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Teaching with a Mountain View
Novels & Picture Books

Novels & Picture Books

I’m passionate about incorporating authentic picture books and novels into my classroom on a daily basis. Whether you’re looking to use picture books to teach reading skills, implement novel studies, or incorporate books into your morning meeting to address essential social and emotional skills, you’ll find it all here!


Start With These Posts

  • Engaging Novel Projects for Any Book
  • Thoughtful Tips for How to Select Novels in Upper Elementary
  • Incorporating Picture Books in Your Upper Elementary Classroom
24 FREE Upper Elementary Reading Response Bookmarks

FREE Upper Elementary Bookmarks

Submit the form to download 24 reading response bookmarks!

Looking for book recommendations? Try these!

FREE Upper Elementary Book Lists

Submit the form to download 19 book lists with tips!

  • Upper Elementary Novels
  • 3rd Grade
  • 4th Grade
  • 5th Grade
  • Advanced Novels
  • Graphic Novels

Novels & Picture Books on the Blog

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  • Picture Books (9)
  • Novel Study (20)

40+ Best Novels for End of the Year Novel Studies

📚 40+ End-of-Year Novel Study Ideas Your Students Will Love As the school year winds down, keeping students engaged can feel like a challenge. Testing, field trips, and summer anticipation…

Easy Picture Book Showdown Competition for March Madness in the Classroom

For the past several years, I have been inspired to create a March Madness-style Picture Book Showdown for my school (and classroom). It has now become something I look forward…

Elevate Your November Literacy Lessons with Engaging Passages & Picture Books

November can sometimes feel rushed between the excitement of Halloween and the upcoming magic of the Christmas season, but it has plenty of exciting themes of its own to integrate…

Free Rockefeller Christmas Tree Literacy Activities

It’s no secret that I love incorporating paired passages into my seasonal instruction, and this Christmas paired text activity is one of my favorites! Over the past several years, there…

First Chapter Fridays and Novel Read-Aloud Engagement Tips

Are you looking for an engaging way to introduce your students to new books, authors, and genres they might not have explored otherwise? Then you need to give First Chapter…

Using Picture Books to Help Students Build Relationship Skills

Using picture books in your classroom can do wonders for your students’ literacy skills while also helping them build relationship skills. These picture books support your students’ social and emotional…

Novel & Picture Book Resources

  • BUNDLE of Morphology Partner Plays | Prefixes, Suffixes, Roots, and Bases

    BUNDLE of Morphology Partner Plays | Prefixes, Suffixes, Roots, and Bases

    $12.99
    View cart
  • Morphology Resource Bundle | SOR-Aligned Word Study | Prefixes Suffixes Roots

    Morphology Resource Bundle | SOR-Aligned Word Study | Prefixes Suffixes Roots

    $29.99
    View cart
  • Reader's theater bundle set character education SEL

    ULTIMATE BUNDLE of Character Education Reader’s Theater Scripts | SEL | Fluency

    $15.99
    View cart
  • Winter Games 2026 Reading and Math Resources | Winter Sports

    Winter Games 2026 Reading and Math Resources | Winter Sports

    $12.25
    View cart
Shop All Novel & Picture Book Resources

hey, I’m Mary

I’m so glad you are here. I’m a current gifted and talented teacher in a small town in Colorado, and I’ve been in education since 2009. My passion (other than my family and cookies) is for making teachers’ lives easier and classrooms more engaging.

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Always so much to do and so little time! 👏 Comment Always so much to do and so little time! 👏 Comment below, and I’ll send you my FREE first week of school lesson plans full of activities, procedures, read Alouds, and more! 🫶 

I want our first week to be full of experiences that set the expectations for the ENTIRE year. We aren’t just “doing activities.” We are working together, practicing with supplies, learning how to transition, and getting to know each other. 🥹
🩷🩷🩷🩷Reading these responses every week brings me S 🩷🩷🩷🩷Reading these responses every week brings me SO much joy, and I learn SO much about my students… their lives outside of school, their writing style and voice, and so much more. 

✨ Leave a comment below, and I’ll send you a FREE guide to get started and a link to prewritten letter templates for the whole year! ✍️ 

Here’s how I run Weekly Letter Writing as homework:

🌟 Each full week of school, I spend a few minutes writing a letter to my students (each student gets the same letter)… In it, I talk about interesting things in my life (they LOVE this), what we are going to learn about and do that week, a character trait we’re focusing on, any interesting dates or celebrations that week, and then I always ask them a question or give them a relevant prompt (or two) to respond to me. 

They write their responses at home and drop them in my mailbox any time throughout the week. I write short responses back to them (directly on their letters) each week. 

#teacher #backtoschool #iteachtoo #teachersofinstagram #iteach
This is one of my favorite back to school activiti This is one of my favorite back to school activities that you can use all year long. 👏 Giant Scrabble has been a staple in my first month of school plans for YEARS, and last year I used the giant letters to play a human-sized version of Tapple, which was a massive hit! 

💌Comment below, and I’ll send you ready to print letters AND my free first week of school lesson plans so you can implement it during YOUR first week! 👏 

🌟 Why does this make such a great back to school experience in the classroom? 🧐 It serves as a GREAT lesson in productive struggle. It’s always amazing to see my students work through both games — and they beg for them to return all year long. 🧩 💡 We also used it as an opportunity to talk about how some students thrive under pressure while it can be intimidating for others. That doesn’t mean anyone is better than another person. 💕🩷

🌟 Details: We don’t REALLY keep score on either of the games. The point is to get them excited about overcoming obstacles and continuing a task that seems impossible or difficult. Most kids aren’t familiar with the games, so some variations and exceptions are allowed.
Like with pretty much every other expectation and Like with pretty much every other expectation and procedure, teaching kids HOW to work in groups is the key to actually getting them to work well in groups. 🩷💖 Comment below, and I’ll send you the one page version of this AND the individual letter descriptors shown here! 

The letters are from @steppintoelementary and SO cute! 🥰
💖 📕 Book Beads have easily become one of my favori 💖 📕 Book Beads have easily become one of my favorite classroom traditions for celebrating reading. 👏 I used this idea for our Battle of the Books teams, so each book was assigned a different colored bead, and once a week, students had a chance to update their necklaces. 

⭐️ Comment below, and I’ll send you ALL the info about implementing it and tons of ideas for applying it to your classroom! 

Shoutout to @lonestarclassroom for the inspiration!
We officially have our two new books for fifth gra We officially have our two new books for fifth grade Battle of the Books!! Swipe to see some other favorites on the list and the entire list (from Pikes Peak Battle of the Books — I didn’t curate this amazing list). 

I am already digging into these two new books and hoping I get to teach them this year as novel studies. 🥰 😁 There are 40 books total on the list, and they removed Kokopelli’s Flute and The Cay this year in place of these new additions.
I’d call my “classroom style” a little bit quirky I’d call my “classroom style” a little bit quirky but a whole lot of fun. 😜 But seriously, I have zero classroom style or theme, and I just add what MOVES me in the moment. 

Comment below for all my quirky classroom goodies (the plants are obviously a must), all the school supplies I’m stocking up on for this year (!!!!!), my personal favorites (yeah, that’s a puzzle scoop), and all the things I’ve bought my kids over the years that I’d buy again in a heartbeat (I could play Ticket to Ride all day every day). 💗
Day 2 of P R I M E is here, and I have some more o Day 2 of P R I M E is here, and I have some more of my teacher favorites to recommend! Comment below, and I’ll send you all the info. 

These are ALL items I’ve bought, used and totally loved. Accomplishment animals, worry stones, a class pet — all things I know a classroom doesn’t need. 🤗 But it sure makes life a little bit more fun.
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