What is not to love this time of year?  Cool weather, colorful leaves, and the excitement of Halloween!  My favorite story for October is Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe.  I could read it a million times and still find something funny that I may have missed the time before.


Harold, the narrator of the story, is hysterical!  He is just like my dog, Romeo, who begs for food 24-7!  And Chester, the cat, oh my.  My students and I fall off our chairs when read about his shenanigans!  He thinks that the new bunny in the house is a vampire and is determined to get rid of a vampire no matter how crazy he looks!  I've called my own cat Chester by mistake when he acts a little crazy.  He wears garlic around his neck, tries to pound the bunny with a steak..yes steak not stake, and wears a towel around his neck to look like a vampire cape to get everyone's attention.  The poor bunny can't get a break so Harold steps in to help him.  It is a must read!  Teachers, there are so many different reading skills you can pull from this book.  As far as vocabulary, it is packed with new words for upper elementary so I would stop and explain or help students use context clues when we crossed a difficult word.


Here are some great ideas to use with this book!

• Genre discussion-  Legends and Mysteries
• Make an advertisement for a lost bunny
• Point of view of the different characters.
• Predict what Chester might do next.
• Inference opportunities are throughout
• Cause and Effect
• Compare and Contrast characters
• Sequence Events
• Text Connections
• Summarize an event using transition words
• Persuade your parents to allow you to get a pet
• Concrete Poem of a white tomato!
• 5W's- Who, What, When, Where, Why
• Homonyms- Steak/Stake
• Write a Parody of one of the events in the story
• Character Traits/ Feeling words
• How did Chester's character change from the beginning of the story to the end?
• Figurative Language- Simile, Metaphor, Alliteration, Personification, Idiom, Onomatopoeia
• Lots of Personification!
• Analyze quotes:  Cruel to be kind.  By hook or by crook.
• Write a Diamante- change from one character to the next
• Explain the name of the chapters
• Research- Rabbit's diet, Transylvania, Animal Fangs, Vampire Bats

For a free character chart, click on the pic below!

Check out the post I did for the Who's Who and Who's New Blog.  Sounds simple but so effective!

Click the pic to get there!

Welcome to mini lesson #28!  Whether you have been following all of the mini lessons in order or stumbling across this one individually, you will find some great ideas for lessons on WORD CHOICE!  I call it MILLION DOLLAR WORDS.  In case you missed the last mini lesson, it was on Rockin Beginnings- ways to begin a narrative essay.  Moving onto WORD CHOICE, I have a step-by-step approach to share.



1.  MENTOR TEXT
For all of my writing lessons, I feel it is important to use MENTOR TEXT to show students how real authors use that skill.  In my mentor text .pdf that is included in all of the STEP-BY-STEP INTERACTIVE WRITING NOTEBOOKS, these are the books I suggest.  If you aren't using the suggested mentor text list in your school, you don't necessarily have to stick by the grade levels below.  If you have one of them in your classroom library already, use it!  I broke it down in grade levels for schools and districts who purchased my writing notebook programs to keep it fresh each year.

(I provided links to some of the books.  I use affiliates solely to keep my blog running so I can provide quality content and ideas for teacher.)

K-  Brave as a Mountain Lion by Ann Herbert Scott
Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

1st-  Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood
Same Smug Slug by Pamela Duncan Edwards
Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Conner

2nd-  Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann
Dinorella:  A Prehistoric Fairy Tale by Pamela Duncan Edwards
Tulip Sees America by Cynthia Rylant

3rd-  The Whales by Cynthia Rylant
The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg

4th-  The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter
Amos and Boris by William Steig
Under the Quilt of Night by Deborah Hopkinson

5th-  When Marian Sang by Pam Munoz Ryan
Noah Webster and His Words by Jeri Chase Ferris
Caves by Stephen Cramer

6th-  If Not for the Cat by Mary Blount Christian
The Man Who Carried His Heart in a Bucket
Roxaboxen by Barbara Cooney

7th-  The Bunyans by Audrey Wood
Monkey Business by Wallace Edwards
The Cat's Pajamas by Wallace Edwards

8th-  Tiki Tiki Tembo by Arlene Mosel
Oh the Place You'll Go by Dr. Seuss

How do you use mentor text?  Go through the book and pick out places where the author shows good imagery.  As you read the book to the students, stop and point out the words you marked.  Here is an example form I Love You the Purplest by Barbara M. Joossee.  Say to the students, "Close your eyes and make a picture in your mind as I read a few sentences."

"The lake slowed its thrashing to a soft, even beat.  The mosquitos dipped low to the water and the water bugs skittered on top.  The moon glowed on one side of the lake while the sun shimmered on the other."

2.  TEACH
Use anchor charts to teach the lessons.  I put them on my smart board and then add them as posters to our writing center.  With the FAAVS, point out that each letter represents a type of million dollar word and they each have a color to represent it.  This is important for practicing because students color-code their sentences.  Also explain that many of the sense words can also be adjectives.  They were added as a separate category to help students think of ways to add million dollar words to their sentences.

Then give examples of each one using the same sentence to show how to BUILD A SENTENCE.


3.  TAKE NOTES
Students should take notes to help retain the information and gain ownership of their writing.

4.  STUDENT RESOURCES
Provide students with copies of some of the information to keep in their writing folder to refer to when writing independently.  I also give them a Million Dollar Dictionary with some million dollar words and lines to add more.

5.  CENTER OR GROUP ACTIVITIES
A great way to provide practice during center time is with task cards that scaffold from choosing the best million dollar word to rewriting sentences with million dollar words.  



6.  INDEPENDENT PRACTIVE AND ASSESSMENTS
Last, provide a variety of independent practice.  You can use one as an assessment of the skill. 

Hot off the press!  Don't miss out first grade teachers!  This will give you model lessons, tracking forms, rubrics, teacher slides, practice sheets, and so much more!  It covers the whole year and all Common Core Writing Standards as well as many Language Standards.  You won't be disappointed!  The other grades (2-6) have been best sellers and I've had requests to do first grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade.  I'm hoping to have 7th and 8th done soon!  Can you tell I am excited?

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