I don’t know how I am sitting at the end of summer and getting ready to start another year, but here I am! And I am as excited as ever! One thing I love to do in the summer is to find new books to share with my students for the coming year. I have found a couple of great ones and want to quickly share them with you.
As I look for books, I always think about what I want my students to embrace as we start the new year. I really wanted to find some new books that would provide students support with mental health and some good strategies to help them be successful with having a positive attitude and working together. I stumbled upon these two books and I am so excited to share them with you!
The Energy Bus for Kids
The Energy Bus for Kids is a children’s version of an adult book that talks about having a positive attitude and looking for ways to stay positive in life. The book has great strategies students can use with bullies and when approaching issues in school.
As I’ve begun planning I created some NO PREP activities that I can use with the book to help focus in on the key concepts I want students to think about. You can grab the unit activities by clicking the image below.
The Hard Hat for Kids
SO I am definitely on a Jon Gordon kick this summer. When I purchased The Energy Bus for Kids I noticed some other books from this author. Through that I found the book Hard Hat for Kids. This is a story about 10 ways kids can be a good teammate. I love the fact that once again this story gives very tangible ways to improve on their collaboration with others. I plan on using this story after we read and work with The Energy Bus for Kids to talk with my students about ways to treat each other.
My favorite part about this story is that it tackles the concept of, just because you are good at something does not mean you are successful if the objective involves collaboration. This is such an important skill for students especially in upper elementary as they learn what they excel at.
As you can guess, I decided I needed some activities to go with this story as well. You can grab the activities by clicking the image below.
Both units have multiple activities. I expect that I will only get to a couple of the activities at the beginning of the year, but my hope is to revisit the books later, in the middle or end of year as we need to talk about these topics again. Students will already have a background of the book and we can do some of the other activities as follow ups to remind us of where we need to be.
I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do! Tell me, what reading do you plan on adding to your back to school list this year?
