The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore Common Core Lesson

My Aunt Robin sent me this book The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore a year ago and it was fantastic.  So this year I read it to them again and we kicked it up a notch and it was marvelous.  The heavens shined their awesomeness upon us and there were unicorns and rainbows!  So I need to share!

First of all, let me tell you about this amazing book.  The book begins with Morris Lessmore in New Orleans (it doesn't say that so INFER) and suddenly a hurricane hits and Morris looses everything including the words in his book and his motivation in life.  He stumbles upon a flying lady and some flying books and is lead to a library.  He finds himself, happiness, and helps the books out until he is a very old man.  Then he too flies away and someone new stumbles upon the library. 

There are so many lessons that you can do just reading this book aloud with your kids.  There are some amazing vocabulary words that you can dig into.  There is ample opportunity to infer about New Orleans, Katrina, Morris' feelings, and the cycles you see in the book.  This books has Social Studies and Science embedded into it with New Orleans and the Hurricane.  Your children will want to "write of their joys and sorrows, of all that they know and everything that they hope for" (a repetitive line in the book) after reading this.  It's common core it's interesting its amazing. 

Then there is the technology!  There are TWO apps for this book.  One from Imag.N.O.Tron and one from Moonbot books.  The Moonbot app allows you to hear the book read and interact with it on the Ipad (or whatever device you download to) AND it has the ACADEMY AWARD WINNING SHORT FILM that goes along with it!!!!  You can compare and contrast the book and the movie.  The app helps the kids understand the book better with the animation, another person besides you reading it, and gives them an interesting rereading.  The Imag.N.O.Tron app has you use the camera in your device over the book to interact with it.  It also reads the book to the children, plays music, etc.  Both apps allow you to integrate a music element to your classroom through the song Pop Goes the Weasel. 

If you don't want to buy the apps the movie is available online.  I found a great blog post by My Bookshelf that review the book and has a link to the movie.  You can find that here. 

The reason I think that the work my students produced was so amazing this year was because of the technology.  I think that it took their engagement and therefore their work up a thousand notches.  Their writing was excellent, their reading response journals amazed me, and just the conversations about the book/movie/apps/etc was impressive.  If you need more lesson ideas you can go to teachingbooks for some more ideas. 

My kids even made another IMovie.  I told you last post that I was obsessed right?!?  My third graders did a great job I think. 

Reading Task Cards for Fables

So I have really gotten onto the task card trend.  I have seen and downloaded many on teachers pay teachers but I just couldn't quite find ones that meet my needs and really isn't it all about me.  So I have taken the plunge and made my own.  The link below goes along with the task cards on teachers pay teachers that I have created.  The cards go along best with fables, myths, legends, fairy tales, and tall tales but I am sure that you can adapt them to your needs.  I mostly made them to coincide with the ridiculously hard FCAT NGSS question stems but they go along nicely with the common core if you are already integrated.

Happy reading!

Erin

I Want My Hat Back common core lesson

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.