This Week's Lesson Round-Up

We continued our author study (Mo Willems) yesterday with a read-aloud of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. During this interactive story, a handful of my students thought it was funnier to say "yes" to the pigeon's pleadings to drive the bus, than to say "no" (of course). It was very entertaining, made for great discussion.



The best was hearing them describe to me (after the story) why a pigeon shouldn't drive a bus. They gave me very detailed (and sometimes gory) descriptions of what destruction the pigeon might cause. I have to admit, some of their comments disturbed me a bit.

I was so impressed that so many of my students remembered Mo Willems as the subject of our author study. They came into class talking about Mo, before I even mentioned him. And these were some of my younger students too! One of them told me that he saw Mo at the grocery store! I'm sure that he didn't (we live in Tennessee), but it was cute nonetheless.



We tried our hand again at being illustrators like Mo, and dreamed up what we might write about if we were authors. It was great fun, and the kids all loved hearing another story of Willems'. They love his stuff, and I can't wait to read them Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed next week.

This unit is going better than I could have imagined. They're even asking if there are more books that Willems has written. I've been encouraging them to visit the library and check some of his stuff out (hmm, once I return it all), and I REALLY hope they do!

Check out the nose-pickin' going on in the back here.