If You’re Gonna’ Steal…(pt. 2)

Well, it happened again. One of my students stole another one of my books. Again! I wrote about it in a previous post. I had been looking for it since I returned from Christmas break. I was stumped. The mystery was solved today when my student, By, told me that he had a book just like mine.
“By, are you sure that isn’t my book?”
“No, no,” he weakly protested. He continued to deny it for another two minutes until I told him that I knew and he knew that that was my book and that I wanted it back tomorrow.
He said okay, but that his little brother wrote in it. Needless to say I was p.o.’d. This really makes me want to stop bringing my own personal books. They are always stealing from me.
They could steal other things. I guess if you’re going to something, I guess a book is a good thing to steal. Even though it’s a bad way to show it, it shows that he really wanted the book. I guess that’s a good thing. He wanted a book, but he just didn’t go about it the right way. Hopefully I will get my book back. Truthfully, I don’t even know if I want it back. When is enough enough? At what point do I stop giving my all when it’s taken for granted?

Punctuation Takes a Vacation by Robin Pulver

Punctuation Takes a Vacation (2004), written by Robin Pulver and illustrated by Lynn Rowe Reed, was a fantastic little book that I used with my class to really hit home how much they needed to use punctuations. When I read this, I also played the punctuation game. This is how it works- the students receive four index cards each, with which they write a period on one, an exclamation on one, a comma on another, and finally a question mark. When I read the book, I instruct the students to hold up the appropriate card. If I’m reading a sentence with an exclamation point, I exaggerate so they students understand that the exclamation point is used to show excitement. Similarly with the comma, I over exaggerate the pause. Finally, I created a worksheet with sentences from the book for classwork and from the OCR story we’re working on for homework.

Now on to the review. On the hottest, stickiest day the class had ever seen, right in the middle of a lesson about commas, Mr. Wright mopped his forehead and said, “Let’s give punctuation a vacation.”
The children cheered and headed for the playground to cool off as the punctuation marks stare at each other in disbelief. They feel so unappreciated. That is when they decide they should take a vacation and let everyone see how much they really need them.
What do you think happens after the punctuation take a vacation? Well, I guess you’re going to have to read it for yourself and find out.
I’d give this book ****/***** stars simply because I thought it could have been a little longer. I would have liked more examples for my students. I did remedy that by creating a worksheet to go with the book. It would have been much easier if the author had thought to do that, but you can’t have everything. I would say this book is appropriate for 2nd grade and up.