Read & Respond: Owl Babies

Series

Free resources

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Reviews

Coryn on 17 February 2008

Read and Respond Owl Babies

The innovative nature of the resource: This is a brilliant book. Extremely well written by someone who is obviously an excellent practitioner. The ideas are extremely innovative. I love the way that the first section gives details about the book and the author. The Guided and Shared reading sections are very clear and contain some lovely and thought provoking ideas. The style is informative, intelligent and inspiring. The impact on learning and the work of the teacher in the classroom, to what extent and in which areas: As this is a book that is much loved by my Reception class I did use some of the more practical ideas with them although I feel that the majority of the activities in the book are a little more suited to a Year 1 class. (The book is aimed at Year 1) The book has had an impact on the learning of my class particularly on their thinking skills and oral language. Ideas such as ‘true or false’ , ‘ caring’ and ‘ask me’ gave a great stimulus for PSHE and drama work and all the sections are linked to language and literacy. How the resource supports or enhances the everyday life or work of teachers, pupils or school: The resource supports and enhances the work of KS1 teachers giving lots of great ideas for literacy lessons and some excellent photocopies and grids. The assessment section is excellent and would be very useful after studying the story in Year 1

Cost effectiveness in terms of educational aims and results – not just price: The book is extremely cost effective. All the activities are easy to plan with a few copies of the storybook and some photocopies, whiteboards and paper.

5 out of 5

Case study

Teacher Coryn Bendelow takes a look at Read and Respond Owl Babies for us.

The innovative nature of the resource

This is a brilliant book. Extremely well written by someone who is obviously an excellent practitioner. The ideas are extremely innovative. I love the way that the first section gives details about the book and the author. The Guided and Shared reading sections are very clear and contain some lovely and thought provoking ideas. The style is informative, intelligent and inspiring.

The impact on learning and the work of the teacher in the classroom, to what extent and in which areas

As this is a book that is much loved by my Reception class I did use some of the more practical ideas with them although I feel that the majority of the activities in the book are a little more suited to a Year 1 class. (The book is aimed at Year 1) The book has had an impact on the learning of my class particularly on their thinking skills and oral language. Ideas such as ‘true or false’ , ‘ caring’ and ‘ask me’ gave a great stimulus for PSHE and drama work and all the sections are linked to language and literacy.

How the resource supports or enhances the everyday life or work of teachers, pupils or school

The resource supports and enhances the work of KS1 teachers giving lots of great ideas for literacy lessons and some excellent photocopies and grids. The assessment section is excellent and would be very useful after studying the story in Year 1.

Cost effectiveness in terms of educational aims and results – not just price

The book is extremely cost effective. All the activities are easy to plan with a few copies of the storybook and some photocopies, whiteboards and paper.

Structure

Read & Respond

To get started with Read & Respond all you need to do is:

Choose a children’s book, from Owl Babies to Kensuke’s Kingdom, to study with your class
Order the corresponding Read & Respond Teacher Resource Book
Add a Read & Respond Interactive CD-ROM to really get your lessons buzzing!

Read & Respond Teacher Resource Titles

In-depth analysis of each book to get the whole class thinking about the story—and expressing their thoughts aloud and in writing. Within each Teacher Resource Book you’ll find:

Background information
Detailed chapter notes
Plot, character and setting activities
Shared reading section, with three extracts to read as a class
‘Talk about it’ section to get the children discussing feelings and ideas around the book
‘Get writing’ activities to help children structure and express their views about the book
Assessment activities*

Read & Respond Interactive

These multimedia CD-ROMs can be used as standalone products, or to expand upon the corresponding Read & Respond teacher’s book. Read & Respond Interactive is ideal for exploring cross-curricular themes and for inspiring reluctant readers.

Each CD-ROM contains:

Teaching notes, including lesson plans, differentiation, cross-curricular links and editable notes
An author interview or biography
Audio clips
Text extracts
Cross-curricular photos and video clips to help put the story into context
A word bank – linked to the text extracts – containing audio and text definitions
A selection of interactive whiteboard activities.