By Dr. Geraldine Haggard, Reading Recovery Teacher Leader, Guest Blogger

Theme sets of leveled books provide excellent opportunities for you to help kids achieve standards across more than one content area. The integration of paired fiction and nonfiction books for kids makes it possible for all first graders to improve vocabulary and explore content-area concepts in guided and shared reading. In today's blog post, I'll explain how you can use questions with a level I theme set of paired texts to help kids practice standards in multiple content areas.

Hints for Meeting the Needs of All Students

The time needed for some of the ideas mentioned in today's blog post will probably be more than one day. When shared reading is done with each of the books, students reading at a lower guided reading level will also need a fifteen- to twenty-minute block of time for guided reading. Students reading on and above level can also read books from the classroom library or school library about homes during independent reading.

Where Would You Like to Live? is an informational text that pairs with the narrative text Three Little Pigs . You can use this book in a read-aloud or shared reading within the following contexts:

Our New House is the second book that pairs with Three Little Pigs . You can read this leveled book to students and then encourage students to the second reading.

All About Pigs is the third informational text that corresponds with Three Little Pigs . It's an interesting book that helps kids improve vocabulary with the help of engaging nonfiction text features.

Three Little Pigs is the narrative text in the theme set that includes the three informational texts described in this post. You can use this book to prompt real-world connections and practice the following content areas and use the list of suggested discussion questions.

I hope these ideas are helpful for your students and I'm sure that children will enjoy these engaging books. Please be sure to visit our blog again for more ideas that you can use to help your students!

Dr. Geraldine Haggard is a retired teacher, Reading Recovery teacher leader, author, and university teacher. She spent thirty-seven years in the Plano, TX school system. She currently tutors, chairs a committee that gifts books to low-income students, and serves as a facilitator in a program for grieving children. If you like what you read here, you can enjoy more from Dr. Haggard elsewhere on our blog .