Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Pocket Monsters

Did you know that the word 'Pokémon' means pocket monsters?

I remember waaaaaay back in the late 90's that these animated creatures took the world by storm.  That was the start of my teaching career and a little boy named John, in my very first class, taught himself to read in English (because I taught at a French immersion school and there was no English in our 2nd grade classroom) by studying the Pokémon poster that was hanging on a wall in his bedroom.  Then the craze faded. . . .and was back with a vengeance in the summer of 2016 with the Pokémon Go app.  This reignited the dormant passion to 'collect' all these different little creatures. It ignited my curiosity as to "what in the heck are Pokémon anyway?!"

The story behind the creation is really neat!  Creator Satoshi Hajiri was fascinated with bugs when he was a kid and turned that passion into "Pokémon".  

My students walked into the 2016-2017 school year all abuzz about Pokémon and I scrounged around for some books to satisfy their passion and curiosity.  To meet that need, I also started creating partner and trio plays based on the characters, game and app to motivate students for "Read With Someone" time during our small reading groups.

I spent a lot of time researching various Pokémon characters and how to play the game.  I added a comprehension component to each play that is part of an overall reading mission for all the plays in this set.

It took me longer than anticipated to complete this new set of partner and trio plays due to the research (which was actually really fun) and switching grade levels this past year AND renewing my National Boards.  But it's done and I'm so excited to share it!


If you do download this pack and use the plays in your classroom, I would LOVE kid suggestions for which Pokémon should be part of Series #2!


No comments:

Post a Comment