Which book will win?

This week we continue our reading to find out which book will win the 2012 Monarch Award!

Kindergarten

We are reading the book A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Phillip Stead. Amos stays home from working at the zoo when he falls ill. His friends, the animals, come to visit and make him feel better. We predicted before reading which character on the front cover was Amos. We also predicted why a man would be playing cards with a penguin and elephant. During reading we continued to work on our predicting skills to determine where Amos works. We made our own connections to the book while discussing our favorite activities to play.

First Grade

The first graders were introduced to book trailers using the book Blackout by John Rocco. The trailer, similar to a movie trailer, allowed the student to predict the story and the meaning for the title blackout. Afterwards we looked at famous pieces of art that connected with the illustrations in this story. We looked at pieces like "Starry Night," "Starry Night Over the Rhone," and "Cafe Terrace at Night." Afterwards we made a word cloud on tagxedo using details from the story. Check out one of our word clouds below.

Checkout the Blackout book trailer here: Blackout Trailer

Second Grade

binkandgollie.com

   We read the book Bink & Gollie by Alison McGhee and Kate DiCamillo. This book is another book on our list to read before voting which book will win the Monarch Award. The story was broken up into three short stories about two friends who like different things, but still manage to be best friends. After the story we used the challenging words the character Gollie uses to help her climb the mountains of the Andes. We had to solve word riddles and unscramble the letters to uncover the words baffled, pancakes, socks, implore, skate, popcorn, and speed. Then we went to our centers and completed activities like writing our own adventure as Gollie did in the story "P.S. I'll be back later." Below is a student drawing from center time. At the art center students drew themselves in a scene with Bink and/or Gollie. Then they used at least 5 words to describe the scene.

http://www.binkandgollie.com/images/BinkGollie_guide1.pdf

Checkout the Bink & Gollie book trailer here: Bink & Gollie Book Trailer



Next week we will continue to look at other books nominated for the award.