Two Bad Ants

When we read this story, the students were in awe with each question and inference that they had to make. The students were able to draw conclusions, make generalizations, and predictions about where they thought the two ants that did not return from the first trip to the kitchen's sugar bowl. As I read this story, I did not show the students the pictures. I had them using visualizations too. WOW! We used a lot of reading comprehension stratgies. After reading the book, we discussed point of view/perspective. As a group, we completed this sensory language web:

Then, I gave the students a picture (I created a picture file in my undergraduate--I want say how long ago, but when I made it I thought when will I ever use this. The file has been helpful throughout the years. Here was yet another situation. On a side note, the picture file is just pictures of all kinds of things that I collected from old calendars, magazines, post cards, photographs, etc.) and they created a similar web. On day 2 of the writing, our class used our class web to write a descriptive paragraph from the perspective of the dog in the picture. This is what we wrote:

We reviewed strong verbs and descriptive adjectives by circling the adjectives and underlining the verbs. We revised by adding more descriptive language to enhance our writing. The students did the same with his/her paragraphs. Then, I placed all the pictures on the board. The author read his/her paragraph while the other students guessed which picture belonged to the paragraph. This was a very successful, easy assignment. We had lots of fun!

Here is a sampling of the students: