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!

Diary of a Wombat

This year I am going to have Munch & Crunch sessions with my class. Each morning just before morning tea, I will read a book (or a chapter of a book) to my students while they "munch and crunch" on fresh fruit or vegetables from their lunch boxes.

I plan to create activities based on many of the books I read so that I can use th

em to reinforce language ideas in the short space between when the story is finished and when the bell goes for morning tea.

One of the books I will use is "Diary of a Wombat" by Jackie French. You can see the book online here or read about the background to the story on Jackie's website.

This is another really cute book. It is written in diary form. They are not always complete sentences. I will use this book to illustrate the different styles of writing for different purposes. (Australian Curriculum link to English, Year 2: Understand that spoken, visual and written forms of language are different modes of communication with different features and their use varies according to the audience, purpose, context and cultural background)

I have made an Easiteach file for the activities. They are very simple activities. The first one is reinforcing the days of the week and the use of capital letters for proper nouns - also Australian Curriculum, English, Year 2. The second one is matching different forms of verbs - past and present tense.

I hope you enjoy this book!