Monday, October 25, 2010

The Pencil By Allan Ahlberg, Illus: Bruce Ingman

Click on the title to see this book.

The Pencil is a wonderful book for all levels. It is a Fantasy book about a pencil who starts drawing a fun and wonderful world that most students can relate to. There are wonderful basic phrases like: "What's my name?". As well as complex language like leopards and tigers.

I used it to talk about occupations with all my groups. We talked about the job of a pencil and a paintbrush. The conversations carried us into some interesting and valuable teachable moments. Additionally with the 4th and 5th graders I used it as an example for descriptive words or character traits in this genre.

With my kindergarten beginner's group, the pictures tell the story so well that not reading the text didn't matter. The students understood the problem and practicing "What's my name?" was a blast!

I strongly recommend this book as a must in the ELL classroom library. I am sure you'll be able to use it in so many other different ways! I'd love to hear what you do with it.

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