Cynthia Rylant

Today we read another Cynthia Rylant book.  So far this week we have read...

I have really enjoyed reading her books aloud to the class.  After we read Scarecrow today we looked at some of the sentences that Rylant used in this book.  Here is one of the sentences that we looked at, "His hat is borrowed, his suit is borrowed, his hands are borrowed, even his head is borrowed.  And his eyes probably come out of someone's drawer."  

As we looked at the sentences from The Relatives Came and Scarecrow I asked the students to read like a writer.  This is going to be a term that we try to use all year long.  Reading like a writer to me would be like watching a basketball game with Lebron James or going to a concert with Paul McCartney...they are going to notice things that I do not notice.  I want our student to get good at noticing things that a writer uses to make their writing interesting.  Once they notice these things they can try to use them in their writing.

In class today we had students trying two Cynthia Rylant sentences.  We even came up with names for the things we were noticing in her writing.  We are going to call the sentence above an "Echo Sentences" and another technique is going to be called "The Andpeater 3000."  It is amazing to see how quickly the students can see these techniques and then fit them in their writing.  We had one piece about gymnastics that was a perfect example of how writing can become more interesting when you are using other authors as your teachers.  

This is the same technique we are using with our book reviews.  By looking at the four book review examples that I gave to the class we were able to figure out how to write a book review.  We started to put together our final drafts of our book reviews today.  The class had practiced writing the hook and then the summary section and then the ending of the book review in class.  They are not going to work to fit these pieces of the project together and give me their first book review.  

You can find the sentences from Cynthia Rylant in their writing folder.  You can also find their book reviews in their writer's notebook.  Hopefully you can see how they used the book reviews and Cynthia Rylant's words to make their writing shine.