“I noticed that the boy was really scared staying home alone,” said Hannah. “Well, he thought there was a monster and he was scared of monsters,” said Greg. “I thought there was a monster, too,” said Hannah. “And Joey saw a green thing that looked like a monster. I would be really scared.” She shivered and her eyes opened wide. “Me too!” agreed Kiley. “I’m scared of monsters. Who wouldn’t be?” Then she laughed . .. a nervous laugh. “The monster in the story was an octopus,” said Philippe, “but it wasn’t real.” “But that octopus was on almost every page,” said Miguel. “It looked pretty real to me and I bet it looked real to Joey, too.” “And the boy was scared of it,” said Greg again. “He kept saying, ‘Well, just you stay put!’” “Well, Joey didn’t want to be eaten.” said Ethan. “Would you?” Everyone laughed. Then Hannah said, “Joey was pretty smart. He was trying to distract the monster so he could be safe.” She pondered a moment. “But in order to distract the monster, Joey put his brother, Dan, in danger.” “Right!” said Emma. “He kept saying, ‘My brother Dan’s delicious.’ But, Joey didn’t really want the monster to eat his brother.” Jaina shook her head. “It was like Joey was using a secret message,” she said. “And . . . it was kind of like the movie, Home Alone because the boy was alone there, too, and he tried to save himself.” “Yeah!” agreed Emma. “Joey was just trying to trick the monster.” Then she smiled and said, “I loved when Joey said, ‘My Hero!’ That was a happy ending.” Then just before the group ended for the afternoon, Tina said, “Do you think the illustrator was trying to trick us, too? Joey looked like him. Maybe this story happened to him when he was little.” “Hmmm . . .” TEACHER TALK I was planning to teach a lesson on contractions, using the segment of the title DAN’S DELICIOUS as a jump point. But as usual, the class diverted me. They do that often and I always follow their lead. Contractions will wait. For now, we will travel down the trail of synonyms. This is how it happened. I wrote the words, DAN’S DELICIOUS on the board and asked the children what they noticed. I was hoping they’d notice the apostrophe in the word DAN’S and ask me about that. They didn’t. Chrissy said, “He’s good to eat.” So I went with that. I asked the children for additional definitions for DELICIOUS. Some of the words they called out were, “Yummy,” “Tasty,” and “Mm-good.”Then, I chose several words from the book and listed them in chart form on the chalkboard. The children suggested synonyms to match the words. (See chart below.) This is a great way to increase children’s vocabularies. WORDS . . . . . . . . . SYNONYMS FEAR . . . . . . . . . . Scared . . . . . . . . . Afraid . . . . . . . . .Terrified WEIRD . . . . . . . . . Kind of crazy . . . . Strange . . . . . . . .Mysterious GLANCE . . . . . . . . Look . . . . . . . . . . .See . . . . . . . . . . Sight Next, I read the story to them again. This time the children picked words from the story and I listed them on the board. The following is a selection of possible words. As you can see they range in difficulty. SITUATION . . . . .MOMENT . . . . .DISTRACT . . . . .ALONE . . . . .SUCCULENT MEAL . . . . . . . . SECRET . . . . . .GOODIES . . . . . PLATTER . . . APPETIZER MAGNIFICENT . .YES, INDEEDY-DO The children chose these words because some of the words were unfamiliar to them. They wanted to know their meanings. Then, I placed two to four children in each group. Together, they chose a word from the list and brainstormed as many synonyms as they could think of. PLATTER . . . dish, plate, ALONE . . . . . by yourself, no one’s there, on your own, with no one MEAL . . . . . . food, supper, dinner, breakfast, snack GOODIES . . . sweets, candy, treats, sugary junk SOMETHING GOOD/Robert Munsch After fifteen to twenty minutes, the children met together as a whole group. Each group selected one member to read the synonyms for one of their words. For extra practice the groups looked up their words in the dictionary. This is another fun way to increase vocabulary, as well as work on dictionary skills. If you like MY BROTHER DAN’S DELICIOUS or books about monsters, you may also like the following books: MONSTER BROTHER by Mary Jane Auch SHELIA RAE, THE BRAVE by Kevin Henkes THE VERY WORST MONSTER by Pat Hutchins |
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