October Book of the Month: Imagine

Imagine by Alison Lester is the beautifully illustrated adventure of two children as they “visit” exotic spots around the planet using cardboard boxes, blocks, plastic animals, sheets, flashlights, and other common play items to construct concrete representations of the real world. Through the familiar rhythm of a repeating line, “Imagine if…,” this stimulating picture book invites the reader to journey deep into the jungle, under the sea, in a land of ice and snow, on a farm, in the moonlit bush, on an African plain, and in a prehistoric swamp. Then, with the turn of a page, the reader finds all the animals living there!

I chose Imagine for our October Book-of-the-Month because of its vivid language and detailed descriptions of sounds and images in the natural world. As we conclude our K-5 Narrative Genre study in October, students will be shown models of descriptive language and be “nudged” to include sensory details and concrete language in their own stories as they revise their drafts in Writers Workshop. Alison Lester demonstrates for young writers the use of details in language and in pictures to tell a powerfully imaginative story and introduce rich vocabulary to readers.

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES:
PLS: Reading Standard 2: Comprehension/NSPS: Reading Standard E1b
K/1 (Reading Standard 2: Comprehension - retell the story)
After hearing Imagine read aloud and having a discussion about the words and pictures, each class will produce a re-telling of the story. Using a large sheet of chart paper, facilitate the writing of a shared, whole group, interactive piece to be displayed on the standards-based bulletin board outside your classroom with teacher commentary. You may wish to invite students to create illustrations to accompany the class retelling. A completed shared, interactive writing with Ms. Haines’ Kindergarten writers is available to view as a model and will be on display outside her classroom.

2/3 (Reading Standard 2: Comprehension – extend the story) This is an element of the first grade reading standard that is being revisited.
After hearing Imagine read aloud and having a discussion about the words and pictures, each class will produce a re-telling of the story and at least 2-3 extensions using original ideas (i.e. Imagine if we were lost in the swamp where alligators snap and mosquitoes bite, where frogs croak and fireflies light.) Using a large sheet of chart paper, facilitate the writing of a shared, whole group, interactive piece to be displayed on the standards-based bulletin board outside your classroom with teacher commentary. You may wish to invite students to create illustrations to accompany the class retelling (especially the original extensions).

4/5 (Elb The student produces evidence of reading by making perceptive and well developed connections)
After hearing Imagine read aloud and having a discussion about the author’s craft (i.e. repeating line, vocabulary as border) and why Alison Lester chose to use the identified craft in her text and illustrations, model a “perceptive and well developed connection” that you made as you read the story (i.e. Text-to-Self: Alison Lester’s descriptions of prehistoric dinosaurs and illustration of the children dressing up remind me of a Halloween when my 4-year old daughter, Anisa, dressed up in the family’s hand-stitched, hand-me-down blue and yellow T-Rex costume. It must have been the "Year of the Dinosaur" that Halloween as we encountered every possible dinosaur from the movie, The Land Before Time, on every corner of our neighborhood.)