Picture books for upper elementary students are perfect to use during mini-lessons to cover a variety of standards. I personally love using picture books to teach those upper elementary literacy-based standards. I also love using picture books to motivate my students to read a variety of books.
The following picture books are perfect books to do interactive read-aloud using these picture books and then we refer back to them as we are learning character development, theme, characters changing over time, story elements, and even writing personal narratives. We often compare and contrast these picture books when discussing themes, characters, etc.
The Junkyard Wonders
Better Than You
Enemy Pie
Each Kindness
This is another great book for teaching theme and I really love how it doesn’t really have a “happy ending” because it leads to a great discussion.
The Other Side
This is a wonderful book to teach how setting can affect the plot of a story and how a character develops since it is a historical fiction book.
Owl Moon
This book is perfect when talking about writing personal narratives and small moments, but also using imagery in writing.
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