Library Lessons

Last week I read CDB! By William Steig.  I read this to everyone, PK-5th.  It's a book filled with pictures with captions written in code.  You could almost call it texting language these days.  Each letter stand for a word.  So the title CDB! means See The Bee!  The accompanying pictures help the reader decode the caption.  Luckily there's an answer key in the back to help you if you get stuck or want to check your answers... we used it... a lot.  Ha!

I started the lesson with the title and pointing to each letter as I said it. Then I'd point to the bee on the cover and ask them "CDB?"  I usually had to repeat the question before it starting to dawn on them that I was asking See the bee?

I then explained I was going to read a book in code and they had to help me read it.  Most classes read each page themselves and I just helped when they got stuck.

We had so much fun!  I found that even the struggling reads could read this book.   They weren't looking for words.  They could just look at the letters and say them. Some of the more logical students struggled with the book.  They were looking for the words and couldn't see them.

There's a page with a man lifting weights wearing very little clothes.  I hid the page when I got to it and made a big deal about them not being able to handle the next page and I was just going to skip it. As you can image I got a choris of NO!!!!!  We can handle it!  I asked them if people who lifted big, heavy weights wore a LOT of clothes or a little clothes.  Most said little clothes.  I explained that the pictures of the man on the next page had on little clothes and it is a little funny but I didn't want crazy laughing... to which I demonstrated crazy laughing.  They thought that was pretty funny.  Then I demonstrated the kind of laughing that was acceptable.  We all agreed that they could "acceptable" laugh and I showed the page.  We all giggled like little school girls... it is kind of funny.

I highly recommend this book!  We had so much fun with it!