Animals Should Definitely NOT Wear Clothing

We have started to cover or review various reading skills during rotations the last couple of weeks. Yesterday we began to review inferences. With short weeks that stretch I decided to spice things up a bit.
First we talked about what it means to inference. Why good readers use this skill. How to use this skill. We practiced using the skill with a few short scenarios. Then for the fun part. Putting our inferencing skills to use.

We listened to the story Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing {I would have read it, but I couldn't find a copy anywhere close, good ol' Youtube to the rescue!} I covered my screen as the student's huddled around the table to hear the story. After the first animal was described as well as the reason why they shouldn't wear clothing, we discussed the scenario as a group. I then reminded the student's to use their visualization skills as well as inferencing skills as they listened to the rest of the book. 

Then the creative part. We became the illustrators for the book. I wrote the lines of text on index cards and the student's took clues from the text along with their own schema to create the pictures. After the pictures are complete we are going to compare them to the illustrators and see if our inferences were similar.

Even though they are 5th graders the kiddos are loving the chance to do something different, add a splash of color, and their  animals will make a fun statement in the hallway for parents to see during our rescheduled parent teachers conferences.  

I had the first line of the book on a piece of construction paper, then the rest of the lines of the book as they were written, my student's illustrations, and the actual illustrations were posted as well. 

This one cracks me up. The student is also into drawing those cars with spy equipment now, so his hen was being spied on too.

I think in the future, this could be a fun activity for my students to do when they write the book themselves. What animal would they like to choose? Why shouldn't that animal wear clothing? It could become a fun classroom book.