Since the class returned after Spring Break, Mo Willems has been our
favourite author! We spent lots of time with his Elephant and Piggie
series. I like to have the students read these books at this time of year,
because they almost forget about the words, and become just the voice
of the characters. The children do not sound like robots,
but instead, you can hear Elephant being scared, or Piggie being silly!
After a couple of weeks of those magical stories,
it was time to introduce the students to Mo Willems
other famous character....Pigeon!
When I think that the students cannot be any more engaged
in the stories, Pigeon shows me that he is even more
popular. Gosh! They do laugh at his antics!
When we are reading these books we really paid attention
to the mannerisms of the character, drawn by Mo Willems.
We discussed how we knew that Pigeon was angry,
or upset, or pleading. We then matched how the words
are read, to the pictures. This adds the emotional component,
or expression to the reader's fluency.
The student's got a chance to add speech bubbles
to the Pigeon characters that they made.
"I'm going to see my best friend in the afternoon."
Oh hi guys! I just still want to drive the bus,
but I changed my mind. I want to drive the truck."
At the end of this week, we explored the latest Pigeon
story "The Pigeon HAS to Go to School!"
(They all knew how to read the title and emphasize
the word HAS."
We tried to create Zip Lines so that the Pigeon
wouldn't be late.
Thanks to Brooke Brown for sharing this engaging
activity with me.
Go to PART 2 to see how the students did!
