Saturday, August 24, 2013

Eric Carle

As promised I wanted to talk a little bit about an Eric Carle book study that could go along with the Global Read Aloud.

Last year I used Eric Carle for an author study in my first grade classroom.  I had two goals for this author study.  One was to share different books from an author already were so familiar with (who doesn't know The Very Hungry Caterpillar?).  The second goal was to use Eric Carle as an example of a writer and see what author crafts he used in his books.

During the author study we sometimes just read some of the author's books aloud for fun and other times we read aloud the author's books to chart what we noticed about his writing.  I do not have a picture of the actual chart but it looked something like this:


Under the side that says title we would of course write the title, but I would also include a picture of the book (I am a firm believer of using visuals for all learners but especially primary learners).  Under the side that says What we noticed, we would record what we saw Eric Carle do as a writer in that particular book.  In the first book that we shared I had to do a lot of modeling and thinking aloud, but eventually they got the hang of it and were able to come up with their own "notices."

Now, onto the books that we shared.  The good thing about Eric Carle is that he has written a TON of books and they are in EVERY library so they are accessible (click his name above for a link to his website.)

Some of my classes favorites from last year were the ones that followed a circular pattern.  I have listed them below:

Little Cloud




The Grouchy Ladybug:


The Very Lonely Firefly:

The great thing about an author study is that it can be done in whatever way works best for your class.  I can say that my class loved listen to his book and discussing them with one another.  How fun would it be to find another class participating in the Global Read Aloud and Skype with them while completing the anchor chart or even tweet them your "notices."  

I hope you find a way to incorporate an Eric Carle book study into your classroom and join in the Global Read Aloud.

Happy Reading!
Laura

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