Our first read aloud: The One and Only Ivan

The first book we are reading is this years Newbery Medal winner, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  We will be focusing a lot on figurative language within this book.  Students will be asked to identify alliteration, imagery, idioms, hyperboles, metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia, and personification.  In addition we will focus on literary elements such as setting, characterization, plot, etc.  To begin the unit, students wrote words the author used to describe our main character Ivan the gorilla at the beginning of the book.  With these words, we created a Tagxedo.  The larger words are words that were used the most by students.  Here is what they came up with: