notice the rhyming words in…

Designing the cover is my final step in creating a picture book. It’s only after spending so much time in the interior of the book—realizing the characters and their world—that I can stand back and consider what one picture would best sum up the experience of the story.
Elementary students love series titles. They enjoy the comfort of familiar characters, settings, and structures. This is especially true for emergent and newly independent readers, whose reading success with these titles encourages them to seek similar books. (Me personally, I learned to read thanks to Matt Christopher’s sports books.)