Exploring Charlotte's Web

I love, love, love this book! I can't wait to read Charlotte's Web to my kids next term!
We are doing a local history study with a focus on the annual show that is held at the quaint, country-style showgrounds in our area.
To get us in the mood for going to the show, I am going to read Charlotte's Web to my class.
Charlotte's Web is the perfect opportunity for me to help my students develop a little more "staying power" when sitting on the carpet - one of my goals for them next term.
Charlotte's Web also lends itself to many great literacy activities!
I am busily reading the novel (again) and trying to come up with innovative and engaging activities to inspire and motivate my children.
I am developing a series of activities for people who want to use Charlotte's Web to address English core learning outcomes. We are implementing the new Australian Curriculum so I am using these standards as a guide, but Charlotte's Web is such a universal favourite that I am sure the activities will be useful for many teachers.
I am keen to develop activities that are more than just worksheets. No more "death by blackline master!"
The activities for the first chapter of Charlotte's Web are discussion, drama, cooperative work, display making etc.

I plan to include vocabulary words and comprehension questions for every chapter but then have a unique focus for each chapter as well.
Since in the first chapter, Fern is pleading with her father to spare the piglet's life, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to play around with persuasive texts. It is still a whole year until my students have to face the dreaded NAPLAN test but this is a great opportunity to get them started in thinking about persuasive texts. Developing comprehension skills never hurt anyone either!
The other key focus in this chapter is speaking verbs. In the English curriculum for Year 2, students need to look at how words are used to show gradation of feelings. E.B. White uses some great "saying verbs" in chapter one to describe the way that poor Fern is pleading with her father!
Download the Chapter 1 Activities for Exploring Charlotte's Web free!
Please, please, please let me know what you think. I would like to be developing activities that people find useful so feedback and suggestions are most welcome.
I hope you and your students love Charlotte's Web as much as I do!

Reading - The Daily 5

After reading yesterday's post on Introducing Read to Self by Kylie at Down Under Teacher, I was inspired to give it a go myself.
A teaching colleague had sent me a link to the Daily Cafe website about a week ago and I have been seeing these terms, CAFE, Daily 5, Read to Self, I -Charts, all over the place so I thought I should at least do a little bit of reading into it.

I must say that the program seems to have many fans and it looks like it is something that could benefit my students so I am ordering the books and then going to implement the ideas into my own room and let you know how I go.

Today I followed the lesson as described by Kylie. Her kids managed about a minute and a half of sustained reading before someone broke the silence. My kids managed 10 seconds on their first attempt (silence broken by an avid reader who just had to share) and built all the way up to 50 seconds by their third attempt! (The "non-readers" keep wanting to look up and see if I am watching them - how do I get them reading? I hope this program holds the answer to that and many other questions...)

Have you tried this system? Any advice on how to implement it and what has worked well would be appreciated.