Louder, Lili (A Little Gem of a Back to School Book!)

With my classroom almost in full swing now 

(only a few more assessments to go!)

I'm always on the lookout for out for those not your

ordinary beginning of the year books. Last year I found this

sweet gem of a book that's so perfect for building community

those first few weeks.  Louder, Lili is a wonderful story

about an quiet little girl who struggles to be heard.

She is too shy to raise her hand, find a partner, or ask to 

take care of the class guinea pig, a job she really wants.

Cassidy, a bossy classmate, exploits Lili's inability to speak up

by volunteering to partner with Lili then manipulating her

into doing all the work while Cassidy takes the credit.

When Cassidy begins to mistreat the class pet Lili 

musters the courage to finally speak up. 

This book lends itself so well to teaching about character traits 

and the inner journey a character experiences in a story.

Find the book on Amazon

One of the skills we focus on at the start of the 

year is retelling the beginning, middle, and end of a story.

We made this guinea pig craft and students retold the 

important details from each part of the story.

Lili's journey to find her voice puts her through some significant

changes which led to a great discussion on how she responds

to the events and challenges she faces at school.

I purchased 6 copies of the book this summer and had groups

work together to complete a "flubble map" as my class 

calls them to describe Lili, as well as provide evidence from

 the story, at the beginning, middle, and end.

The groups then shared their ideas while I added them 

to our map on the SMARTBoard.

We then used our maps to guide us in making these flap books that

we later added to a culminating foldable story booklet.

We worked with character traits, vocabulary, and writing 

a summary in mini-books to add to our story booklets.

We also did some how-to writing during our writing 

block explaining how to be a good friend.

We published our writing in trifold brochures and 

added it to our booklets. 

During our literacy block we worked with story vocabulary 

and made these mini-books for our story booklets.

My kids loved these fluency sticks! Partners took turns 

reading passages from the book in what they imagined 

the different character's voices to be like.  

This book lends itself so well to this standard as the 

author gives quite a vivid mental picture of each character 

and their loud, soft, or bossy voices in this story! 

And what's more fun than reading in a bossy voice?

We practiced writing words in alphabetical order..

And even had a hamster hop! My kiddos got to roam 

the room to find all the cards, then record 

the part of speech of the underlined words.

Here's a little peek at our classroom display once we were

all finished!

I hung some of our prewriting along with our finished booklets to 

show our learning process and because my kiddos were so proud

of their writing!

Click here to find these and more Louder, Lili activities 

along with easy to prep chart parts, templates for interactive 

notebooks, and additional literacy centers in my 

Louder, Lili Book Study. 

See all of my book companions and literature studies here.

For more literacy ideas visit my Reading board on Pinterest!

Happy teaching friends! Remember to be kind

to yourselves and know it will all get done

eventually!

This post includes affiliate links for books and

 items I use in my classroom. These links do not add additional cost to you.