Battle Bunny - Jon Scieszka focus continues

This unit has been extended for some students until Wednesday 4th of March.  Well done to those students who handed me their work today; much appreciated and for meeting the initial deadline their work looked upon favorably.  Students will have a few more blocks of class time. It has been the only homework for two weeks. We look forward to sharing them with our buddies.

The inspiration by Scieszka

This is a new unit I have just designed and obviously never done before. I hope to get students really motivated with both their reading and their writing. They will be using their Writer's Notebooks to firstly read thoroughly, then to deconstruct, plan and re-write their chosen book. In this book (the motivation for the unit)  Alex receives a silly, sappy picture book entitled Birthday Bunny so he picks it up and transforms it into something that he would really like to read. An adorable rabbit's journey through the forest becomes a secret mission to unfurl a dastardly plan - a plan that only Alex can stop. This book features layered original illustrations and celebrates students as story tellers.

I read the text in two voices, one reading the original and one reading Alex's version at the same time. It was like a song duet. We discussed the major changes to the plot line, the intentions and qualities of the characters. Students later chose a picture book of their own to get to know thoroughly and then to transform. I have collected a very wide range of books from which they can choose. They will be given ample perusal time before making their final selection. Before commencing on the modification, they must have carefully planned their deviation from the original story and thought through the possible vocabulary and illustrative properties they could insert.. There will be an emphasis on proof-reading and evaluation of their own work. Students will be asked to set goals and reflect on their journey as they become authors.

Below the book release:

Students can download the PDF file to design their own Battle Bunny Book.

Make your own Battle Bunny Book

Selection of books students could choose from to make their own modified, infinitely-more interesting book.

Students chose from this selection and a few others not photographed.

Students brainstormed the ways the chosen texts could be modified to make them more attractive to readers and presented their ideas using a visual organiser called wheel spokes.

Possible conversions to the texts

Two absolutely amazing new Golden Book titles...

Clearly a great deal of time and thought has gone into these two deconstructions and reconstructions, both with a twist. Jon Scieszka would be proud!

Don't miss this very innovative book; really quirky!

Math Chaos

Our current focus is on the book called Math Curse by Jon Scieszka.  We watched a ten minute segment from this very entertaining presentation by the author. Students may like to watch the whole presentation at their own leisure. He is very funny.

The unit has a literacy and numeracy focus and students will also have to think about the design elements of their clocks. Students are learning to use a compass and to understand degrees in a circle and how to efficiently partition the circle to create an analogue clock face. They will be designing a clock with movable arms to discuss intervals of time. Each student is writing a narrative about their morning, detailing the times and events from when they wake up until when the bells goes to begin their school day. They will then be writing five mathematical questions to pose to their peers. They must have worked out the answers.

I whipped up a quick example to give the general idea. In class I also and modelled writing my narrative about my morning.

My favourite time of the day

Five students were shown in depth how to use a compass and protractor and two possible ways of partitioning their circles. They then became the expert team and assisted other students with the construction of their circles.

Captains of Industry

Hard at work designing their clock faces

Some students are using photographs for the head section of their bodies.

As an aside to this unit students are looking at written maths problems, learning to decode them and to find the necessary information.  I encourage students to use the think, pair and share method which allows students to unpack questions with support from each other and to compare their chosen strategies.