A New Read Aloud

 

 

It’s the first day back after Spring Break, the start of a new unit, and the start of a new read aloud book (yay!). We started reading The Thing About Jellyfish. It’s such a beautifully-written book with a character that has a passion for learning that goes just a bit too far. As my students are embarking on their own learning projects this unit, I felt like it was a good story to share with them.

We had a really amazing conversation about a sentence on the first page: “A person can become invisible simply by being quiet.” We talked about whether we agreed or disagreed with the statement. We talked about whether invisible was being used literally or metaphorically by the author. We talked about how we could reword the sentence to make it “better” (clearer, more true, etc.). We talked about the difference between being invisible and being ignored. It was such a deep conversation about such a short and seemingly simple sentence.

I love discussions like this. I love when my read aloud book provides us with the writing to have discussions like this. I hope we find many more sentences like this to guide deep discussions on meaning and author’s craft.