It's Monday! What are you reading?

I've been mentioning this read-aloud in our Wednesday library update posts, but thought I'd write a bit more about the discussions I'm having with my K-2 students while reading it.  The book is A Hungry Lion, or a Dwindling Assortment of Animals by Lucy Ruth Cummins.

Our wonderful district Armadillo Readers' Choice Award Program committee chose this book for our use this year.  It is a great story to practice inference and text evidence, as well as to incorporate the Depth and Complexity "Unanswered Questions" icon.

A Hungry Lion, or a Dwindling Assortment of Animals opens with a list of a large group of animals--a group that dwindles just a few pages in, until all that is left is the hungry lion.  I begin the story by telling students that many times during this story, they will want to tell me what they think is going on...but they can only respond to what we're reading with questions, not statements.  We are able to practice both inference skills and text/ picture evidence this way.  Only a few of our questions are answered in the middle of the story, and try as we might to answer the many questions that follow, we can never be quite sure of the answers without conclusive picture and text clues.  Reading this aloud and asking students to respond only in the form of questions got everyone talking in my Book Nook, as it removed the pressure to have the right answers--and made it okay to be left with questions at the end.

Some of the students' questions:

Where are the animals going?

Did the lion eat the animals?

Why do the animals keep moving?

Is the turtle still in its shell?

Why is the lion less hungry?

Did the lion eat some of the cake?

Are the animals hiding behind the cake?

Did the animals run away?

Where did the T. rex come from?

Did the T. rex eat the lion?

Where did the T. rex go?

Did the turtle eat the T. rex?

How did the turtle slice the cake?

If you are a fan of books that leave you hanging (or in need of a good inference lesson),  A Hungry Lion, or a Dwindling Assortment of Animals will fit the bill.