Ben, Amos, Me, & the Kiddos

I'm in the middle of teaching summer school for a few weeks. Before I started summer school, my mentor teacher suggested that I might want to try doing a short novel with my kiddos. The emphasis on short because of the brevity of summer school. I couldn't do a neat literature unit due to the time constraints, but I did the next best thing. I decided to read Ben and Me as a read aloud. Each day we read about ten pages.

I had only seen the animated version of Ben and Me and had never read the story it was based on. Gosh, I should have totally read it all the way through before making this choice. The language is quite challenging. It's really formal colonial style English, which fits the setting of the story. To compensate and hopefully make the story more enjoyable, I decided to translate it as I read it aloud. This translation can get tricky. It might be working though. Half of my kiddos are enjoying it and respond to the questions with enthusiasm. As Nicole reminded me, that's a success! Thanks Nicole!