Virtual Books for Older Students!
Books have been one of my absolute favorite tools to use with my older students during this era of virtual therapy! Back when we first started teletherapy in March, I stumbled across a website called Epic!, which is a virtual library with books for kids. It was free to sign up using my school email address, so I signed up and promptly forgot about it until one day over the summer during ESY. I was scrambling for last minute session plans for an elementary student and decided to check it out. I remembered initially thinking that Epic would only be appropriate for my younger students…I couldn’t have been more wrong!
Signing Up
Signing up as an educator on Epic is very simple - just create an account using your school email address! According to their website, Epic is ‘always free for educators.’
Sign up using the link here: https://www.getepic.com/educator-sign-up/profile
Once you’ve made an account, you can search for books by age, reading level, topic, grade, etc. and create a library of your favorites, making it super easy to pull up different books each session.
Using Epic in Therapy
One of the reasons that Epic is such a great therapy tool is that the platform is incredibly easy to access. If your students are either virtual or in-person and have their own laptops, you can actually import your Google classroom (if you have one) or add students to your roster. They can then log in using your “class code,” which appears on your Epic home page, click on their name, and pull up the book that you’ve assigned to them. Its quite the covid-friendly way to have all students in a group doing the same thing!
If you are sticking with virtual therapy, you can simply pull up the book on your account and share your screen with your students. Epic also has an app for the iPad, which I use daily!
My favorite goals to target using these books include…
Reading comprehension strategies, such as visualizing and making connections, sequencing, summarizing, and identifying the main idea
Vocabulary strategies, including prefixes and suffixes, synonyms and antonyms, context clues, and identifying parts of speech
Inferencing and providing evidence
Higher level language, including figurative language, idioms, morals, etc.
Social skills, including asking questions to characters, problem/solution, cause/effect, social inferencing, identifying emotions, and perspective taking
Articulation at the reading level and during conversation (discussing the book, forming an opinion, etc.)
Syntax, including identifying conjunctions, writing book reviews, etc.
My Favorite Books for Older Students
I have SO many favorite books…too many to count, really, and I keep finding more! So make sure to keep checking back - I’ll make sure to announce on my Instagram (@the_speech_express) whenever I add more titles to this post.
For graphic organizers and visuals to pair with comprehension activities: check out this Reading Comprehension Strategies resource and this Vocabulary Strategies resource.
Graphic organizer paired with PEZ passage from ‘Fun Food Inventions’
Books for February
Winter Themed
Detecting Disasters: Detecting Avalanches
Why I Like It: This book is part of the Detecting Disasters series, and all of these books have comprehension questions included at the end. This book in particular is a great winter book for learning about avalanches, targeting vocabulary, main idea, and summarizing, as well as discussing size of the problem. Check out my freebie library for a free Jamboard companion for this book.
Why I Like It: This book is excellent for winter! Students will learn how snowboarding was invented, as well as the history of the popular winter sport. Target describing, compare and contrast, or have students complete a KWL chart for comprehension. Make sure to check out the whole series for background info on a variety of other well-known sports.
Emperor Penguins: Antarctic Diving Birds
Why I Like It: Another great book for winter. Target describing, compare and contrast, comprehension, and more! This is also a great book for targeting vocalic /r/, with multiple instances of words like, “emperor,” “antarctic,” and “underwater.” For a similar book on snowy owls (perfect for all of those /s/ kids!), click here.
Black History Month
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Case of RBG vs. Inequality
Why I Like It: Besides being fantastic for vocabulary (obstacle, verdict, dissent, oh my!), this award-winning book is an amazing history lesson about the life of a true icon and symbol of justice.
Why I Like It: This book is perfect for Black History Month! Inferencing, perspective taking, cause and effect, summarizing, comprehension and more can all be targeted with this story about a baseball team who deserves to play in the Little League World Series.
Holidays in February
Why I Like It: This is a nice little guide to the different holidays in February, both popularly celebrated days like Valentine’s Day and Groundhog Day, but also lesser known days such as Pokemon Day, Polar Bear Day (both on Feb. 27), and Pizza Day (Feb. 9). The series has a book for every month. Here’s January and here’s March!
The Story of Our Holidays: Groundhog Day
Why I Like It: This book tells the interesting and strange history of why we celebrate Groundhog Day!
Holidays Around the World: Celebrate Valentine’s Day
Why I Like It: There are some interesting facts about Valentine’s Day in this informational book that can be easily incorporated into a Valentine’s Day themed lesson. My favorite passage is called ‘Celebrating Love Around the World’ on pg. 27, and it discusses love-related traditions in different countries - great for compare and contrast!
High Interest Books
Why I Like It: Each mystery is only one page long, but there are still SO many opportunities to practice vocabulary, inferencing, cause and effect, and even writing! Using the provided prompts, students are asked to come up with their own theories on these crazy mysteries! I highly recommend the one called, “Blobs of Goop Drop From the Sky.” (I promise, your students will be just as intrigued as you are right now!!)
Why I Like It: This book is perfect for picking a side, forming, and supporting an opinion! Each chapter describes two different views of a great debate. I’ve had groups read the text together and then either write a short paragraph or verbally support their opinion - perfect for syntax, compare and contrast, and artic too! There are other books in the series on basketball, football, hockey, and baseball for students interested in those sports.
Pros and Cons: The Debate About Video Games
Why I Like It: Another debate book that will get your students fired up! Most of my students have a very strong opinion on video games, so this book is not only amazing for understanding other perspectives, but also for learning how to differentiate facts from opinions and support an argument with evidence. The format of this book is easy to follow, with one pro or con outlined in each section. There are other Pros and Cons: Debate books on Epic - check out this one on Homework!
The Crazy Careers of: Video Game Designers
Why I Like It: Let’s be honest…anything related to video games is an instant attention grabber for most middle school boys. Students can read about the various careers, come up with character traits and qualities that would be beneficial (or not beneficial) to have as someone with that job, and then decide which career they’d enjoy the most! You can even target executive functioning by having students work together to develop a plan or an idea for a game, character, or level.
Why I Like It: Each page of this book contains the backstory of’ a different food-related invention. These short passages are perfect for mixed groups because you can target just about any goal! The whole ‘Awesome Inventions You Use Every Day’ series is probably one of my favorite series on Epic!, so make sure to check out the other books, including: Tremendous Technology, Fabulous Fashion, Exciting Entertainment, and Marvelous Medical Inventions.
Wisdom Stories From Around the World
Why I Like It: This book contains fifty super short stories that are perfect for practice with summarizing and inferring (why do you think this story was written? What is the moral of the story? etc.). Some of the tales that I’ve used in sessions include: A Farmer’s Horse Ran Off (China, pg. 35), Echo and Narcissus (Ancient Greece, pg. 53), and The Red and Blue Coat (Africa, pg. 93).
Why I Like It: This book tells about a typical school day from the perspective of students around the world. It’s perfect for comparing and contrasting! Choose a few countries and have students compare them to their own school days, as well as the school days in other countries. For students who need more structure, you can provide categories (i.e. transportation, size, classes, transitions, after school, etc.) to help gather and organize the information.
Biographies & Personal Experiences
Pokemon Designer: Satoshi Tajiri
Why I Like It: This high-interest book is divided into short chapters that detail the mind behind the international phenomenon of Pokemon. Great for vocabulary, sequencing, describing, compare/contrast, and more!
The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus
Why I Like It: All. the. synonyms!! Need I say more? This book is perfect for vocabulary! I’ve had students discuss the shades of meaning in the word lists (i.e. how is annoy different from provoke?) and identify parts of speech. After reading, I’ll give each student a word and have them create their own “list” of synonyms and related words, just as Peter did in the book. For an extra challenge, students can generate an antonym and list of synonyms for the antonym as well (i.e. if given the word “happy,” students create a list of synonyms for both “happy” and the opposite of happy aka “sad” - upset, unhappy, devastated, etc.).
Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World
Why I Like It: Besides the fact that students will get to learn about women from all different cultures, I love this book for the accompanying illustrations. Each illustration has a quote by that woman, which is great for analyzing during your session. If you like this book, make sure to also check out Rebel Girls Explore.
Real Kids, Real Stories, Real Change: Courageous Actions Around the World
Why I Like It: The stories are short - the perfect length to complete one in a 30-minute session - and they show that kids are truly capable of making an impact on the world around them. Target goals including identifying problems and solutions, summarizing, One of my favorites in the book is the story of Santosh Yadav (pg. 34), who proves that girls CAN climb mountains. This book is also great for identifying or inferring character traits - was this person courageous? Creative? Motivated? How do you know?
Social, Emotional, & Functional Learning
Why I Like It: This is a GOLD MINE for social skills groups or any student that is working on life skills! This book teaches how to do daily tasks of living without coming across as too childish. Students can learn how to compose an email, hand wash dishes, get out a stain, and even how to help themselves fall asleep! As an added bonus, there are quick comprehension quizzes every few pages!
Think for Yourself: The Ultimate Guide to Critical Thinking
Why I Like It: This is a great introduction to the process of critical thinking. It is also full of quizzes and opportunities for practice!
Figurative Language
Why I Like It: Illustrated idioms and other common sayings fill each page of this fantastic tool for targeting figurative language (birds of a feather flock together, piece of cake, etc.). Choose one or two idioms per session, have students read the page, determine the meaning, and then create their own example!
It Figures!: Fun Figures of Speech
Why I Like It: If I am introducing a certain type of figurative language (i.e. similes, onomatopoeia, etc.) to my students, I’ll use this book. There are some great examples of each, and prompts for students to create their own examples as well.
Do you have any favorite books on Epic? If so, share them in the comments below! I’ll continue to update this list as I discover more stories.