Reading Rocks

Literature in the Lives of Young Readers

In chapter 2 of our textbook, Book Buddies are discussed to shape a community of readers.  Mentoring younger readers is a common strategy schools use to build community across grade levels. In addition to the social stimulation, well-planned Book Buddy sessions can serve as a learning point for students.

My fourth grade students are Book Buddies with kindergarten students.  The Scholastic site offers ideas and lessons on how to implement cross-age book buddies.  My first step was to meet with the kindergarten teacher to assign each student with a buddy and discuss how often we would meet and the best day and time.  Then we met the kindergarten students in their room for a snack and to get acquainted with one another.  The next step was for me to to teach the students about mentoring.  Here our the goals listed from Scholastic:


Create a student-friendly definition for “mentor”
Identify Traits of Success that a mentor displays
Describe how they will be a mentor to their primary Book Buddy
Examine literature of emergent readers
Categorize types of common primary literature (i.e. wordless, pattern, alphabet, number, rhyme, etc.).
Write a book about themselves using one of the identified types of literature
Utilize the writing process when writing the book
Apply the “Traits of Success” when they read their story aloud to their Book Buddy

Our first project is to create a book about themselves as a gift for their new primary grade book buddy.  Before we begin our books, we first examine literature of emergent readers.  Then I have the students categorize books into types of literature common for primary readers. (i.e. wordless, pattern, alphabet, number, rhyme, etc.)  The next step is to write a book about themselves using one of the identified types of literature, utilizing the writing process when writing the book.

We try to meet once a week, Thursday or Friday afternoon for about twenty to thirty minutes.  Our sessions include reading and writing.  In the beginning of the year, it is the fourth graders who will read the book and most often the kindergarten will draw a picture to go along with the story.  The fourth grader will add the kindergarteners words or sentence to the drawing.  As the year and each student progresses, the fourth grader and kindergartner will take turns reading and by the end of the year, the kindergarten will read the book to the fourth grader.  Both fourth graders and kindergarteners look forward to our weekly visits.