Awesome Common Core Book Experience Ahead!
When I say common core book what I mean that the book in my hands reaches the balance of being a quality piece of literature, the tasks that go along with the book are meaningful (not just color and paste), and the quantity of words in the book are at a sufficient level for the grade (which is going to be harder than it used to be). At least that's my abbreviated version of the common core requirements of qualitative, quantitative, reader and task orientation towards text complexity (and I spent four repetitive mind-numbing long days in Orlando at the common core conference getting that drilled into me knowledge).
My Aunt gave me this AWESOME 2nd-3rd grade common core book called I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen. In the book bear is looking for his hat and he politely asks all the animals if they have seen his hat. They all tell him no, sorry even thought he rabbit is clearly wearing the hat. The rabbit even goes into this long speech about how he would never steal hats... At the very end the bear realizes who has his hat, gets really mad and then you suddenly see him wearing the hat. A squirrel then asks the bear if he has seen a rabbit wearing a hat and the bear goes into a long winded explain action about how he would never eat a rabbit. The end. You don't really know if the bear eats the rabbit and the book ends suddenly.
So there are several lessons that you can get into about this book. First of all, it is a fantastic book to use when teaching inferring and character analysis. My kiddos surprised me about how deeply they were thinking about I Want My Hat Back. There was a discussion about whether the bear sat on or ate the rabbit. They discussed the cyclical nature of the bear's reaction (and then later possibly the squirrel's reaction). We discussed the social implications of what the rabbit and bear did. They also brought up how they know people who do what the rabbit did and how they all have different reactions. Then of course we analyzed the main characters of the book. We also talked about the illustrations and how they relate to the book. We even talked about the dialogue between the characters and quotation marks.
When I read the book I broke up the discussion into three minilessons: character analysis, social skills, and grammar. It worked out really well having a round of daily five work (centers) in between each discussion. I think it gave them time to form their thoughts and think of support for their answers. All in all this is a great book to read with students that really gets them thinking.
