Teachable Texts

121. Vote! by Eileen Christelow

November 2, 2009 at 8:28 pm Leave a comment

Retell: This book combines narrative and non-narrative text to describe how and why people vote.

Topics: voting, majority, mayors, elections, democracy, voting age, protests, marches, political parties, media, campaigns, taxes

Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area

Reading Skills: monitoring for sense, determining importance, synthesis, making connections

My Thoughts: Tomorrow is election day.  My students have the day off and they have no idea why.  Unlike last year’s election day, the buzz around tomorrow’s election is quiet.  Nevertheless, days off from school can be good teaching moments and a great time to tuck in a read aloud.  Vote provides a nice, kid-friendly introduction to the world of voting.  The text in the white space explains how voting works.  Within the illustrations, speech and thought bubbles support a narrative thread:  Chris Smith is running against Bill Brown for mayor and Smith’s family (including the family dog) all participate in the campaign.  You may choose to read all of the non-narrative text and then pick and choose which speech bubbles are the most important to highlight.

If you choose to read this book (or others about voting) please add your comments in the space below.

Entry filed under: Female Authors, nonfiction, Picture Books. Tags: campaigns, content-area, democracy, determining importance, elections, majority, making connections, marches, mayors, media, monitoring for sense, nonfiction, political parties, protests, synthesis, taxes, voting, voting age.