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Bunny Readers
We participated in an Internet project called Bunny Readers. You can click on the bunny on the left to see projects from schools all over the United States and the world. Only part of our work is posted on the Bunny Reader Site. The rest is here.

Our class read It's Not Easy Being a Bunny by Marilyn Sadler. It's a story about a bunny named P.J. who decided that he no longer wanted to be a bunny. He tried to be a bear, a bird, a beaver, a pig, a moose, a possum, and even a skunk. P.J. soon learned that other animals had hard things to deal with too. He finally decided that he really did want to be a bunny after all!

We brainstormed animals that were not in the story and discussed what would be hard about being that animal. Each child selected a different animal. Each student then typed, using Claris Works, a speech bubble with a sentence saying what would be hard about being the animal they had selected. The children had to enlarge the print to 72, print it out, and save the document to a disk. They then cut around their words to make a speech bubble. They painted a picture of their animal, cut it out and glued it onto a class mural.

On another day we returned to the computer lab. The children used KidPix to paint their animals. They had to save their illustrations to disk. Then they opened their original speech bubble documents, reduced to print size to 24 and imported their KidPix illustrations into their documents. We then printed out each page and made a class book.

On the last day of this 4 day project, the children wrote about what was hard about being a kid. They also made a KidPix illustration of themselves. This last writing project was used to assess the students' independent writing on a topic related to the project and their ability to illustrate using KidPix and to save their work to a disk..

I have to jump all day with my baby in my pouch.

by Jessica


I have a hard time getting food because my nose is in the way.

By James


It would be hard to be a worm because I'm slimy.

by Lisa


It is hard to be an elephant because you have to pick up stuff.

By Malon


It's hard to jump high.

by Cammy


It's hard to be a cheetah because you have to hunt deer.

by Brenda


It is hard to stretch my wings.

by Jilly



It would be hard to be a jaguar because they run for my food.

by Justin.


I have to stretch my legs out and try to get my neck down to drink.

by Kelli


It's hard to fly.

By Adrianna


It's hard to be a rat because you try to not get trapped.

By Chelsea


I get tired going back and forth.

by Peyton


I have to make lot of spider webs.

by Travis


I am a turtle. I am slow. I can't catch up to animals.

By Brandon


I am a butterfly. It is hard to find food.

by Cynthia


It's hard when an enemy bites my tail off.

by John


ItŐs hard to run with a person on my back.

By Ashley


I spin around on a wheel. Then I get tired.

By Brie


We made a classroom mural. Pictures were painted with water colors. The children made their own speech bubbles. They typed in Claris Works using a font size of 72. They printed their documents. Then they made a speech bubble shape around their words with a black marker. They cut them out and added them to our mural with their animal.


Go to our stories: It's Not Easy Being A Kid


This lesson covers The Brentwood School District's Standard:

Students write clear and choherent sentences and paragraphs that develop a central idea.

 

Assessment

The students' writing and computer skills were assessed on the fourth and final day of this project. Independently, the students wrote about what is hard about being a child. They also demonstrated their computer competency by illustrating in KidPix and saving their work to disk.

 

 

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Kathy Gursky
The School Bell ©1999-2003

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