Posts tagged ‘alliteration’
150. Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini
Retell: Gritch the Witch wakes up one morning with an intense craving for ‘piggie pie’. When she discovers that she is missing the main ingredient she heads to Old MacDonald’s Farm where she meets some crafty pigs.
Topics: witches, pigs, nursery rhymes, cultural literacy, Old MacDonald, wolves, Wizard of Oz
Units of Study: Fairy Tales, Fantasy
Habits of Mind: Persisting, Thinking Flexibly
Reading Skills: Understanding humor, catching cultural references
Writing Skills: Writing commas in a list, Including alliteration, Using sentence variety
Thoughts: I can see reading this book during a study of fairy tales and folk tales. To thoroughly understand the story, students need to have a good understanding of the song “Old Macdonald”, the movie The Wizard of Oz as well as the role of the wolf in fairy tales. Though this book may be geared to children under 8, this could be a good book to read for older children when teaching readers to analyze cultural references. The “Spy vs. Spy” endings makes the story.
126. Strong to the Hoop by John Coy
Retell: James has always wanted to play basketball on the main court. Knowing that he’s too young and too small, he practices on the side court. One day a player gets injured and he volunteers to play. Though he misses shots and fouls other players, he gains his courage and ends up winning the game.
Topics: basketball, courage, playground, body image, boys
Units of Study: Realistic Fiction, Personal Narrative
Tribes: personal best, appreciations/no put-downs
Reading Skills: envisionment, inference
Writing Skills: incorporating similes, alliteration, using commas to list action, balancing internal thinking, action and dialogue
My Thoughts: This book was hiding on my read aloud shelf in my classroom. I forgot all about it and now I’m kicking myself for not reading it to my class during our recent Realistic Fiction unit. This is a fantastic small moment mentor text. The events of the story are few: a boy practices, enters a game, struggles, and wins. However through a balance of internal thinking, small action and dialogue, the author creates a suspenseful, meaningful story.
122. Welcome to the Green House by Jane Yolen
Retell: Jane Yolen poetically compares the rainforest to a green house.
Topics: rainforest, animals, birds, nonfiction poetry
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area, Personal Essay
Habits of Mind: gathering data through all senses
Reading Skills: envisionment, inference
Writing Skills: using repetition, incorporating rhythm and rhyme, using sparkling vocabulary, using alliteration
My Thoughts: A few months ago I received a GrowLab through a DonorsChoose grant. We received support from an educator at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and created corsage box terrariums. Students planted cuttings from three different plants that thrive in the rainforest. I plan on reading this book soon to support our gardening experience. The text in this book is so vivid that as I read it I can actually feel the humidity of the rainforest. It’s a great text for teaching students how to interpret metaphors. At the end of the book, the author writes a message to her readers encouraging us to find out more about saving the rapidly disappearing rainforest. Though it’s not technically a personal essay, you could use sections of the message as a mentor text.
118. Hawk, I’m Your Brother by Byrd Baylor
Retell: Rudy Soto yearns to fly. He climbs up a cliff and captures a young hawk in the hope that he will be able to become brothers with the hawk and thus have a sense of what it means to fly. Eventually he sets the hawk free and is forever changed.
Topics: hawks, dreams, flying, keeping pets, freedom
Units of Study: Talking and Writing About Texts, Social Issues
Tribes: mutual respect
Reading Skills: questioning, inference, interpretation, synthesis
Writing Skills: using alliteration
My Thoughts: Each year the issue of whether or not to get a class pet comes up. I have mixed feelings about class pets. I think they can be very useful for studying life cycles and animal habitats, but I don’t like the idea of animals in cages. I may read this book the next time the issue arises in my classroom. It will be an essential text during the interpretation unit and could also be an interesting one to read or reread during Social Issues.
When I was looking for images of this book I came across a website with a fantastic resource. Through the Magic Door is an online bookstore that has put together some fabulous lists of books that may be very useful when making text sets. Hawk, I’m Your Brother can be found under the list of books that are all about Flying.
106. H is for Home Run: A Baseball Alphabet by Brad Herzog
Retell: Brad Herzog celebrates the A to Zs of baseball.
Topics: baseball, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Reading Skills: envisionment, determining importance
Writing Skills: using alliteration, using dashes, crafting rhyme
My Thoughts: I normally don’t use alphabet books very much throughout the course of the year. This book inspires me to change my mind. This book is more sophisticated than your average alphabet book. Each page has both a rhyming description of an aspect of baseball and a more detailed description in the sidebar. I’m considering proposing alphabet books as a way to publish Content-Area pieces. During Social Studies students could make alphabet books as a way to assess their understanding of the content of a unit.
Often I’m scrambling to find read alouds that fit within one of our units of study. However, sometimes it’s nice to read something that will connect with a current event or a current class interest. For those who want to celebrate the upcoming World Series, H is for Home Run is a good choice.
99. The Whales by Cynthia Rylant
Retell: Rylant imagines what whales might be thinking while swimming in the ocean.
Topics: whales, whale songs
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Habits of Mind: responding with wonderment and awe
Reading Skills: envisionment, inference, monitoring for sense
Writing Skills: repetition, alliteration
My Thoughts: Though the Content-Area unit is months away I’m trying to start early in my search for nonfiction poetry. As a child I loved doing research but I hated having to do research reports. Within the Content-Area unit students make choices about how they will publish the findings from their research. They could do a research report but they could also choose to do a speech, an essay or write a poem. Last year one of my struggling writers, who found essays and fiction writing to be torture, discovered nonfiction poetry. He became interested in longhouses, researched the topic for a few weeks and wrote a poem several stanzas long. I feel that I could lift the level of my students’ writing this year if I can get my hands on engaging nonfiction poetry. The Whales is just the mentor text I’ve been looking for. I love how she inserts factual information and balances it with descriptive language. I think it would be great to read this book side by side with an informational text in order to compare each author’s voice.
Do you know of any fantastic nonfiction poetry texts? Please post your suggestions in the comments section!
97. A Family Guide to House Monsters by Stanislov Marijanovic
Retell: This book explains many things including: why we look in the mirror, why we spill things and why we are afraid of the dark. It turns out we can blame everything on house monsters.
Topics: monsters, behavior, forgetfulness, laziness, vanity, clumsiness
Units of Study: Fantasy
Tribes: personal best
Habits of Mind: finding humor
Reading Skills: making connections, monitoring for sense
Writing Skills: using alliteration
My Thoughts: I thought I was feeling exhausted from the hectic day. It turns out I’m being followed by Doze-A-Log, the house monster of fatigue. One of the great things about doing this blog is that I’ve been receiving gifts of books. (Thanks Jess!) Just last week I had a reading celebration where students brought in artifacts that represent a positive reading moment. I’m so thankful to the people in my life who are sharing their favorite reading moments with me. Keep sending recommendations!
This book may be difficult to obtain, but I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy. It has many teaching purposes. It could be a great mentor text during the Fantasy unit for developing quirky characters. Each monster’s name is either a play-on-words or contains a Greek or Latin root that is connected to the monster’s behavior. What a wonderful addition to word work! With my more advanced students I plan on having them read a monster’s name and make a prediction about its behavior based on information from the word itself. We’ll then read the text together and discuss if there are other words that may be connected to the word. For example, I may show students the name, “Instantania”. I would expect that they could recognize “instant” and guess that the monster is impatient. We may then brainstorm other words with that base, (instantly, instantaneous, etc.)
23. Mr. George Baker by Amy Hest
Retell: Hundred-year-old George Baker and his young neighbor Harry are friends. Each day they wait for the school bus that brings them both to school.
Topics: friendship, reading, literacy, growing old, learning, music, small moments, friendship
Units of Study: Personal Narrative, Social Issues
Tribes: personal best, mutual respect
Reading Skills: envisionment, inference, interpretation
Writing Skills: zooming in on small moments, alliteration, onomatopoeia, using sensory details
My Thoughts: This is a slow-paced story that easily lends itself to teaching small moments. Though you could also read this book aloud with a social issues lens, the author spends most of the story describing the moments just before going to school. It would be a good mentor text for paying attention to how authors incorporate sound into their writing.
10. Come On, Rain! by Karen Hesse
Retell: A young girl anticipates the long awaited thunderstorms that will cool down the humid city she lives in.
Topics: heat, rain, family, summer, cities, thunderstorms
Units of Study: personal narrative, poetry
Reading Skills: envisionment, making connections
Writing Skills: including similes, using active verbs, personification, alliteration
My Thoughts: This book makes me wish it was more humid outside right now. Every New Yorker without air conditioning will be able to relate to this book. I love how Hesse uses poetic devices throughout this small moment story, making it a nice mentor text for personal narrative or poetry unit. She includes personification: “The smell of hot tar and garbage bullies the air…” There is alliteration and assonance: “The first drops plop down big, making dust dance all around us.” Hesse teaches young writers to slow down and zoom in on ordinary moments.
Teachable Texts 