Over the past weeks, Year 2 has been exploring the Early Childhood Shortlist Picture Books during their Library lesson.
It has been wonderful reading the six shortlist books to Year 2, in fact I read so many books in one week (23 classes a week K-5) that my voice stopped working. Lucky for me and the children we were able to enjoy Mr Huff by Anna Walker on Story Box Library.

Using the first book Perfect by Danny Parker, the children reflected as a whole class to the following questions and their responses were recorded.

Story Element Questions:

• Who is the main character? Are they human, an animal or an imagined character?
• Are there supporting characters? Are they human, an animal or imagined characters?
• Where is the story set? Is the setting realistic, magical, set in the past, present time or future?
• The message or a lesson from the story is…
• A symbol (object, action, or expression) in the story is…
• The story made me think about…

For the additional shortlist books, once the story had been shared the children worked in small groups, each group being allocated one question. The responses were shared and then complied onto one page for later use. What became evident was that as the children revised the routine and became familiar with the questions they were able to reflect and reposed more thoroughly.

Samples of work for the Early Childhood Shortlist Picture Books:

Once the six books were read each student voted for their favourite book by placing a star on the Years K-2 2016 Book Week voting chart.

In the coming lessons the students will work in small groups to create dioramas of the shortlist books. I am really looking forward to the creative designs and displaying the story dioramas in the Library.