Realbooks 2 - Scholastic

Realbooks in the Primary Classroom4of funny faces.As the children begin to associate theexclamations with the objects, they will help youto say the whole sentence.Teacher: ‘Spooky!’Children: ‘A haunted house.’Teacher: ‘Eek!!’Children: ‘A wriggly spider.’You can ask them individually to choose theirfavourite exclamation, challenging their friends tocomplete the sentence.TELLING THE REALBOOK STORYShow the children the volcano flashcard. What dothey think they could say as an exclamation? Thendo the same with the two-seater car.Now show them the book. Look carefully at thecover, read out the title and make a funny facewhen you read, ‘A Cheese and Tomato Spider.’Oh, dear! Tell the children you are going to readthem a book using some of the words they havebeen playing with.Show them the first page and read the caption,allowing the children to help you say it if theyhave been using it. Now turn over the top sectionof the page and read, ‘Yummy! A strawberryflavoured spider’. Ask the children, Is that right?They should chorus, ‘No!’, and complete thesentence properly. Turn the bottom sectionover showing the ice-cream cone and read thecaption properly.Go through the book, showing the pages, turningtop bits, then bottom bits, and mixing up thepictures. The children will think they are veryfunny and laugh loudly. I have found that thisbook causes much hilarity. Be prepared for this,and use it to your advantage, but also beprepared to control their excitement. You can mixand match the pictures in many different ways,but you may discover that children prefer certainimages mixed.When you get to the end: ‘Hooray! A birthday …lemon?’, ask the children what they think it couldbe. Then say, Of course. It’s a birthday cake. Turnover the bottom half, read the caption and singHappy birthday … to the spider. Hooray!POST REALBOOK ACTIVITIES1 Mini-flashcard gamesa) Photocopy the set of mini-flashcard images onpage 34. Give the sheet to your children. Askthem to colour the cards carefully. Play somegames with the mini-flashcards. (See pages 9–10for how to make them and for gamessuggestions.)b) Photocopy the set of mini-flashcard words onpage 33 and the set of mini-flashcard images onpage 34. In pairs, one child has a set of miniflashcardpictures, and the other has a set ofmini-flashcard words. They try to match thecards together.c) For this version of the activity you need to do adouble-sided photocopy of the pages just as theyare: images and text back to back on both sides ofthe page. If you cannot make double-sided copies,it is best to photocopy each page once and stickthe pages in position back to back. Cut along thewavy dotted lines which appear on the wordcards, so that each mini-flashcard is cut in half.That will mean that the sentence will be cut inhalf and so will the picture. Place the cards on thetable or on the board, word side up, and mixthem about a bit. Explain to the children, bydemonstrating, that they should now try to matchthe two half-sentences. By turning the cards overand checking with the picture, they will discover ifthey were successful or not. It will also providemuch hilarity as they start mixing the sentences.This activity is excellent preparation for the classbook activity.2 InventingOnce the children are confident, why notencourage them to make up their ownexclamations for objects? Give some examples ofyour own based on language that the childrenalready know:Original:‘Eek!! A wriggly beetle’‘Cor!! An explodingrocket’A Cheese and Tomato SpiderCombination:‘Eek!! An explodingbeetle’‘Cor!! A wriggly rocket’The children can copy some of the exclamationsfrom the book; they don't have to think of newones, but encourage them to think of their ownassociations: ‘Cool! A two-seater plane.’‘Goodness! A red-haired mummy.’ ‘Spooky! Ahaunted castle.’30REALBOOKS IN THE PRIMARY CLASSROOM © MARY GLASGOW MAGAZINES, AN IMPRINT OF SCHOLASTIC INC.