Faithful Elephants

Faithful Elephants

Faithful Elephants

by Yukio Tsuchiya

translated by Tomoko Tsuchiya Dykes

illustrated by Ted Lewin

Faithful Elephants is a fictional retelling of what happened at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo during World War II. 

Today the Ueno Zoo is a wonderful zoo and it was a wonderful place before World War II as well.  But during World War II is was a very sad place.  As the Allied Forces bombed Tokyo more and more, the Japanese Armed Forces ordered that all large animals, that could be dangerous if they escaped, be killed. 

Faithful Elephants retells how difficult it was for the three elephants' caretakers to follow through with the army's orders.

This story is extremely sad and demonstrates some of the lesser known consequences of war.  

Students would find this story to be quite fascinating and I can see wonderful discussions about right and wrong happening during and after reading. 

After reading and discussing the story, students could be asked to write a summary and their opinion on whether killing the elephants was the correct thing to do.

Published in English: 1988

Genre: Historical Fiction Picture Book

Locations: School Library, and Amazon

Note: This book is considered fiction and non-fiction depending on which library you go to.  The Library of Congress considers it to be fiction.

Me Too! and The Escape of Marvin the Ape Writing Lessons

These lessons are exactly like my No David Writing Lesson that I wrote about early.  Both Me Too! by Mercer Mayer and The Escape of Marvin the Ape by Caralyn and Mark Buehner are cute picture books that contain a lot of little events but very little detail about each event.  


After reading either book, you could ask children to choose one event from either story and then revise what was in the book by adding more detail.  Students could explode the moments, add dialogue, or add thought shots.  (I wish I could give proper credit for those revision ideas but I don't remember which teaching book I read them in.  I would guess Ralph Fletcher.  He's awesome!)


This kind of activity makes for a nice prompt write because it provides students with a variety of main ideas to choose from instead of just one topic.  Also, students don't have to come up with the seed idea (Lucy Calkins), they just need to fill in all the details. 


There are a ton of books that can be used in this manner.  All of the No, David books are possibilities and a lot of Mercer Meyer's Little Critter books would work too.

Banish Boring Words

Banish Boring Words
Leilen Shelton


Leilen Shelton has created an awesome mini-thesaurus to use with your students.  Its 48 pages contain 26 different word choice lists, ranging from "Action Verbs" to "Sound" to "Easy/Hard" that you can refer to or refer to and photocopy to share with your students. 


I've used bits and pieces of the "Action Verbs" portion to discuss word choice with my students. I look forward to using more of the book in the upcoming weeks.


Word choice is a neat writing trait to teach because it helps students make their own writing more interesting but it also teaches them vocabulary words that help them better understand other writers' stories.


This book is well organized and easy to use.  I would recommend it.

Free Choice Language Arts Games

Instead of using Work Stations so I can run interventions with my fifth graders this year, I've come up with Free Choice Language Arts.  I'm still experimenting with it so I'm not going to go into detail about it now.  One of the free choices is Language Arts Games.  I've recently purchased three games that I want to briefly discuss.

 

1. Tell Tale by Blue Orange:  This is a story telling game.  It comes in a circular metal tin and contains 60 double sided picture   cards.  The included directions explain 4 different games.  I'm going to summarize all 4 with one version.  You pass out some of the cards to each game participant and you use the pictures on the card to make up a story.  Students could just tell their stories orally or they could record them if they wished. 
2. Spell It! by Blue Orange: This is a spelling game.  It comes in roundish metal tin and contains 5 dice with a different letter on each die (it does not contain the entire alphabet).  It also comes   with 28 scoring disks.  Students are asked to roll the five dice,   and then using at least three of the letters that turn up spell a word that is at least 4 letters long.  The first person to spell a word gets the points. Students can score points for words ranging from 4 - 10 letters.  Depending  on how you play the game, students may be asked to spell words that fit certain themes, or you could just spell anything.  Once again, the game does not require students to record anything but students could write the words down if they wished. 
3. Rory's Story Cubes by Gamewright:  This is also a writing game.  The game comes in a sturdy box and contains 9 dice with a different picture on each side of each die.  There are no repeats.  Students roll the die and then use the pictures to create a story.  Students are not required to record their story but they can if they wish.  I've already used this game in my class.  Some students have rolled the dice and told stories to their partners.  Other pairs have rolled the dice and used them to create a picture book together.  I like the picture book ending the best but don't require it. 

In addition, Spot It! by Blue Orange is a cool matching game that I've played with my 4 year old son and 15 year old nephew.  There is also another version of Rory's Story Cubes called Rory's Story Cubes-Actions that I haven't ever seen in person.