Last year, before COVID made all our lives a little crazy, I had a problem. And it was a wonderful problem to have. Our first grade class had a large group of above grade level readers. I KNOW! What a problem. So incredibly proud of how far they had come but they needed more from me.
So I got together with another first grade teacher who had taught second grade the year before and we came up with a solution for intervention. A first grade chapter book study! We took the handful of higher level readers from each first grade class to create a group that would participate in literacy circle time activities.
These kids would be reading a chapter from the book every couple of days and use a text dependent questions worksheet to model comprehension and discuss their thoughts with each other.
Now that we had a plan we needed to find the book. I already had 10 copies of a favorite chapter book series that I used for read alouds so we decided in the name of time we would chose them, The Alien Next Door Series! Kids love love love it! (and bonus it has a diverse set of characters) We were a little nervous at first since The Alien Next Door reading level is a 3rd grade reading level. (DRA 34-38, F&P O, Lexile 530)
Once we found the book we needed to make the novel study workbooks. Here is where we ran into another problem. I have been spoiled when it comes to TPT and I took for granted that it would always have exactly what I was looking for… Well this time it didn't. There was NOTHING for a book study of The Alien Next Door.
Not to panic. Not to panic. We had already told the kids the title of the book they were going to start next week so we couldn’t and wouldn't turn back now. So I buckled down and made this especially for my students. It was so amazing to watch them get deep into the text and work to answer text dependent questions, learning to use evidence from the text, and just generally loving reading, because reading is fun!
This resource worked so well for my kids and I know they'll work well with yours! Check them out and watch your kids dive deep into The Alien Next Door book series. Perfect for independent readers in first, second, or third grade.
