If...Mental Images To Be Continued

What an exciting day!  First I made it to 100 followers!  Love all the new people I am "meeting."  Second I won three units.  I cannot wait to use them!  From Second Grade Sugar and Spice an American Symbols mini-unit and from Oh My LIttle Classity Class a fluency game, and from The Honey Bunch a double digit addition scoot game!  Woohoo!

And now onto class like things....

Today we read the book, If, by Sarah Perry.  I had even heard of it before The Accidental Teacher, Mom, Runner mentioned it in her Mental Image Book List.  The words are simple and the illustrations amazing (although my chickadees haven't seen them yet).   We all thoroughly enjoyed making an image of each page....some of them were pretty funny.

One of the If illustrations.

After we finished reading and creating images of the text, we wrote our own If statements.

If snot was juice.....

If dogs didn't have tales....

If the American flag had 8 stars...(can you tell what we have been studying?)

If snow were ice cream...

If children had 100,000,000 eyeballs...

If a fish could jump...

If I were Sean...(can we tell who this student's best friend is?)

If frogs told tales...

If boys were girls...

If whales could talk...

If the Statue of Liberty could talk...(again, can you tell what we have been studying?)

If houses were movable...

If hippos wore pants...

If dogs could talk...

If waves could talk...

If children were half robot...

We created an interesting list.  I have typed them all and am going to put them in a hat.  Students will pick a phrase and do their best mental image.  Tomorrow we make our own images for our If statements....stay tuned.  It should be entertaining!

Happy Thursday

Laurie

Mental Images

Images of a distinguished Edward

Mental Images is such a fun comprehension item to teach.  I like to start with poetry or short phrases from descriptive books.  We have made mental images of Edward Tulane, after reading his description.  "He had china arms and china legs, china paws and a china head, a china torso and a china nose. His arms and legs were jointed and joined by wire so that his china elbows and china knees could be bent, giving him much freedom of movement.
    His ears were made of real rabbit fur, and beneath the fur, there were strong, bendable wires, which allowed the ears to be arranged into poses that reflected the rabbit’s mood — jaunty, tired, full of ennui. His tail, too, was made of real rabbit fur and was fluffy and soft and well shaped.
    The rabbit’s name was Edward Tulane, and he was tall. He measured almost three feet from the tip of his ears to the tip of his feet; his eyes were painted a penetrating and intelligent blue.
    In all, Edward Tulane felt himself to be an exceptional specimen. Only his whiskers gave him pause. They were long and elegant (as they should be), but they were of uncertain origin....The china rabbit was in possession of an extraordinary wardrobe composed of handmade silk suits, custom shoes fashioned from the finest leather and designed specifically for his rabbit feet, and a wide array of hats equipped with holes so that they could easily fit over Edward’s large and expressive ears. Each pair of well-cut pants had a small pocket for Edward’s gold pocket watch. Abilene wound this watch for him each morning."

We read a funny Jack Prelutsky poem and drew our image of his words.

Love how the bottom one has the girl, just peeking over the fence!

My Neighbor's Dog is Purple

My neighbor's dog is purple,

its eyes are large and green,

its tail is almost endless,

the longest I have seen.

My neighbor's dog is quiet,

it does not bark one bit,

but when my neighbor's dog is near.

I feel afraid of it.

My neighbor's dog looks nasty,

it has a wicked smile....

before my neighbor painted it,

it was a crocodile.

-Jack Prelutsky

More images tomorrow!

Jennyfer@ Teaching in the Couv has a Top 10 list of books she uses for mental images.  I can't wait to try some of them out!

Happy Thursday,

Laurie