Zathura

I did not even realize Zathura was a movie too, but my students did. Where have I been? Anyway, Zathura is a book about a board game that end up out in space. Again, the students were enthralled making inferences, visualizations, and drawing conclusions. Today, the students completed a story matrix about Zathura. We had a discussion comparing and contrasting Zathura and Jumanji and completed aVenn Diagram together.

We started discussing the features of modern fantasies. We compared the features to a lot of Disney movies, as well as, some other novels (James and the Giant Peach, Chocolate Touch, Chocolate Fever) The students created a story matrix as a guide for their own fantasies. The students used this poster to guide them in remembering the features of a fantasy:

Then, the students used the four square model to begin writing their fantasies. We shared the first square with partners and in group discussion. Many of the students have other students making predictions and inferring. YIPPEE! We will continue the fantasies this week. One part of our revising will be visiting those verbs and making sure they are STRONG. This will be a great time to review synonyms and  the thesaurus.