Goldilocks and the Common Core Standards

I was talking with our school librarian the other day to find out her current favorites in children’s books. She was very enthusiastic about a new book purchased by our parents’ club, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems. I can see why. It’s hilarious! She generously loaned me the book and I had a great time reading it to my students. The kids enjoyed it too.

The story begins,

“Once upon a time, there were three Dinosaurs: Papa Dinosaur, Mama Dinosaur, and some other Dinosaur who happened to be visiting from Norway.

            One day for no particular reason, the three Dinosaurs made up their beds, positioned their chairs just so and cooked three bowls of delicious chocolate pudding at varying temperatures.”

The three Dinosaurs decided to take a walk and when Mama Dinosaur laughed, “Hey hey, hey . . .” and said, “I sure hope no innocent little succulent child happens by our unlocked home . . .” we stopped right there and had a mini vocabulary lesson. After they understood the word “succulent” we moved on to inferences, such as, what did Mama Dinosaur really mean when she said she hoped a child wouldn’t happen by? A couple of pages later when the narrator said the dinosaurs “were definitely not hiding in the woods waiting for an unsuspecting kid to come by.” The second-graders laughed. They weren’t surprised to turn the page and see dinosaurs peeking around trees in the forest.

My students enjoyed retelling this tale so it was easy to work on the second Common Core Reading Standard for Literature where students are expected to

“Retell stories, including key details . . .”

And it was especially fun to work on the ninth Reading Standard for Literature where the second graders are asked to,

“Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story (e.g. Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures.”

They had a great time comparing this story to the more traditional one.

When discussing this tale, one of my second graders thought there were lessons to be learned other than those covered by the standards. Noah thinks if you are going for a walk in the woods “you might want to listen for really strange noises and if you hear something that sounds like an evil laugh – go away!” That sounds like good advice to me. I asked my students if they had any other advice for readers of this blog and they all agreed, “If you haven’t read this book, you should.” I couldn’t agree more.

World-Wide Reading: Across America and Beyond

This was a busy book week at Redwood. We celebrated Read Across America on Monday with volunteer readers from around our community. In Marcia Douglas’ class, a high school student came to read Green Eggs and Ham to her kindergarteners. The kids decided to ham it up when I took their picture.

Marcia had a creative activity lined up to accompany the story. She introduced the students to the art of making green smoothies. 

They took their jobs seriously as they chopped the fruit and kale leaves for this creation. 

Speaking of chopping greens, Yoyo had a similar task in the original folktale, The Market Bowl by Jim Averbeck. 

In this wonderful tale, set in Camaroon, Yoyo had to slice bitterleaf (a leafy green vegetable) “thin as a whisper” to make her first bitterleaf stew. She was impatient and ignored her mother’s instructions because; “people just chew everything up anyway.” So she didn’t bother slicing, grinding or measuring the ingredients. When she showed her mother the creation, Mama Cecile gasped. My students grimaced at the clumpy, dripping greens in this fabulous illustration. Yoyo hid her stew in the market basket and several students cried, “oh no.” Others started laughing. They were sure there was trouble ahead and they were right.

The striking illustrations in this book inspired my second grade students to try some of their own.

I read this book to several speech groups and a first grade class in celebration of World Read Aloud Day. It was the perfect choice for March 6^th, a day celebrating the power of words across the world. After reading the story, we looked at Cameroon on an African map in the back of the book. Then we went online to find out more information about the author.

Jim Averbeck brings personal experience to this story. He was a Peace Core volunteer in Cameroon for four years. On his website, he shared some interesting facts and I passed on one to the kids. When Mr. Averbeck was in Cameroon, he ate crocodile, boa constrictor, and fried termites! That created quite a stir with my students. They loved the drawing on his website, depicting his Cameroon diet and they tried their own rendition. Take a look at one:

I haven’t shared this book with Ms. Douglas’ class. If I do, I’m curious what sort of cooking project it might inspire. Fortunately, there is a recipe in the back of the book for bitterleaf stew and it sounds almost as good as the green smoothie I had with that generous kindergartener group.