Summary:
Another wonderful installment in the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. This go-around, Piggie has discovered a BIG ball. but somebody took it. He goes complaining to Elephant, named Gerald. Gerald decides he's going to go get Piggie's ball back, but Piggie emphasizes he's big, but Gerald doesn't believe that he's THAT big. When Gerald goes to get the ball, he realizes that the Big Guy is REALLY big. Turns out, the Big Guy (a whale), only wanted to play with someone, and so Gerald and Piggie ask the whale to play "Whale Ball." They all play together and have a grand ol' time.
Response Associated with the Book: Reader's Theater
This involved splitting up the dialogue in the book and having each person in a group take a different part within the dialogue. In this book, we first read it in a group of three, one person being Piggy, one person being Elephant, and one person being the Whale. When their part showed up in the dialogue, they had to express it within the context. We then expanded into pairs of people reading each character (groups of 6 people total for this book). And then a few of the groups read their interpretations in front of the class.
This response allows the students who could possibly be struggling with reading or even reading comprehension, rely upon another person for help. This allows students to interpret and act out the text and making further connections than just reading the text off of a page. Students struggling will eventually learn the text and what it means and will (hopefully) not have to rely on a partner to partake in the reader's theater. This also causes lots of laughter and fun in the classroom as students enjoy interacting with the text.
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