Red Sled {Language Arts Must Read Mentor Text}

Happy Sunday!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday break! We go back tomorrow....going to be hard to get up! I've enjoyed sleeping in!!!  :(

I want to share a Language Arts mentor text that is perfect for Winter. I bought this book last year because it looked soooooo cute, but I never ended up using it with my kids. So, this year I am excited to try it with them.

The book is Red Sled by Lita Judge.

I know this book is written for young children, but I am going to adapt it to use with my fourth graders. Sometimes the simplest books can be the most powerful teaching tools!  :)

Amazon.com Description: "In this almost wordless picture book, a host of woodland creatures take a child's sled for a nighttime joy ride. Their whimsical ride is gorgeously depicted in bold watercolor, complemented by humorous expressions and pitch-perfect sound effects. With a timeless tone and classic characters, RED SLED will become a wintertime favorite."

I am going to start by reading the book aloud to my class and showing them the gorgeous illustrations. Then, I will read it a second time, but this time I will pause on each page to allow my students to make inferences. They are going to tell me what is happening on the page and how the characters are feeling. The students are thinking this already in their heads, so this is a great way to show them how often we make inferences and we do not even realize it!

Next, I will use the book during my Writing Workshop. Since the whole book is written in onomatopoeia phrases, this will be a great time to review these awesome sound words. We will add the onomatopoeia we find in this book to our onomatopoeia charts in our writing notebooks. 

I will also use this text to do a writing lesson on using quotation marks. I know the first thing my kids will say is,"There are no quotation marks in this book!" and they are right. Sooooooooo...we will create our own dialogue for the characters! I will explain to my students that they are going to help author this book by adding in dialogue. And the expressions on the animals' faces are priceless, so I know they will come up with some clever quotes!  :) This also ties in the inferencing because the students are inferring what the animals would be saying. 

Other Writing Workshop lessons I will do focus on narrative writing. I will review how to describe the setting of the story using our senses- this is a great book to try that with since the snowy setting offers so many opportunities. We will fill in words on our graphic organizer that we paste in our notebooks. Then, I will review how we "Show, Don't Tell" in our writing. In groups, students will rewrite the sentences on the graphic organizers we paste into our notebooks. I always love to see the awesome details my students come up with! :)

Finally, I will have my students write a narrative of this story. They can use their setting graphic organizers and onomatopoeia charts to help them. I will give them the choice to follow the story that the author outlined or to create their own "Red Sled" story.

If you would like to use any of these printables I created, please just click here to download them for FREE from our TPT store.

I hope that this will be a fun way to "ease" back in after our two week holiday break! :)

I look forward to seeing what books you link up. Have a happy Sunday!
-Stacia

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Next week's linky- Math