Looking for a fun and engaging way to get your students excited about reading while also building important literacy skills like listening, comprehension, and vocabulary? You might be thinking, “Really? Does an engaging resource even exist that covers all of these topics?” Well friend, I’m here to tell you I have the answer…
Wordless Picture Books
So, what skills do wordless picture books provide to students? Think about story elements and story structure. In a text with words, students are given what they need to know as well as how those situations/events came to be. With a wordless picture book, readers have an increased awareness of how a story is built because they are inferring events that happen in the beginning, middle, and ending of the story.
Another skill that wordless picture books promotes is making predictions. Students REALLY have to think and predict what could happen next because they do not have the characters or narrator giving them clues as to what is coming up. This is a very important skill for elementary students to understand and grow.
Finally, think about those reluctant writers in your classroom. Where do they usually struggle in the writing process? If you said getting started, then your students are just like mine! Giving a reluctant writer a wordless picture book and having them write out the story is much less intimidating because they have the story in front of them and all they need to do is provide the wording. This could include adding dialogue/voice, creating a new twist or alternate ending, while also punctuating and spelling correctly.
These are all very important skills that young learners need in order to grow and thrive through their literacy journeys. I hope that your students to begin learning these very important skills (and so many others) through the use of wordless picture books very soon, so I’ll share with you a few of my FAVORITE wordless picture books…
3. Unspoken by Henry Cole
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