The Relatives Came

We've been learning to "read like a writer." To do this, we first immersed ourselves in Cynthia Rylant's picture book, The Relatives Came. We read it several times together as a class, then read it individually as well. We read it while viewing the illustrations, and we read it with just the text, as well. We then set out to find "striking places" within the text. These are places in the text that make us feel something, make us laugh, create connections to our lives, present a vivid picture, use interesting language, or make our mouths feel good when we say them aloud.

Each student found his or her favorite striking place in the text and narrowed it down to 15 words or less. We read our striking places in our class circle - like a poem. We were amazed by the beautiful language and the interesting position of lines. It was also interesting to see which students picked similar lines. We switched ourselves around and read it again - it was very cool.

After this activity, students got in groups of 4 and created presentations for their striking place "poem." Students were only limited by their creativity. They had to design the order of their poem, as well as the motions and movements. We hope you enjoy our presentations of striking places from The Relatives Came.

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