Fancy Nancy is my favorite series for lower elementary grades. It tells the adventures of a young girl and it is an easy read. The students could read the story and do a lesson on adjectives. Also, the students could have a lesson on character analysis considering Nancy is a very interesting character. This story is also a good introduction to synonyms because there are many words in this book that may be new to most students. The class could explore these words and what they mean as well as create a chart to draw connections to similar words.

Lexile Level: 420L

The Recess Queen is a fun story to read to lower elementary grades. It is a story of a girl they call Mean Jean and how she treats others at recess. There are a variety of directions you could take this book. One is to have the students analyze the character of Mean Jean and tell how she is a bully. Also, the students could dig deeper into the central message of the story and the details that support that.

Lexile Level: AD450L

Miss Nelson is Missing is a fun story about a teacher who is absent one day and has a mean substitute. This book would be a great read aloud for many things. One idea is to compare and contrast the teacher and the substitute. The students could also draw inferences from the actions of the characters to infer where Miss Nelson really is. It is also a good story to read to the students before they have their first substitute! 

Lexile Level: 340L

I really enjoyed this book, especially the wonderful illustrations. I would love to read this book to my students to teach about character analysis. The students could list the character traits of Grace and compare those to a character from another book to emphasize text-to-text connections. Also, the students could read this book and practice sequencing the events of the story.

Lexile Level: 680L

This book is a great read aloud for lower elementary grades, especially Kindergarten. The  teacher could read this book on the first day of school in order to create rules for the classroom. The class would then create an anchor chart together with two columns. One column would be for actions that are allowed in the classroom and another column would be for actions not allowed called the No, David column. A great lesson for this book could be on making inferences about the character.

Lexile Level: BR