Chris Van Allsburg

On Friday I had the opportunity to sub for my first time in 4th grade! We had such a good day together :) My favorite part of the day was our reading/writing portion. We had to combine them because we were short on time due to art! We continued our author study on Chris Van Allsburg by reading Two Bad Ants. We looked at a few different elements of the story: first of all we used our prior knowledge of ants to think about what different locations would look like to an ant. We determined that the perspective of our classroom would be very different if we were an ant because of the size difference between us and ants! I then explained that Allsburg uses very descriptive words in this book to give readers a visualization of where the ants are, but he never actually says the setting the ants are in. We first read the book without being able to see pictures, but we brainstormed as a class and with our neighbors about where the ants were on each page that was being described. After we finished the book we went through and looked at the pictures that went along with each description ( the students guesses were spot on almost every time!) After looking at the pictures we discussed what made his writing so descriptive and entertaining. The students then had the option of writing one of two writing assignments: They could either write a text to self connection that they thought of while reading the story, or they could choose a setting and describe it using any words they wanted besides the name of the place. I thought that they all did an awesome job! We saved time at the end of the lesson to make sure we could go back to the rug and share our wonderful writing :)