School Supply Adapted Books!

Wow!  Summer has gone by fast again this year.  Some of us are beginning school again soon and it’s time to starting thinking of setting up our classrooms and preparing our materials.  Here are some great adapted books to use at the start of the year which focus on getting ready for school and learning school supply vocabulary terms.  These books also incorporate other basic concepts such as colors, counting, and sequencing.  This series of books includes “Let’s Get Ready for School!”, “What’s on the Desk?”, and “Pack Up the Backpack!”  These books are perfect to use during center time or small group instruction.

Let’s Get Ready For School! focuses on identifying common school supplies items and sequencing concepts.  Each page has the same intro sentence along the top so the students can help read/point to some of the words along with the book.  This is a perfect book to work on modeling those sequencing terms.  For example, “first get the notebook out of the backpack.”  Make sure you model the word “first” for the focus of that page.  When I read the book, I hold one finger up and say the word “first” again.  I model those 2 key terms “first” and “notebook” multiple times as I focus on that page.

As we continue to read the book I make sure I review each item on the desk with the corresponding sequential term.  For example, after the student places the glue on the desk for the 4^th item I review by pointing to the items on the desk and saying “first notebook, second pencil, third scissors, fourth glue…what’s next?”

What’s on the Desk? focuses on identifying a variety of school supply items, and number concepts 1-6.  The book also reinforces the prepositional concept “on” throughout the book.  The students need to count the correct number of the school supply item and place them on the desk.  Each page has 6 school supply items in the bottom rectangular box which means the student needs to count the items and know when to stop instead of just putting the set number of pieces on the desk from the box.

Pack Up The Backpack! targets identification of school supply items and color concepts.  The students have to find all the correct color items to place in the backpack.  I know there are a lot of school supply items to cut out when you make the book but I like multiple items per page because I can also work on counting after the correct items are placed in the backpack.  To make the book more challenging you can have the student work on identifying objects by function.  For example, on the green page I may give the following descriptions – “Find what you use to cut paper with”, “Find what is sticky”, “Find what you write on with a pencil” or “Find what you use to erase a mistake with”.  If you are using the book with a small group of students I sometimes have the students give each other descriptions of the items.