What's in YOUR diary?

One of the most important things for students to grasp is reading comprehension. One of the main reading strategies for children to learn how to make connections in text they are reading. This helps them internalize what they are reading. There are three types of connections students can make: text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self. Today on the blog, we are going to show a resource of making connections to self. To do this we will use the book Diary of A Fly.

Why is Diary of A Fly, by Doreen Cronin, a good book for helping the students make connections to their lives?

Billie: I think that this book would be perfect to help kids connect the text to their lives because it probably mirrors a lot of things they go through. First, the fly is nervous about the first day of school. Then she has trouble with her babysitter, hates her school picture, and has to go into time out because she is mean to her brother and sister (all 327 of them!). Fly then wants to become a superhero but is afraid she isn’t special enough. Her friends, Worm and Spider, help her learn that “the world needs all kinds of heroes”. The kids will be able to relate to all of those situations and hopefully more contained in the book!

Cami: This book would be great to use for a writing lesson. After reading the book a great activity would be to have the students write journal entries in order to make a connection to the fly in the story.


Do you think that this book will keep your children’s attention? What age do you think will be the most engaged with this book?
Cami: This book is so much fun! I think that most kids would be engaged but I think this book would be great specifically at a 2nd grade level.  It’s a really fun book, and I think kids would love it. I liked it and I’m 22. So I’m sure that a 2nd grader would love it as well.

Billie: I definitely agree with Cami, I think that this book is so entertaining and fun! The story is in an interesting format, diary form, the pictures are fun and fly is totally relatable! I think that this book would be best used in most classrooms up to about 3^rd grade.

Do you think that the kids could also use this book to make connections to another text or to the world?
Cami: I think that because the book goes through so many different scenarios that it would be relatable to other books they’ve read but more importantly relatable to the real world. Fly talks about “learning to fly” which could be related to pilots training. It also talks about superheroes, which they could easily relate to any other story about superheroes.

Billie: When I picked up this book, my first thought was about Diary of A Wimpy Kid. I think that the children would be able to make a very easy connection between the two texts. They are written in a similar format and have some of the same story line factors.

We found a really great activity that you could use along with this book to help the kids make connections to their own lives with this story. A lot of children are very visual so, if you give them this worksheet they can write down what they are hearing/reading in the story and directly relate it to something in their lives. The worksheet link included below would probably be best for older kids. Younger kids might need to journal about it (in a similar format) but with more prompting from the teacher. One column contains “Words From The Text” and the other column contains “My Personal Connection”. This book would be a perfect start on their way to making personal connections to a story!

Making Connections Worksheet

You can totally judge this book by the cover!

World War I: Putting Up a Front is the perfect book to help teach a social studies lesson on World War I. If you read on into the blog, Billie and Cami talk about how engaging this book is and why kids would want to pick it up and read it. It is not written in “typical” nonfiction fashion. And the end of the book has some awesome resources for teachers!

How can World War I: Putting Up a Front be used to teach a social studies lesson?

Cami: It would help address the standard SS5H4 the student will describe U.S. involvement in World War I and post-World War I America. This book is set up in a magazine form and goes through all the aspects of World War I, including what was going on at home.

Billie: This book would make a great supplement to a social studies lesson on World War I. It also has some awesome activities at the end of the book that would be great classroom wide games, or even individual worksheets.

Do you think that 5^th graders will be interested in reading this book?

Cami: Yes I do, it is a great alternative to reading a text book. It has all the information the students need but it has wonderful pictures and is formatted in a way to keep their interest. The pictures alone would have been enough to make me interested in reading it.

Billie: At first glance, this book looks like a magazine. I think that it would catch their eye just from the cover. It also reads very similar to a magazine. Most nonfiction books are very boring and unappealing. The content is presented in such a way, kids will not want to put this book down!

Do you think this book will be more beneficial in a read aloud setting or a small group setting?

Cami: I think this book would be better in a small group or individual setting. The way I would do it is in small groups I would have them read the paragraphs on each page, then go through each of the points by the pictures, explaining each one.

Billie: I think this book would be very difficult to present in a read aloud setting. It should definitely be tailored to small groups. I also think that the book would have to be broken up into sections. There is so much information provided that if the kids are reading it all at once, they will not absorb the majority of it.

What kind of activities would you do with this book?

Cami: Conveniently enough the back of this book has three activity pages, so one thing I would do is I would make copies and use those because the questions come directly from the book and they are pretty engaging activities. Something else you could do is break the students in the groups and assign them a category and have them use the book to make a poster about their category.

Billie: As Cami and I mentioned before, the activities in the back of the book could definitely come in handy! But one thing I remember doing in elementary school was role playing. I did not enjoy social studies, but when we had to “become” what we were learning I was really interested. I got to put all of my dramatics to good use. I think that a lot of kids would love to do that as well. Now, I wouldn’t suggest acting out the war scene. Although they could definitely act out the other parts such as, what was happening on the home front.

If you are having trouble keeping all of your children engaged when it comes to World War I, this is the book for you! The pictures are awesome and almost all of the information included has a graphic to go with it. We believe this is especially beneficial for visual learners. They will be able to link the information they are learning with the pictures being presented.