Book Buddies

In the schools I have worked in, the lower grades pair up with an upper grade class and read once a week.  We call this book buddies.  A few years ago, my little grade 2’s were coming up to me and saying “My book buddy is fooling around.”  I felt really bad for my grade 2’s because they really looked up to the older students and really wanted to read with them.  So I started to think how I could focus the older students and make them feel like they were truly a part of the younger students learning and really have a type of student teacher role with their younger book buddy.  I came up with an idea of a duotang that would hold reading strategies that the older students could refer to when reading with the younger students and a recording sheet (Readers Talk About Books sheet) that focused the older students in helping the younger students.  Every week the older student would use the recording sheet for the first book the younger student was reading.  I couldn’t believe the difference in the older students…they were focused and actually helping their younger book buddy. This year, I went a little further and developed a few more recording sheets such as Concepts About Print, Readers Think About Stories, Features of Non-Fiction Texts and sight word sheets.  So at the beginning of this year, I started book buddies off with the older students using the Concepts About Print recording sheet.  When a younger student received all happy faces two weeks in a row, the older book buddy then started to use the Readers Talk About Books recording sheet.  These are mainly used all year but can be switched out for Readers Think About Stories and Features of Non-fiction Texts recording sheets when you want to see how your students are doing with these concepts.  I always have a pile of each recording sheets on hand and the older book buddy will come up and take the sheet that is needed for that reading session and place in it the younger book buddy’s duotang.  I also have the older book buddy test their younger book buddy on their sight words.  They do this for me every 2nd month.  I find this very useful as I can compare my assessments with the book buddy’s assessment.  I find sometimes students are more nervous around teachers than other kids. 

I have revamped my book buddy system and have put it up on my TpT store.  Check it out!




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