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

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.

Louder, Lili

  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 Louder, Lili is 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, alphabetical 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!