There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly Review

 There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly









BIBLIOGRAPHY

Taback, S. (1997). There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Viking. ISBN: 978-0-670-86939-8


PLOT SUMMARY

The old lady swallows a fly followed by the rhyme, “I don’t know why she swallowed that fly, perhaps she’ll die.” Each page has a hole in her stomach to show what she has eaten, which subsequently makes her stomach bigger and bigger. The final animal she eats is a horse, which in fact seals her fate and kills her. The last pages shows the animals in mourning and her headstone . The whimsical pages offer readers a hilarious warning of your fate if you eat a horse. 


CRITICAL ANALYSIS

There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly is based off the poem of the same name. This book falls under the category of cumulative tales. The repetition builds on each page for the items that the old lady swallows. Readers will be able to recite the pages because of the repetitive nature. The Caldecott Honor illustrations of mixed media and collage are whimsical and detailed. Added in are die cut expanded shapes to show the animals in her stomach. This version of the poem is an undeniable favorite in the classroom, library, and in homes. 


REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

Horn Book Guide (March, 1998)

This version of the well-known folk poem includes additional comments (in rhyme) by the soon-to-be-eaten animals as they witness the zany old lady devouring progressively bigger and bigger animals until she, "of course," perishes. Bold, colorful artwork includes childlike cartoon drawings, detailed collages for individual perusing, and clever die-cut holes for gastrological peeking.


CONNECTIONS

Students can retell the sequencing story by placing the animals into a little old lady paper bag. 

Teach phonemic awareness with the rhyming words in the story

Teacher can purchase the finger puppets of this story then have the students act out the book. 

Similar books:

Old Lady series by Lucille Colandro

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/teaching-tools/book-lists/series/there-was-an-old-lady-book-list.html


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Environmental Scan

  Have you ever thought about how information technology impacts the learning of our students and their environment?  “The environmental scan method is designed to enable decision makers to understand the external environment and translate this understanding into an institution’s planning processes.(Cohen Group p.3) In this blog post, I’ll be discussing an environmental scan of my school Covenant Christian School, the communities we serve, and how we can improve.  While on the campus of Covenant, students are given broadband internet access on their school issued device. In PreK- Kindergarten, students use an iPad as their device. In grades 1st-6th, students use a designated Chromebook from a class set checked out to their teacher. All Elementary devices stay on campus in their respective classrooms.  In grades 7th-12th, students are checked out a Chromebook and charger for the year to be returned at the end of the school year. Secondary devices can be taken home to be used but must be
Read more

AI-Assisted Newsletter

Image
 I began my ChatGPT journey with the prompt "create a school library newsletter for elementary students about summer reading". This was the initial result I got.  I reran the the query with additional sections to include; here is the result for that newsletter. I found a template on Canva for a summer infographic and copied the sections from ChatGPT. I am  pleased with the entire process. The LinkedIn course helped me to decide how to generate more specific newsletter sections and if it would be appealing to my audience. One of the cons I found was that the book recommendations are dated and the author interview was with Mary Pope Osborne. Another is that it lacked emotion so that would lead to more editing on my part.  When speaking with my group, two of us got very similar newsletters. Our other group member had a very different result with the same prompt. This goes to show that although AI can be beneficial, it's not consistent. When just starting out this can be time
Read more

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow Book Review

Image
 Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow 1. BIBLIOGRAPHY Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow . Scholastic Inc., 2016.  ISBN: 0439353793 2.  PLOT SUMMARY  Hitler Youth begins with the murder of Hebert Norkus of the Hitler Youth. He joined after his mother died and enjoyed the activities on the weekends. The Red (Communists) were on the attack and he had to be careful while passing out propaganda. One day, a group of 40 Reds chased him down and stabbed him to death. Hitler called him a martyr and planned an elaborate funeral which inspired more youth to join the cause. The Nazi party rose to power with the help of their youth. 70,000 of them turned out to listen to Hitler at a rally. This led to many ready to die for their cause. In the first chapter, the book focuses on Hitler’s rise to power first as the Chancellor (2nd in line of power). He wanted to unify Germany to fight back on sanctions from WWI. In the second chapter the Hitler Youth exp
Read more