Friday, June 18, 2010

I love Mo.


Willems, that is. After returning to school from my 8 week maternity leave this past year, I found myself with 3 weeks left in the school year, and 22 kids absolutely ready for summer--which was, well...wild. I needed learning activities that would be meaningful, engaging, and get the kids excited about learning! That's when Mo and his trusty pigeon came in and made those last three weeks AWESOME! I have done many author studies before, but this one was by far the most excited I have seen my kiddos get! His books and illustrations are hilarious, and the kids loved making their own Pigeon and Elephant and Piggie books. They sat at the writing station working. Thats right. Working! They read independently, using funny voices and reading with expression, and they rolled with laughter as they buddy read the Elephant and Piggie books together! We read, laughed, created, wrote stories, and had a blast those last three weeks. Parents, I highly recommend adding Mo Willems books to your home library. I know we will be reading Mo at our house! Here are just a few of the fun activities we did with our author study...



We made our own pet pigeons!


The kids were inspired to write their own pigeon stories! This one was precious!


We made a graph! Would you let the pigeon drive the bus?


We made a character map of words to describe the pigeon! They surprised me with some of the words they used!

Visit his website for fun games, teacher's guides, and just "Mo" stuff! www.mowillems.com

4 comments:

According to Ashley said...

I love the little graph!

Rachelle said...

I just found this post!!!! I LOVE MO WILLEMS! When I was interviewed at my school to get the position I currently have, they asked me what my favorite book was. No, I didn't reply with any scholarly novel....I said DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS! :)

Jackie said...

I love this series too and I use it for our pursuading standard. We read a few of Mo's books over the week and then I have a black and white copy of a pigeon with a speech bubble and we create our own "Don't let the pigeon teach the class." The kids did great with their pigeon voice with things like: "Can I just teach calendar?", "I JUST WANT TO TEACH THE CLASS!" "Can I teach for just 1 minute?" I'll send you a copy of the worksheet.

Susan said...

We make our own pigeon stories at the end of first grade (this is the perfect end of the year unit!) and we turn the best into pigeon videos. They are all cute: check them out: http://dassamckinney.webs.com/firstgrade.htm

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