Day 52

PASS IT ON, written by Marilyn Sadler and illustrated by Michael Slack, reminds me of the old game classroom telephone. You know, teacher whispers a silly message to a student, student tells next student and so on and so on. The last student then announces the message to the whole class.  The message is always mixed up and the teacher makes the point that gossip is not reliable. In PASS IT ON, Cow is stuck on a fence and Bee must get help. The message gets passed on from character to character. This story created a classroom gigglefest.

The illustrations are super cute.  The picture of Cow stuck is particularly funny. but one particular illustration grabbed my attention immediately. I have noticed my students struggle to retell stories and then I saw the page below. It was the perfect teaching opportunity. I displayed the story on the Elmo and my students practiced retelling it with a partner using this page as a guide. What started out as a fun read ended up becoming an instructional activity. I also plan to bring this book to my intervention group and have them use it to practice retellings.


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