Bring Jon Scieszka (or at least his books) into your classroom

Find lessons using Jon Scieszka's books at ReadWriteThink.org

Whether it's fractured fairy tales, historical stories about time traveling kids, or poems about science, Jon Scieszka's books cover a wide range of topics and genres. And no matter which title you choose for your classroom, one thing you can count on is that the book will be engaging and funny. If you have these books in your reading corner, why not consider using them as part of one of your lessons or units? ReadWriteThink.org can show you how.

If you are interested in using one of Scieszka's fractured fairy tales, consider the lesson "Guided Comprehension: Evaluating Using the Meeting of the Minds Technique" by Sarah Dennis-Shaw. In this lesson, students evaluate The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by responding to questions from the point of view of characters in the book. Other activities include writing reviews of the book, performing Readers Theatre scripts, and having students compare different versions of the fairy tale.

The extension activities for "Once Upon a Link: A PowerPoint Adventure With Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Teaching About Story Structure Using Fractured Fairy Tales," both by Deborah Kozdras, also offer suggested uses for The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and the main lessons can easily be adapted to use this book or The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.

"Solving the Math Curse: Reading and Writing Math Word Problems" by Valerie Adair begins with a read-aloud of Scieszka's book Math Curse; students then write their own word problems and solve problems written by their peers. Included also is a link to a related online crossword puzzle.

Students have fun with words and learn about verbs and other parts of speech in the lesson "Let's Get Cooking With Words! Creating a Recipe Using Procedural Writing" by Alison Morawek, which explores vocabulary in Scieszka's Baloney, as well as other books.

Finally, in keeping with Scieszka's mission of helping boys become excited about reading, the lesson "Boys Read: Considering Courage in Novels" by Helen Hoffner has boys read and discuss books with their peers. Scieszka's Guys Read website (www.guysread.com) is one of the recommended resources to help you find appropriate books.

These and other lessons can be found on the Lesson index page of the ReadWriteThink.org website at www.readwritethink.org/lessons/index.asp.

In addition to these lessons, the November episode of the Chatting About Books podcast features an interview with Scieszka. Listen to him talk with host Emily Manning about his latest book series Trucktown, which is aimed at preschool and kindergarten students, and offer tips to parents and teachers for engaging reluctant readers. Find more information about this podcast episode by clicking Podcasts & Videos at www.readwritethink.org/beyondtheclassroom.

ReadWriteThink.org is a nonprofit website maintained by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English with support from the Verizon Foundation, and in association with the Thinkfinity consortium. The site provides free lesson plans, interactive student materials, Web resources, and standards for K–12 classroom teachers of reading and the English language arts.