Read Alouds for the Beginning of the School Year

Using stories to teach is the best part of being a librarian!  Every year, I would start the school year with stories that taught students the norms of the library.  While I am no longer in the classroom, I still have my favorites to share.

This summer I also did some training with Project Look Sharp (PLS) on media literacy.  I always knew that media literacy was an important skill to be teaching, but always thought of it as a standalone topic.  PLS gives ideas and resources on how to incorporate media literacy into every lesson, including when you're doing read alouds.  The PLS lesson titled How Do I Choose? Picking the Right Book for Me is a lesson plan that has the teacher lead a media decoding where students analyze book covers and pages from children's books to determine personal preferences in reading for a variety of purposes.  Doing media decoding with any book you are going to read with students is an excellent way to incorporate media literacy into another topic.  PLS also has a video example of a librarian leading the media decoding.

The following are my favorite books to use at the beginning of the school year to help teach book care and library manners.  These are just what I used, there are definitely more out there.

Read It, Don't Eat It! by Ian Schoenherr

Very simple pictures and text to explain the rules for lower elementary students.  The animals in the various pictures are doing silly things with books that make it obvious to students how they should care for their library and all books.  It is a very quick read, but you can supplement the simple text with explanations.

The Shelf Elf by Jackie Mims Hopkins

This is one of my all time favorites that I started using in 2011 when I first started in a library.  I used to have a stuffed Skoob (The Shelf Elf) that I would have do silly things around the library similar to the Elf on the Shelf.  Unfortunately he was lost during the COVID closure, but I still tell the students who ask that he's somewhere in the library watching for good library manners!  Just like Read It, Don't Eat It!, The Shelf Elf tells the story of how an elf named Skoob has become a library elf.  His guidebook explains the rules of the library and how students can earn the "Golden Shelf Elf Award" for having good library manners.  There is also a sequel to the The Shelf Elf and some teaching resources on different reference sources.

Do Not Bring Your Dragon to the Library by Julie Gassmann

For fans of Dragons Love Tacos a similar funny story of what can go wrong when you bring a dragon to the library.  To me, it seems like this book is set in a public library, but students won't notice.  This book is a fun way to share with students manners and appropriate behavior in the library.

My Mouth is a Volcano! by Julia Cook

This book is not library specific but more for appropriate classroom behavior.  Julia Cook has several books out there to teach appropriate behaviors for students.  I never expect young students to be perfect, but interruptions are a challenge when trying to read a story sometime.  This story helps students understand why interruptions can be impolite and give students a strategy for how to save all their important words.

These were some of my favorites to read in the library.  They didn't always have my rules exactly as I taught them to students, but they worked.  I always wanted to write my own library manners and procedure books for students but I'm horrible at drawing!