Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Good Night Gorilla


As a way to help students improve descriptive writing skills, I enlisted the assistance of a classic children's book: Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann. There is little text in this precious story about a mischievous, little gorilla and her (or his) zoomates who sneak into the zookeeper's cozy cottage to sleep. The students individually wrote details from the action they saw on each page. Then they got into groups to refine and revise their stories. We discussed the use adjectives and adverbs, vivid descriptions of characters, the setting, and events, ways to transition from page to page or scene to scene, and delicious words ("How did you went?").

After another revision and editing, students narrated their stories and matched them with photos uploaded to Photo Story. All students' work will be put on their Google Sites when they are completed. Here is an example of a finished story that was very well written. Nice job Dyna, Phoebe, and Claire!



6 comments:

  1. I love the words that you used to go with the pictures in "Good Night Gorilla". You are very creative and used your imagination. Thank you for sharing your story.
    -kay, A friend of Mr.Pahl.

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  2. Fantastic! Zane (7), Ruby (4) and I enjoyed this very much, especially the detailed descriptions. When it was finished, the kids decided they prefer your version to the way that I read it to them! I have to agree with them.
    Sincerely, Laurie (Zane and Ruby's Mom)

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  3. i think they used good ideas of ceativity

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  4. dyna! claire! phoebe! you guy rock i like the good night gorilla thing you guy wrote it's awsome!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  5. who ever wrote good night gorilla you guy rock

    rajveer's dad

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  6. It was actually kind of hard to create a descriptive version of the book because the original didn’t have much description at all so we had to work from what little we had!

    From, Linnea =D

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