Friday, September 21, 2012

Ladybug Nominee #2: Cloudette

Cloudette, by Tom Lichtenheld, is the story of a tiny cloud who likes being small but sometimes wishes to be big and powerful like the other clouds in the sky. Cloudette is the second book primary grade students have heard that is nominated for the 2012 NH Ladybug Award.

In this book, children encounter an asterisk in the text, next to an over sized RIBBIT from a frog. The reader needs to look to to the bottom of the page and find a second asterisk to see that the frog is actually saying "thank you" to Cloudette! An asterisk is one of the elements of print students will see as they read more difficult texts, especially non-fiction. We talked about how the "aster" part of the word means "star" - like in astronomy and astronaut!


Bigger clouds called Cloudette nicknames like "pipsqueak", "small-fry" and "shortcake". We took a few minutes to talk about name-calling and how some names can make us feel happy and loved, while others can make us feel badly. Students shared pet names that parents and grandparents called them, like "sweetie", "peanut" and "pumpkin"! We like those names!

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