Observe Earth Day in the classroom by reading The Great Rhyme Travel Machine III: Saving Planet Earth. This awesome song that inspires kids to help our planet accompanies the story. The story and song include specific activities kids and their parents can do that match the goals of Earth Day. View story details here or see our feature story section below!
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A message from Playbooks® Kids! "We know that we’re just kids,
but we
want to save the earth!
We’re here to spread the message,
telling people what it's worth.
So listen to our song,
as we spell it out for you,
and we hope you'll want to be
a greener person, too!"
G.R.E.E.N. G is for thinking Globally R is for Recycling E is for the Energy you have inside E is for Every drop of water you conserve N is for your Neighbors to pass on
the global dream
More Playbooks® To Fit Your Curriculum
For Earth Day Education!
A Squirrel in Time Grades 1-3 Saving a Tree
Bug Off Grades K-2 Each Bug Has a Job
Protecting the Magic Grades 4-8 Nature Appreciation and Renewable Energy
The Glub Club Grades 1-3 Tide Pool Ecology
National Physical Education and Sport Week "Let's Move in School" is this year's theme! Join the Fun!
Many stories from the Playbooks® catalog focus on enjoying exercise and being active, creating a perfect opportunity to align academics with your Physical Education Week plans.
One selection, How Sandy Got Her Spin, even comes with a basketball circle routine including chant lyrics and motion directions that get students moving inside the classroom or out! Be sure to check out our activities of the month below to get this feature free.
Exercise and Sports Themed Playbooks®
to Encourage Healthy Physical Activity
How Sandy
Got Her Spin Grades 4-7
(Confidence and Goals, Basketball Handling)
My Wide World
of Sports Grades 3-6
(Finding a Sport
You Love)
The Baseball
Equation Grades 4-6
(Confidence and Goals, Baseball)
Soccer Stars Grades 4-9
(Team Playing, Soccer)
Surfing at
Sunrise Grades 6-9
(Training, Sportsmanship, Surfing)
Host a "Reader's Theater Cafe" in Your Classroom!
A fun twist on reader's theater performances for a parent or student audience! In a typical reader's theater fluency-building program, students will rotate through a series of stories they repeat 3-4 times each, in accordance with the guidelines for Repeated Guided Oral Reading. They will have read the stories in small, non-threatening groups, and at completion, they will be prepared to share what they've learned with an audience. After completing your reader's theater program, invite parents, teachers, or students to visit your classroom and order a selection from your Reader's Theater Cafe!
Prepare a menu of the stories that your students have practiced, complete with a plot and character summary for each story, to hand out to your guests. Each of your student groups should have their own audience consisting of their parents (or alternatively, students from other classes). Allow the audience to select a story from the menu, by vote or discussion, that they would like to see performed. Your reader's theater stars will literally be able to serve up the story at a moment's notice, being well versed in every story selection after reading them several times in their small groups. Students and audience members alike will love the excitement when the story chosen is performed.
You could even ask for a guest volunteer from your audience to participate in the story with a small extra part or the role of the narrator! Students can be asked to dress in white shirts and dark pants to resemble restaurant servers, but story performance props may still be used if desired. Guests can be seated at desks arranged like tables, while students stand to perform. A Reader's Theater Cafe could also be hosted at Parent/Family Night or other school/community events.
This sample menu below displays our classic Grade Level Kits, consisting of student and teacher favorite titles.
Save Your Smile Water Works Bug Off! Jake Can't Fake It There's No One Like You The Three Goats Gruff
Go
to the Greener Side The Three Little Pigs Play a Song For Us
Mini, the Super Watermelon Sundance and the Bully Stone Soup An Unexpected Path The Great Rhyme Travel Machine I:
Famous Americans The Great Rhyme Travel Machine III:
Saving Planet Earth Send Me a Sign Who Gives a Hoot!
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi Rumple-Stilt-Who? Fabulous Food Detectives Princess and the Pea Soccer Stars Who Gives a Hoot! Questionella and the
Perfect Prince: A Fairy
Tale of Multiple Choices Romeo and Juliet
Classic Tales
in Playbook® Format
Playbooks® offers a variety of traditional classic stories in reader's theater format, making for an improved opportunity for studying fairy tales and improving fluency at the same time. The stories can be purchased in single title sets with a book copy for each reader, or in our Folk Tales, Myths, and Legends Kits for Grades K-5 and Grades 6-8. Below are our Playbooks® Adapted Classics and Fairy Tales.
April is National Poetry Month! For young students, learning about rhyming words, and how you can tell a story in rhyme and verse, are often first steps for learning to love and understand poetry.
Rhyme and rhythm are also useful tools for holding the attention spans of young readers and for helping them read successfully, which is why Playbooks® provides several titles for beginning readers written in rhyme. Some of our stories in rhyming format include: Water Works, Babbles Bizarre, and Bug Off!
Here is an example from our best-selling story
for Grades K-2, "Bug Off!"
Ladybug Fly Ladybug Bee
I help your roses. If she is not near, The roses will suffer, If she is not here.
Ant Ladybug Fly Ladybug
She eats up the bugs, That sit on the flowers, That take little bites, For hours and hours.
Ladybug Fly Ladybug Fly
Without me to stop them, They would eat all day. The roses would die. They would all go away.
In addition, our Reader's Theater, Jr.™ titles all include rhymes repeated throughout the stories. For older students, choose our Shakespeare set, which stays true to Shakespeare's original poetic language.
Miss Chalk’s elementary students are about to become true caretakers of Planet Earth. They’re in route to their very first ocean field trip! Twins, Melinda and Marcus, along with their best friend Kelly, can hardly wait! Following close behind their activity bus is Mr. Scrubit, the school custodian. His old pickup truck carries a special surprise…courtesy of Miss Chalk. However, things do not go as planned. Upon arrival to their destination, the classmates discover that the beach has been trashed. Marcus witnesses more disrespectful visitors tossing garbage on the sand, and he is disappointed. To renew his faith in saving the planet, Miss Chalk reveals a secret: The Great Rhyme Travel Machine and the silver rhyme book are close at hand! Excitement escalates when childhood versions of Rachel Carson and John Denver are transported through time to the present. Motivating the kids with their talents and knowledge, the two nature lovers also get a peek at their own historic legacies!
Using dialogue filled with Science and Social Studies themes, this script teaches a valuable lesson on practical ways kids can help our planet. Filled with meaningful rhymes and a catchy new song, it will have readers “Going Green” with pride! Story set includes an entertaining and educational DVD with on-screen lyrics to help students learn the song, "I'm Going Green." Also meet the author, illustrator, and singer!
Staff Development Workshops Playbooks, Inc. continues to
offer
several options for staff development
workshop packages. For workshop content
details,
read on.
This simple accessory pack allows you to split a typical one-story set of six books into three Lend & Extend™ take-home packs, designed to be checked out of the classroom or school library.Learn more and order here.
