Posts tagged ‘behavior’
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.)
73. David Goes to School by David Shannon
Retell: David is a rambunctious boy who wreaks havoc at school. After coloring on the desks he stays in after school to clean them up.
Topics: school, rules, behavior, bathroom, calling out
Units of Study: Personal Narrative
Tribes: mutual respect, attentive listening, personal best
Writing Skills: using memories to generate notebook entries
Thoughts: Here is a just-for-fun read aloud for the first day of school. It’s a great read for beginning a discussion about rules, agreements and norms. If you have access to Guys Read you may want to share David Shannon’s story about how he created the David books. The anthology has cool original pictures of the young version of his other book No, David!
Teachable Texts 