Book Club Dilemma for Low-Level Readers

In a previous post, Book Hunt, I described how I went about finding books to use for our Biography Book Clubs. I had a difficult time finding books for my low-level readers though. I searched on Reading A to Z and the lowest book I found was a level J and I need D, G, and H. I looked for some passages on Read Works, but the lexile-leveled passages on there were not low enough. So I had to get creative!

I have some old Social Studies big books that were part of a retired series. I use them to cut out pictures, paragraphs, and nonfiction text features to use as examples in various lessons (see my posts Biography Boxes and Bullets and Repurposing Those Old, Boring Textbooks). I decided to look through them and see if there were any biography pieces.  Jackpot!

 

I cut out all of the biography passages and created my own biography big book.

 

I dedicated the book to two of my students who have made great strides in reading. They will be the first two students to use this book.

 

The large print and simple sentence structure will allow my low-level, special needs students to participate in their own biography book club. They will read together with their exceptional needs teacher and personal needs assistant. They will be able to make jottings on large sticky notes.

 

Some of the passages had great text on the back. I created a flap so students could read both sides.

I also found some worksheets with short biography pieces. I cut the worksheets apart and created multiple copies of these small biography books. The vocabulary is a little bit high for the group that will use these books, but I am going to do the first read with them. Then they will break apart and read it independently and make their jottings to prepare for their discussions in book club.