Hanging Out with Stellaluna

Do bats give you the willies?  Then it's about time, teachers, that you met Stellaluna.  

Stellaluna is an adorable baby bat that stars in Janell Cannon's award winning book, Stellaluna.  Although the book was published in 1993, it holds timeless appeal for children.  In fact, just this year, School Library Journal named it one of the "Top 100 Picture Books" of all time.  Stellaluna was featured on Reading Rainbow (my all time favorite TV show for children), as well as in the movie, I Am Sam.  It has also been released in an animated version on DVD by MGM & Scholastic.  

If you haven't fallen in love with Stellaluna yet, you need to crawl out from under that rock where you've been hiding!

Before reading this book to my class, I like to do 2 activities.  The first one is designed to gauge their feelings about bats before we study them.  To this end, my students add their name to a graph like this:

[One of my anchor activities each morning is a graph.  My students join the graph of the day upon arriving at school.  There's a new graph every day, so this is a rote action by my kiddos.]

Be sure to save this graph so that you can compare it to your students' feelings about bats AFTER you've studied them.  

The second thing we do is complete a K-W-L chart about bats.  NOW we are ready to read the book.  

By the way, I always pull Stellaluna out in early October.  My school no longer celebrates Halloween.  By studying bats, I can give a nod to this holiday without breaking the rules.  

I hope you will have time to come back soon for more ideas about teaching with Stellaluna.

P.S.  In response to a request, the bat graph is now available via Google Docs.  Use this link: bat graph

You may like these other resources for October:

 


Both are available in either my TpT Store  or my TN Shop.