As I looked through the series of books that I picked out to bring in from Capstone Publishing, this series quickly became one of my favorites. The story lines are incredible! I love that the author, Franco Aureliani, has illustrated parts of the story on nearly every page. The reading level is perfect for beginning readers who are moving to larger chapter books. This series would definitely be a great addition to your classroom library.
While teaching in my own room, I often wanted to highlight a series of books or get my students excited about a particular author, so I did what most teachers do and sorted my books based on genre, author, or category. Yet, there are other tricks to getting students excited. I had a section of my classroom library dedicated to books recommended by a classmate. Sometimes we did an activity based around a series of books.
One particular activity got me thinking about the Dino-Mike series. How fun would it be for students to make dinosaur puppets? As students work on their dino puppet, the teacher could read a chapter or two from one of the books. Also, as teachers, we need to assess students. I thought that this particular series helps to build vocabulary and could encourage students to explore words that may be more challenging. Our free downloadable illustrated glossary worksheet is an easy way to get students thinking about new words. Even though the downloadable has a dinosaur theme, this simple sheet could be used for any series of books you and your students are reading. You can find Dino-Mike and our entire selection of books from Capstone Publishing, here.