"Currently" and a Charming Gorilla

Happy June!  

My favorite part of Farley's monthly Currently link up is seeing how many teachers have blogs and are excited about sharing their craft!  It's so motivating!

Yesterday I had a friend in town from college to celebrate her 30th birthday.  I think the last time we celebrated a birthday together was when we turned 21, so it's been awhile since I've seen her and we've done so much in the past nine years- it's so fun to catch up!  She is also teaching 4th grade now so we had a lot to chat about.

I'm considering spending a large amount of time scanning in all of my paper files so that they are on the computer and then getting rid of all that dreaded paperwork.  I've been reading up on blogs and other threads about so many teachers scanning everything in, using apps, and all that jazz.  It totally sounds like something that I would already have done, but it's time consuming, and sometimes old habits die hard.  So the inner debate begins:  paper or digital?  What do you do?!?  I'll probably go digital because I'm horrible about just putting papers in piles everywhere and forgetting never looking at them again.

Enough about me.  I've been wanting to share about this book for awhile, and this week's ELA Mentor Text link up with the Collaboration Cuties is the perfect time.   

So I bring you:  The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  

Have you read it?  It's lovely.  This book now rocks a Newberry award on the cover, but I bought it before all that excitement- for once I was ahead of the game.  

Ivan is a gorilla in an old mall/arcade that was turned into some kind of unfortunate zoo.  I completely fell in love with the story from page one.  Ivan speaks simply, but not all the sentences are "simple".  We did this as a read aloud this year- so many opportunities to stop to check student comprehension (lots of inferencing) and tons of similes and metaphors.  Here's a couple examples from the book:

"Her voice was like the throaty bark of a dog chained outside on a cold night."

"She makes a happy, lilting sound, an elephant laugh.  It's like the song of a bird I recall from long ago, a tiny yellow bird with a voice like dancing water."

It was a sweet story that both the girls AND boys enjoyed.  Sometimes I find that the girls love sweet animal stories, but the boys want more action.  This story isn't "action packed", but it wrapped the kids up in a fascinating tale.  Plus it's about a gorilla, so the boys loved it.  Even better, while we were reading, my Bing Dynamic background {which I blogged about here} switched to a baby elephant that all the students were convinced was Ruby.  

Next year I plan on doing more with it as far as figurative language goes.  This year was my chance to test student interest.  Success!  Some reviews have argued that the author "overuses" similes and metaphors, but from a teacher perspective, it's perfect for that exact reason.  

Link up!