Who Goes to School?

Excellent for building independent reading skills for new readers. It uses short, simple sentences and interesting subject matter to hold readers' attention through to the end of the page. Additional reading strategies are listed at the end of the book for adults.

When seeing the cover for the first time, the reader may think that this is a book about going to school. While it is a book about going to school, its about different kinds of school. There's school for dogs, lions and children. This is a very simple book with only a few sentences and basic words. Great for beginning readers who are ready to move onto a little more challenging books.

This is actually a clever book to teach children to read.  It has a simple text, and a cute narrative.  It have been around since 1950s, and recently has been re-illustrated for a new generation of readers.

This book doesn't engage me, not that an early reader should, but I actually enjoyed the "City Walks" better, also written by Margaret Hillert, and recently republished with new illustrations.

I am glad all these books are getting republished, and I hope that children enjoy these, but I got bored of all the different schools for animals there were.  Hopefully children will find it fun to see what dogs and lions and cats and elephants can do. Oh, and children.  Children go to school too.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

This is a re-illustrated and re-released primer that was written in the 1950s. It is still a great little book to teach little ones to read using repetitive vocabulary. In "Who Goes to School", Margaret Hillert writes an unexpected story. It is not about children going to school, it is about various animals learning and going to school. They have working dogs (police dogs, guide dog) and cats that catch mice etc. as well as ending up at a school for humans. It has bright pictures that can be used for picture clues when learning to read. There are activities and recommendations on how to use this book when teaching children to read. It is great to see these books come back. I think they will be a great addition to other resources when teaching young children to read.

The repetition of phrases and word list at the back of the book make this a very good "first book" for young readers.

An updated version of an old classic, designed to help beginning readers with sight words.

Instead of children at school, it's animals!  Dogs, cats, elephants, even a seal, all learning how to do something and reinforcing that learning can be both fun and useful.

At the end you'll find exercises and suggestions that will help a child learn to read: phonological awareness (sound substitution), phonics, echo reading, building vocabulary, practising comprehension and explaining structure.  Of course you don't have to use them, but it can help children learn skills they will find useful later in school too.