When we announced that we would be releasing a new Read-Aloud Poster this spring (yay!), we got a lot of messages asking if it would be for one favorite book or another. We love hearing from you, and we LOVE your enthusiasm for our Read-Aloud Posters and suggestions for future posters. But the truth is, we're never, ever going to be able to make a Read-Aloud Poster for all the great books you want to read. :(

But that doesn't mean that you can't incorporate some of the techniques that make our Read-Aloud Posters so successful into your own home read-aloud time....without a poster!

The truth is, we see lots of activity suggestions on the inter-webs about how to get kids to sit quietly during read-aloud time. Most of them involve some kind of low-cognitive-load kinesthetic activity - coloring by number, playing with thinking putty, doing a puzzle. All of these can be helpful in some ways, but they don't actually help your child understand and engage with what you are reading. And let's be honest... you don't really want them to JUST be quiet (okay, maybe sometimes :)). You want them to really connect with the story you're reading, understand and engage with the material.

That's what our "on the poster-off the poster" activities are designed to do. Some of them are what is traditionally known as a "graphic organizer" while some just provide the activity-oriented boost in structure that helps kids listen in a more focused way.

We've been reviewing these on Instagram, and we'll be following up here with a series of blog posts on each technique, but we wanted to provide a quick reference guide  here for you to reference as you follow along, and use as you select activities for your own read-aloud choices.

We're going to talk about 5 simple activities:

Character Portraits

Character Mapping

Timeline

Season Wheel

Story Map

For each of these, we'll discuss what skills it boosts, how you can do it at home, how to find a "book fit," and give you some example books to show you what we mean.

Ready? Get your quick reference guide here, join us on Instagram, and be sure to drop us a line if you have any questions as we go along!