Chris Van Allsburg Interactive Notebook

     I have loved Chris Van Allsburg books my whole teaching career.  I love his style of illustrations; I love the stories; I love the little twist or magical elements that always appear in the books.  Heck, I even love searching for Fritz in all the books.
     So, when I moved from Kindergarten to 3rd grade I this year I was so excited to finally be able to read his books again with my students- (Kindergarteners totally miss the finer points of his stories LOL).
     And, when I decided to venture into the world of interactive notebooks with mentor text read alouds, he's the first author that came to mind.  You can get it in my TpT store here.

  

     When I get started on a project, I work for hours and hours on it practically non-stop.  Amid all the holiday stuff this week, that's what I've been doing!  I chose four of his books to focus on at first- The Wretched Stone, The Sweetest Fig, The Wreck of the Zephyr and The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. I chose vocabulary from each book and created a vocabulary activity that is the same for each book (just a different way of representing it in the notebook).  Then I created at least two different activities that can be done for each book.  Most of the activities focus on character development or how the characters' actions contribute to the sequence of the events.  Here are some pictures of final products.

I am very excited to try this out with my 3rd graders when we return!  Coming soon: Patricia Polacco and Eve Bunting!