Book of the Day Teaching Ideas: For When You Want To Dance

Each weekday I share picture books for the classroom and teaching ideas over at the Galarious Goods Instagram account. Now I’m happy to share them here with you.

Josephine Wants to Dance by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley

This book, following the story of Josephine the kangaroo who really wants to be a ballet dancer, is a wonderful story about holding onto dreams.

This is a great story to retell from different points of view - from what Josephine’s brother was thinking to how the other dancers in the company react.

Memorial by Gary Crew and Shaun Tan

Based around a Memorial tree, this book tells the story of different generations of one family who’ve experienced war - the perfect book for Anzac Day or Remembrance Day

Students can create a timeline of the different wars mentioned in the book and undertake more research into those wars.

Get the book study for Memorial here

Errol! by Zanni Louise and Philip Bunting

This lovely, funny book about a penguin who won’t listen to his mother is a great book to explore with lower primary students.

Students can expand their writing skills by writing about Errol’s adventures and the places he went.

Engibear’s Dream by Andrew King

Engibear’s Dream is perfect for STEM activities, with a focus on what you should do when an engineering project doesn’t quite work the way you hope it will.

Students can use this text as an introduction to engineering, examining the book for vocabulary which they could use as they write about their own engineering adventures.

Whoever You Are by Mem Fox

This sweet book explores the diversity we can find in our communities and in our world - it’s a great book for lower primary students.

Students can use the book as inspiration as they create a portrait of who they are and the world around them.

Related posts to read:

• 5 ANZAC Day Picture Books to Use in Your Classroom

• Five Ways to Explore Picture Books in the Classroom

• Exploring Australian Picture Books About Weather

• Three Different Ways to Explore Poetry in your Classroom

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4 Literacy Activities for I Just Ate My Friend

He was my best friend . . . and now he’s gone!

If you haven’t read I Just Ate My Friend by Heidi McKinnon, I highly recommend getting your hand on a copy. This lovely picture book, which follows the monster’s search for a new friend - after they ate their old friend, is a brilliant book to read with early primary students, and a great one to take a closer look at in the classroom. 

Here’s a few ways you can explore this very funny picture book in your classroom.

1. Create Your Own Monster

The monsters in I Just Ate My Friend all look very different. Students can choose a monster and work in pairs or in small groups to describe these monsters. Alternately, students can explore creating their own monster.

One way to create a monster is to combine it with mathematics and use chance - and a dice - to create a monster. Each number of the dice can correspond with a particular monster feature and students can roll the dice, then draw the piece of monster they get. If students are in the pre-reading stage, this can be done in literacy rotation groups with a teacher or assistant or even as a whole class activity. Once students have drawn their monster, they can write descriptions for their new creation.

Want to create monsters with your class? You can get free printables to support this activity in your classroom by signing up for the free resource library.

2. Engage in Readers Theatre . . . And Create Their Own

Because the main character in I Just Ate My Friend meets a lot of other characters, it’s a great opportunity to introduce and explore reader’s theatre with your students. Students can discuss how they think different lines in the book should be read (exploring fluency and expression) and take turns being the main character and the monsters they meet. 

Once students are comfortable with the text, they might also like to think about how they could expand it. Students can brainstorm other monsters the main character might meet and act out what those monsters might say. They could challenge themselves to have enough monsters for the whole class to participate!

3. Exploring What a Friend Is

This is a great book for exploring the qualities of friends. Students can brainstorm words which describe friends and create images or descriptions of friendships.

Students can also explore what friendships look like in other media. They might like to talk about television shows or movies or other books which feature friendships and talk about the qualities of friends shown there.

Do you want to teach this activity with your students? You can find it as part of the I Just Ate My Friend book study

4. Exploring Surprising Endings

I Just Ate My Friend has a surprise ending which completely changes the book. This is a great opportunity for students to talk about surprise endings and why the author might have chosen to write it. They can also connect this book to other books with surprise endings and discuss what makes an ending surprising.

Once they’ve discussed surprise endings, students might like to try creating their own surprise endings. They can create stories in small groups or pairs, write them, record them or have them scribed and create their own books.

Have you read I Just Ate My Friend in Your Classroom? Share your experience in the comments.

Related posts to read:

• 3 Easy Ways to Explore Alpacas with Maracas

• 4 Literacy Activities for The Wrong Book by Nick Bland

• 5 Engaging Picture Books Featuring Australian Animals

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Book of the Day Teaching Ideas: The First Edition

Each weekday I share picture books for the classroom and teaching ideas over at the Galarious Goods Instagram account. Now I’m proud to share them here with you.

A Dog’s Tale by Michael Rosen and Tony Ross

A lovely book which explores advice perfect for young dogs - and humans. This is a great book for exploring advice, which advice is good advice and how we can use it in our lives.

Students may like to create their own animal advice books. They can explore the behaviour of different animals and reflect on how that behaviour might connect with human traits.

Fire by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley

This is such an important book, exploring the fury of a bushfire and its impact on people, structures, animals and the natural environment.

Students can spend some time exploring the author and illustrator notes in the book. They might like to use these to form more questions.

Get the book study for Fire here

Oi Cat! by Kes Gray and Jim Field

This is a serious favourite in my household with it’s rhyming word play - and the playful use of words makes it perfect for the classroom.

As well as exploring the rhymes in the book, students may like to choose one of the animals mentioned in the story for further research - looking at what they are, where you find them, their habitat and other interesting facts.

Cloud Dance by Thomas Locker

This is a really pretty book exploring clouds - a great one to add to any exploration of clouds and weather.

Students can use this book to inspire their own writing, drawing or photography of the clouds they see. Alternately, they can find pictures of clouds online and write poetry and descriptions of these.

The Return of Thelma the Unicorn by Aaron Blabey

Thelma is back! This time backed up by Otis and exploring what good she can do for the world.

This is a great book for exploring good things we can do in the world. Students might like to brainstorm how they can be ‘unicorns’ for their community and how they can bring joy and glitter into the world.

Related posts to read:

• Five Ways to Explore Picture Books in the Classroom

• Exploring Australian Picture Books About Weather

• Three Different Ways to Explore Poetry in your Classroom

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The Power of Settings When You’re Teaching Coraline

What will be on the other side of that locked door? This is the question asked early on in the Neil Gaiman novel Coraline. As Coraline reaches up to get the key and turns it in the door, we aren’t sure whether there’ll still be bricks there, or if there’ll be something else there.

Just like this moment, the other settings in Coraline are filled with a little bit of uncertainty - which is why they’re so exciting to explore in the classroom!

Coraline tells the story of a girl who has recently moved to a new home. As she is exploring the environment around her, she is compelled to explore behind the door - even though when her mother opened it, there was nothing but a brick wall behind it.

The settings tell us a lot about the themes and ideas of Coraline. From the woods which aren’t really woods and just take her back to the ‘other’ house, to the flat where her neighbours live in (both in the ‘real’ world and in the ‘other’ world) to the well in the yard of the real house. As students work their way through the novel, it’s worth taking the time to explore the settings in more detail, allowing students to better understand it.

Here’s some ways you can explore the settings in more detail:

Create a List of the Important Settings in Coraline

What are the most important settings in Coraline and why are they important? This is a question which students can ask themselves as they are reading the story - maybe reserving a part of their notebooks or contributing to a collaborative list of important settings. Once they’ve finished reading the book, students can review the list and identify which of the settings are most important and why. Students can then take this further by identifying which of the settings are most important to which character and why.

Describing a Setting from Coraline

If students have identified the important settings from Coraline, they can extend it further by describing the setting. Asking students to describe a setting in their own words - or to draw and describe it - requires them to really focus on what is - and isn’t included in that setting. As students are describing it, you can further prompt them to think about what people might see, hear or feel in that setting.

Want to engage in a draw and describe activity with your students? Find this activity as part of the Coraline Characters and Settings teaching resource

Creating a Map of Settings

Coraline is one of those books where the characters need to go on a journey to solve a problem. As she goes on the journey, she visits a range of settings. This can be explored in the classroom as students look at the journey to create a map of the settings. 

As students make a map, they can explore which places Coraline chose to visit and why she chose those places. They can look at how her emotions change in the different places she visits and whether the setting has any influence over those emotions. They can also explore who she encounters in each of those settings and how that impacts the plot of the story.

Have you explored the settings of Coraline - or another novel? Tell us about your experience in the comments.

Related posts to read:

• Three Connections to The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice #1)

• Exploring Unreliable Narrators in the Classroom

• Adventure Girl and Reclusive Author

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Why You Should Teach Coraline as Your Next Novel Study

Are you looking for your next classroom novel study? Here’s why you should consider Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

Coraline tells the story of a young girl who’s recently moved into an apartment in an old house. In the process of ‘exploring’ she discovers a door that leads nowhere . . . until it does. She finds herself in the ‘other’ world, a world where the other mother wants to fulfill her every wish. Or does she . . . ?

This short novel is filled with interesting characters to explore, storylines to follow and themes to examine. But here’s some other reasons you should teach Coraline in your classroom.

Coraline is Filled With Wonderful Writing and Language

Neil Gaiman is a wonderful writer and his writing style shines in this book. It’s filled with beautiful descriptive language which makes it perfect for vocabulary lessons. Students can identify their favourite words within different chapters or sections. They can define these words, discuss why the author might have chosen to use them in the book and what feelings they evoke in the reader, then try to use the vocabulary in their own writing.

Coraline Explore the Notion that Everything Has Two Sides

The Other Mother and the other ‘other’ characters are fascinating to explore. They are probably one of the key ideas to discuss when engaging with a Coraline novel study. Students can compare and contrast the features of the ‘real’ characters and the ‘other’ characters. They can talk about why those characters might have certain characteristics and how that would impact their relationships with others in the story. Students can also explore those characters which don’t have ‘other’ counterparts and question why that might be the case - why the author made that decision.

Coraline Explore the Theme of Bravery

Bravery is one of those themes which we often find in children’s novels, even when it’s expressed in a range of different actions. Jamal in Boy Overboard, for example, needs to be brave when he finds himself and his sister in an awful situation without their parents. He often shows his bravery through quick thinking and being willing to make suggestions to those in positions of authority. Rowan in Rowan of Rin is another character who has to be brave to solve a problem. In his case, he has never thought of himself as brave in the village of people who appear to be brave - but it is his calm and caring nature which allows him to be brave. 

In Coraline, Coraline is required to say no at a time when it would be very easy to say yes. She has to use her brain to be a problem solver and at times, she simply has to run, and keep going.  Students could examine her different actions throughout the book and identify when she is being brave and when she isn’t and what bravery looks like in the world of Coraline.

Teacher Resources

There are three teacher resources for Coraline as well as a resource bundle available through Galarious Goods.

The Comprehension and Vocabulary teaching resource allows students to take an in-depth, chapter by chapter look at Coraline. Different printable resources allow students to examine the comprehension and vocabulary of Coraline including chapter questions and more in-depth looks at an aspect of each chapter.

The Character and Setting teaching resource takes a look at the characters of Coraline and some of the events which happen to them. It also includes classroom activities where students describe and discuss the settings in the book.

The Whole Novel teaching resource encompasses the entire novel of Coraline. It includes reader response, retell, themes, discussion questions and creative activities.

Related posts to read:

• Using Boy Overboard in the Classroom

• Introduction to Rowan of Rin: Classroom Discussions and Teaching Resources

• Introducing The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice #1)

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Just Empty Your Head! How Students Can Create a Brain Dump When They’re Reading

“Just hold all these complex ideas in your head. Then add in some new vocabulary. And form some questions. And don’t forget to make predictions!”

What are we asking students to do when we ask them to read a complex text or a novel? When you start to break it all down, it’s easy to see that students are being asked to recall or process several things at the same time. And that is, of course, an incredibly important skill to have. But how can we scaffold this to ensure that every student in the class has success with the more complex task? Enter . . . the brain dump!

What is a Brain Dump?

Essentially, a brain dump is the act of taking everything that you’re thinking . . . and putting it down onto paper (or a technological alternative). Many people use them when they’re feeling stressed or anxious or overwhelmed; it allows people to grab all of the nagging little thoughts in their heads and put them into a tangible form. They’re also great if you’re in the habit of ‘remembering’ all of the things you need to get done in a day or a week. By putting them down onto paper you have something to help you remember, loosening the mental load just a little.

“So, that sounds great . . . but how does it work when you’re teaching reading to children?”

Using a Brain Dump when exploring a book

As I pointed out, reading a text involves a lot of different actions, particularly if the text is longer or is complex. There’s characters to remember, settings to put into place, plots to follow. There’s the basic act of decoding, then there’s understanding the vocabulary - either by using context clues, remembering words or by using word roots. Students then need to make predictions of what might happen next or why they think a particular character acted the way they did or why the author might have chosen to use that particular word. The act of reading is a complex one!

By creating a brain dump, students can get everything they’re thinking about the text out of their head and onto the page. They’re able to see what they do and don’t know and use their brain dump to create new connections. 

“That’s great . . . but how do we teach it?”

How Do We Teach Brain Dumps for Reading

It might be best to start with a short piece of text - a poem or a picture book - which is familiar to the students. On the first read through, students should simply listen to the text. On the second read through, you demonstrate the brain dump. As you read through it again, model writing down everything which comes into your head - from observations on the characters’ names (“Oh, that dog is called Trevor. I went to school with a Trevor. Just like the Trevor from Fireman Sam . . .“) to questions (“I wonder why Pig never seems to learn his lesson. Or does he learn his lesson and just constantly make new mistakes?”) to random thoughts which are unconnected to the text but came into your brain anyway (“I wonder if it’ll be wet at lunch?”)

Once you’ve modelled your brain dump you can use the same text or another familiar text for the students to have a try. Remind them that it doesn’t need to be perfect - it’s not being used for assessment - it’s just a way of helping them better understand the texts they are reading. Give students plenty of opportunities to practice - remembering that they can be used with texts students use in history or civics, science or technology as well.

Tip: Students can use any piece of paper - or a computer or tablet - for brain dumps. However, you can find a range of free brain dump templates by signing up for the Galarious Goods free resource library.

“Ok, I get that. But what do we do with them once we have them?”

Using the Brain Dumps

Once students have their brain dumps, they can use them in a range of ways. Again, this is something you might like to model to the students - but they might also develop their own ways of using them, which they might like to share with their classmates.

Students might like to use their brain dumps for basic recall references. They allow students to write down the important characters or the important dates and events, something to refer back to when they need them. Or they could use them to brainstorm questions they might like to ask about the text, going back through their information to see where there are any queries.

If students create brain dumps for two different texts, they might like to use them to find connections - once they see the information written in front of them, it can be easier to see where those themes or ideas overlap. Students might also like to share their brain dump with a classmate to see how different people have responded to the same text.

Have you used brain dumps for reading in your classroom? Tell us about it in the comments!

Related posts to read:

• Three Connections to The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice #1)

• Exploring Unreliable Narrators in the Classroom

• Exploring Author Intention

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5 Places You Can Find Picture Books

So you want to add more picture books into your classroom. That’s great! But where are you going to find them? And how are you going to find them without spending every single cent you earn? Here’s some ideas for finding picture books for your classroom library collection!

1. Your favourite book shop (or other place to purchase books)

The first place you’ll probably look for picture books is your local bookshop. If you’re lucky enough to live near an independent bookstore, it’s definitely worth building a relationship (ie: visiting as much as you can to admire the prettiness) with the shop. Independent bookstores often have books you can’t find elsewhere and booksellers are often well informed about upcoming releases you might like to try out. 

Even if you have a book chain rather than an independent bookstore near you, it’s worth building relationships with the staff. My local QBD bookstore has staff who have been there so long they’ve helped nurture my kids into readers. And they always have good recommendations for me when I’m looking for something new.

For low cost books in Australia, Kmart, Target and Big W have smaller selections, but are usually good for the most common books and a few hidden gems. However, if you’re wanting something from another country or something more rare, you might need to look towards online bookshops. It’s worth shopping around a bit with these - sometimes it makes it easier to find a good deal. 

2. Second hand/op shops/thrift shops/ marketplaces/garage sales

When I first started teaching, I built my classroom library from local op shops (thrift shops). Then I went to the big Lifeline Book Sale which is usually held in Brisbane each year and left with armfuls of affordable second hand books.

These days, it’s worth checking online marketplaces like Facebook or Gumtree to find second hand picture books. And don’t forget the humble garage sale - my daughter’s kindy teacher is an expert at finding high quality second hand books at those.

3. School library

What if you have absolutely no money for picture books and you need them right away? Talk to your school librarian about some great books to borrow from the school library. Your librarian might have a system to make sure you can rotate books in and out of your classroom which suit what you’re teaching or which work for certain topics you want to cover. And if there’s a book you really want and the school library doesn’t own it, they might be willing to add it to their ‘to-buy’ list.

4. Public Library

Don’t forget your local public library! Mine is brilliant for new and interesting picture books - high quality books I haven’t seen anywhere else. Like school librarians, the librarians at your local library might be able to help you find the most appropriate books and some libraries also have special borrowing limits for teachers!

5. Organise buying with other teachers

If you’ve got teacher friends you’re willing to lend books to, organise it with them so you don’t double up the books you’re buying. Whether it’s just one other teacher or a small group, create a list of books you’d all like and let the other teachers know when you buy one of the books off the list. Then you’ve got borrowing rights to books from your teacher friends and they can borrow yours. It might be worth that little extra organising to get books at a lower price!

How do you build a classroom library without spending a fortune? Let us know in the comments.

Related posts to read:

• Exploring Three Galarious Goods Picture Book Studies for Upper Primary

• Five Reasons to Use Picture Books in Middle Grades Classrooms

• Five Ways to Explore Picture Books in the Classroom

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Finding Extra Time in the School Day to Read Picture Books

We know that reading picture books in the classroom is beneficial for many of the grades, but how can we fit that reading time into a busy school schedule? The lack of time in the classroom is real, but here’s a few ways to sneak extra reading into your classroom time.

Fit in reading at the beginning of the school day

Reading a short picture book is a great way to set the tone for the day. On those grey, miserable days you can begin with something funny. Something thoughtful can be used when you’ve got a lot of heavy thinking work planned for the day. You can even fit a short book into a morning meeting, especially if it fits in with what you’re talking about.

Still lacking time? Read the first couple of pages, then leave the book. Allow students to delve into it at other times during the day.

To teach reading concepts

Picture books can make great mentor texts. You can explore rhyming with almost every Aaron Blabey book or explore how Nick Bland makes his characters come to life in The Very Cranky Bear (complete with use of speech for another mentor lesson.) Picture books tell stories with surprises, stories with quests and stories with lessons to learn. Picture books can also be used when you’re looking at writing skills, from character to plotting.

Still lacking time? Use a page from a picture book to teach a particular skill . . . and keep the book available for students at other times.

After breaks

After a busy break running around and engaging with their peers, a book can be a great way for students to wind down and focus on their next session of work. While this is a great time for a chapter of a novel or silent reading, you might like to change it up a little with some picture book time. If you’ve got a class with some playground behaviour management to work through, this can also be a time to use books which explore behaviour, feelings and emotions.

Still lacking time? If you usually do silent reading after breaks, take a minute or two to introduce new picture books or ‘sell’ a forgotten picture book to the class. Make sure you have a system for when 5 people want to read it first!

In those 5 minute gaps

School days are filled with those 5 minute gaps - when a lesson doesn’t quite go as long as you think it might or you’re waiting for a specialist teacher or an event within the school. These are the perfect time for part of a picture book if not the full book. It doesn’t have to be the full class - if you do rotations in your classroom, you might have one group which finishes early - this is a great chance for a picture book (either with an adult or a student reading it aloud, or the students just sharing it together). 

Still lacking time? Plan a week where you give yourself some 5 minute breaks. You wouldn’t want to do it every week, but it’s good for students to see reading prioritised. 

As part of literacy rotations

If literacy rotations are part of your classroom environment, these are the perfect places to fit in picture books. You might examine them in a more indepth situation, ask different groups to complete activities based on picture books, or just ask students to read them - either individually or as part of a pair or groups. There may not be a place for them every week, but you can fit them in at least some of the time.

Still lacking time? Plan a special ‘picture book focused’ rotation. Think about spelling or word activities based around picture books, writing activities inspired by picture books and reading comprehension questions or graphic organisers which can work for any picture book. This might work particularly well when combined with study of a particular commemoration or holiday such as Anzac Day or Christmas.

How do you make time for picture books in your classroom? Let us know in the comments!

Related posts to read:

• Five Reasons to Use Picture Books in Middle Grades Classrooms

• Five Ways to Explore Picture Books in the Classroom

• 7 Great Books to Integrate With Australian History and Social Studies

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5 Engaging Picture Books Featuring Australian Animals

Australian authors LOVE to create picture books about Australian native animals. After all, many of them are rather cute, some of them carry around babies in their pouches and - although kangaroos don’t always jump down the middle of the street (unless you’re in Canberra), many of them can be spotted around the major cities, while others might be just a short drive away. 

It’s hard to recommend just a few books starring these lovely animals, but I’m giving it my best shot (while reserving my right to write another post in the future!). Here’s 5 of my favourites.

1. Don’t Call Me Bear by Aaron Blabey

Koalas are not bears. Warren the koala wants everyone to understand this. He’s quite happy to spend his time telling you why . . . but don’t be surprised if he gets a little cranky if people insist on calling him a koala bear.

This is an interesting picture book because it combines non-fiction - the discussion about koalas not being bears and where you can really find bears is true - and fiction - koalas and their friends don’t usually talk and koalas are often a lot sleepier than they are in this book! Students can explore the rhymes that the author uses and look at some of the extra details in the illustrations.

Don’t Call Me Bear is also a great text for students who are discussing similarities and differences between different animals. Students can look at the features of a bear and the features of a koala, comparing and contrasting them. This can be connected to research activities, where students use different sources to explore the habitat, diet and features of koalas. 

You can use the printables from the Don’t Call Me Bear! book study to scaffold koala research with your students

2. Josephine Wants to Dance by Jackie French

Josephine has a dream to be a ballerina, but how will she deal when an emergency situations leads to her being asked to take the leading role?

This is a Jackie French classic, created with Bruce Whatley, which explores what it means to hold onto a dream even when other people don’t believe in it. It’s a great book for identifying favourite moments - there’s lots of very memorable illustrations which bring the text to life. (My favourite? Stretching the ballet shoes to fit Josephine’s large feet!)

While we don’t have too many kangaroos in ballet companies, students can spend some time looking at how different animals move, creating lists of verbs and writing descriptive language to describe their movements. Students can also examine some of the different ways dancers jump - watching a range of dance videos - and can create a kangaroo inspired dance of their own.

3. Possum Goes to School by Melanie Carter

What happens when a possum leaves the comfort of a tree and finds itself inside a school building? This is the question posed in Possum Goes to School as the possum in question causes chaos and destruction wherever it goes.

Possums are pretty common in Australia - many children are familiar with the thud and scramble of a possum running across a roof at night (we seem to have a possum the size of a man who tramples our roof!) It’s also not unusual to hear of them finding their way into less than ideal spots. Students can definitely use this book as inspiration for research on possums and why they behave the way they do!

This is also a great book for young students getting to know their school. The possum visits all sorts of places within the school - places which students might need to know in their own school. Students can go on their own ‘possum walk’ visiting some of the places in their school which feature in the book (the library, the tuck shop and the playground included!). Students might also like to create a map of the places the possum visits, either individually or as part of a group.

Are you interested in creating a map based on Possum Goes to School? A mapping activity is part of the Possum Goes to School book study, with a worksheet and place cards.

4. Not Cute by Philip Bunting

Until recently there haven’t been a lot of books about quokkas, which is a pity because they’ve got one of the best names of all the Australian animals. And they’re very cute.

Or not cute according to the quokka at the centre of this Philip Bunting picture book. Quokka goes to great lengths to let us know that they aren’t cute . . . but it is possible that they should be a little less stubborn!

If you’re reading this book with students who have already read this one, ask them to keep the story to themselves for the first read through. The surprise twist in the book is BRILLIANT and it’s a reaction worth experiencing! Once you have read it together, students might like to go through it in more detail, exploring how Quokka tried to convince the others that he was not cute.

Students can also discuss what the lesson of this story might be and what might have happened if Quokka had behaved differently. 

5. Eric the Postie by Matt Shanks

Eric really wants to be a postie and he knows he’s be really good at it. But he’s never given the chance he deserves.

Students might like to look at the reasons why Eric would make a good postie and use those reasons to create their own job descriptions for post deliverers. They can talk about which of those features real posties need and which ones aren’t as important. They can also discuss whether it was right for Eric to take the letters even though he wasn’t the official postie.

This is a great book to team with a letter writing unit. Students can write their own letters and post them into a classroom postbox - you might even like students to help you create a postbox for the classroom.

What’s your favourite picture book about Australian animals? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts to read:

• 7 Reasons We Love the Pig the Pug Books

• Exploring Australian Picture Books About Weather

• 12 Books to Read After Whitney and Britney Chicken Divas

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4 Literacy Activities for The Wrong Book by Nick Bland

Go away! You’re in the wrong blog post!

Unlike Nicholas Ickle, the very frustrated narrator of Nick Bland’s The Wrong Book, I don’t really want you to go away. But I do want to tell you about this wonderful picture book and to offer just a few ways you can explore it, pull it apart and bring it to life in your classroom with these literacy activities.

The Wrong Book tells the story of the aforementioned Nicholas Ickle who really wants to tell a story about . . . well, before he can tell us what the story is about he is joined by a bunch of unexpected guests - from mischievous monsters to a plague of rats. With repeating text, extra details in the illustrations and constant anticipation, this is an excellent book to use in lower primary classrooms. 

Here’s some activities for The Wrong Book you might like to try with your students:

1. Reader’s Theatre

This is the perfect book for some reader’s theatre and there’s a range of ways you can approach this with your students. If you keep the text as it is, the only speaker is Nicholas Ickle, so you can have the teacher reading most, with the students chiming in for the refrain “Go away . . . !” while other students act out the visitors. Or a range of students could divide up the lines for Nicholas Ickle.

If you wish to have non-speaking roles acted out by the students, you can spend some time - as a whole class or in small groups, exploring what each of the different visitors are doing. This allows students to practice their visual literacy skills and also allows you to incorporate some drama through mime into your activity.

If you wish to have more speaking roles, you can work with the students to imagine what each of the visitors might say. When you have brainstormed this together, you can work collaboratively with the students to write a new script.

2. Conversations between the different characters

What would the monsters say to the Queen? What kind of conversation would the pirate have with the elephant? These are great questions for students to discuss and write about as they’re reading The Wrong Book.

By putting themselves into the ‘heads’ of the non-speaking characters, students are examining the ways they behave in the illustrations - again working on their visual literacy skills - and inferring what they might say. Students can also explore whether the characters might speak differently to different characters - would the elephant be more polite to the queen and a little crankier with the monsters

3. Why Did They Come?

Why did the different characters walk into Nicholas Ickle’s book? Were they supposed to be there? What is their motivation?

As students develop a better understanding of all the different characters in The Wrong Book, they can engage in activities where they create new motivations and worlds for these characters. Students can work in pairs or small groups to brainstorm why the different characters turned up then contribute their ideas to the whole class to create a display. 

Would you like to try this activity with your class? The printable resources for this are available as part of The Wrong Book picture book unit study.

4. What does this book tell us about books?

What is Nick Bland trying to tell us about books with The Wrong Book? Students can definitely spend some time contrasting and comparing The Wrong Book to other books they know. One very interesting aspect to discuss is the way that Nicholas Ickles talks both to us, the audience, and to the other characters in the book. Students might like to draw connections with other books which have characters breaking the fourth wall - such as The Monster at the End of the Book or Do Not Open This Book

Right as we’re finally about to get Nicholas’ story, the book ends. Students might like to explore if the book had to end at that point. This could even lead to a mathematical exploration as students investigate whether picture books have a certain number of pages and ask whether The Wrong Book really had to end when it did.

Have you read The Wrong Book with your class? Tell us about your experience in the comments!

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