Kindergarten is Grrreat!: Teaching with Wordless Books

Wordless Books

Wordless Books are so powerful in the classroom, especially for little learners. I love starting the year off with wordless books for many reasons. Wordless books captivate the class and the books peak my students interests. Here are just a few of the reasons that I love to start with these books.

Print Concepts

Even the simplest of skills need to be taught. Not every student was exposed to books as a child. Understanding how to turn the pages of a book is an important skill. Wordless books are great for this because the readers are not focused on anything except for the pictures, making it easier to work on this skill.

Pictures Contain a Message

This is great for both reading and writing. It is so important for kindergarten kids to understand that pictures contain a message.

Read to Self

An expectation at our school is that students spend some time reading to themselves. I know that this is a very hard skill for young learners. Many of them do not know how to read yet and they won't hesitate to say that. We spend a lot of time talking about how we can read the pictures. Students are able to successfully read to self during the first few weeks of school because they are reading the pictures in the book.

Writing

Writing is another skill where students come in at all sorts of different levels. Many students are telling their stories just by using pictures. Wordless books are a great way for students to see that they are "authors" too, even when they are just drawing pictures. They can see that the pictures they draw can have a story too. This is always a powerful moment for students.

Storytelling

Creativity and storytelling is so powerful. I don't feel like students have much time to be creative and use their imaginations. Wordless books allow students creativity and imagination to come to life.

Labeling

We became the authors of a wordless book! pic.twitter.com/eudae1yUUi
— Kelsey Cones (@MsConesTweets) October 12, 2017

Labeling is the first step to writing. We often become the authors of wordless books. We take sticky notes and write down what we can. We stretch out the word and write the sounds we know. Some students are able to write a word or sentence on their sticky, other kids are just writing the first sound. The kids are amazed when they become the author of these books.