I LOVE Mo Willems' books! He is one of the few authors whose books can be equally entertaining to kids from Pre-K to upper elementary; specifically his Pigeon series where the characters are laugh out loud funny. Not only are they fun to read, his books are amazing as read alouds for audiences as well. You can read with such expression and intonation and kids are instantly drawn in.
Here is a link to an interview with Mo Willems where he talks a little about his books. I started an author study in my class with this You Tube clip. It gave the kids an idea of who he was as a person and what he looked like, before we delved into his books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnLqoZvrMfw
Then, we started off with a little bio comprehension reading where students had to use the text to highlight the answers to the questions.
For our author study, I focused on his Knuffle Bunny series set of three books and his Pigeon series.
Here are some activities we did with books like, "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus," and other spin offs.
Here is my grade level partner's writing for a different version of "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the _________." Students came up with their own mini story to write.
We practiced adjectives by sorting adjectives that did and did not describe the Pigeon.
I had my students write a letter to the bus driver persuading him to let or not let the pigeon drive the bus.
Students compared and contrasted different Pigeon series books with this interactive Venn Diagram.
Wow aren't sideways pics so annoying? But so is spending time on rotating them... :)
Then we moved on to Knuffle Bunny. This series has a main character girl named Trixie who has a stuffed animal called Knuffle Bunny. What's awesome is that all three books go through Trixie growing up. First she is a toddler, then she is school aged, and finally she is a little older than that.
We had fun completing different activities with these characters.
They completed story maps for the Knuffle Bunny books.
Here is a letter to Knuffle Bunny explaining how we missed him when he was lost in the books.
I printed out black and white scenery pictures and little Knuffle Bunny cut outs. Students chose a scenery and wrote all about his adventures of where he was when he was lost.
On a side note - if you haven't read "Leonardo the Terrible Monster," by Mo Willems to your kids yet, you have to check it out!! It is the PERFECT read aloud!
I had planned on completing my Pigeon supplemental pack and make it TPT ready but then life happened. I did get to finish my Knuffle Bunny unit. The above activities and more are included in this unit if you want to take a look. Click on the picture below.
Okkkk and now the best part - your chance to win a giveaway for a Tallahassee Sunday Pencil in celebration of our 6 month blog anniversary. Just enter the Rafflecopter below and good luck!!
No comments:
Post a Comment