Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Clementine Novel Study by Sara Pennypacker

Clementine is one of my very favorite novels to study with children- and don't let the orange cover fool you! My boys relate to Clementine at least as much as my girls and everyone laughs when we read it. Last eyar I purchased a class set of the Clementine books and a copy of this Clementine Novel Study packet (which I highly recommend) from Andrea Parker's TPT store.


Clementine Novel Unit

This year, I'm adding some more creative twists to our study, including a Clementine word wall (where we'll put the vocabulary words we learn as we read) and a character traits chart for Clementine.

And of course, the word wall is more memorable if it's shaped like a clementine:


We've been working on inside and outside character traits with my third graders all year, to help them achieve the core standard RL3.3: Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.


ELL students in particular can have trouble with this standard because they may not know many words to describe character traits other than what they see, so we've been expanding our "inside" character trait vocabulary all year. For example, Clementine is free-spirited, funny, and outgoing. We'll see what other characteristics they can come up with! We'll put them on the chart with post its as we read the story.

I can't wait to introduce this hilarious novel to my students next week!

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