Junior Great Books

Last week we began our first unit in the Junior Great Books series. Junior Great Books is a reading program that combines high quality literature with art, drama, and discussion. The main focus is answering interpretive questions through discussion and using evidence from the text to support answers. To kick off our first unit we read a variety of stories and worked on asking and answering questions about the text. One story that we read was called "The Fox and the Stork." In the story, both characters play tricks on each other. The question that we answered after reading was "Who was meaner: the fox or the stork?" Students wrote their answer on a sticky note and then posted it. From their answers we had a discussion about why they chose one character over the other. We had a perfect opportunity to talk about how during discussion sometimes we change our minds when one student did just that. We will use Junior Great Books to support reading and discussion skills throughout the year.