More Reading, I Say.

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

We’ve recently been working through the Scholastic Reader, More Spaghetti I Say by Rita Golden Gelman & illustrated by Mort Gerberg, with small groups of 5th graders at Cheng Gong.

GIF via rebloggy.

The book is a lighthearted and slightly ridiculous read about a monkey named Minnie completely in love (and addicted to) spaghetti. No matter how much her fellow monkey Freddie begs and pleads, Minnie won’t stop eating or playing with spaghetti until Freddie loses it. After some yelling and hurt feelings, a surprise ending always ends in laughter. But seriously, this book, while funny, does touch on the sensitive topic of food obsession.

To get my students interested in the book, we play vocabulary matching games after reviewing the vocabulary. If we have extra time, I’ll have them play Headband, where they hold up the vocab card and ask yes or no questions until they guess their mystery word. After reading the book as a group, I tend to offer incentives in the form of the vocabulary food words we learned, like “cookies” or “marshmallows.” For the Halloween season, I asked if they knew the “magic words” (trick or treat). They’ve been good sports about their first reading challenge.

I hope they get to read some more books soon, perhaps in different genres. I noticed some of my students getting distracted. They might find adventure, mystery or science fiction books a bit more up their alley.

I hope we continue this with another book next semester!

Sherry Yue
Fulbright ETA Taiwan, Yilan