Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John ArchambaultIt was easy to collect multiple copies of this book. It seems that each
primary teacher in my building had at least one or two. I picked up a
couple more at the library and we were ready. This is one of my kids
favorite books and we had already read it several times. That helped
because they were familiar with the text. I did a lesson which covers
several of the items found in the CAPS assessment by Marie Clay.
Purpose: Today I want you to notice some of the punctuation marks in
this story and tell me what they mean. They did some funny things with
the print too, so we will talk about what that means.
Procedure:
1. I used a Big Book and pointed to quotation marks and asked if
anybody knew the name. Nobody did, but several said it had to do with
talking. One volunteered that we need to say it with expression. I then
explained what “”marks meant.
2. Next we talked about question marks and exclamation points. Again
there was a sense of what they meant and how we should read it. We then
went on to commas and periods.
3. Last of all we looked at the print. I posed the question of how we
should read words that are in all capitals. After that we talked about
bold faced or print that is darker than the other text. Again some had
a great deal of knowledge and some knew nothing but were listening.
4. We then read the story with our partners. On this day I noted that
we did a much better job of reading with a partner than we had
previously. That reading aloud went very smoothly - lots of expression
and an increase in fluency over other stories that we had read.
5. For our closing activity, I had them find quotation marks,
exclamation points and other items with their partner. I quickly
checked after each item.
