Monsters and Halloween Parades

We don't celebrate Halloween at school, but we do have a book character day (at the end of this week).  So, today I read Pooh's Halloween Parade.  We talked about the different costumes and the book characters.  I reminded students that our costume parade on Friday is a book character parade, not a Halloween parade.  Students shared some of their ideas for book characters that they might like to be or see at Friday's parade.

Then, I showed them an ebook, Even Monsters Get Sick.  We talked about how the print books that I have been reading to them don't have voices or moving parts.  Many ebooks, like Even Monsters Get Sick, include audio and interactive parts that change when we tap them or manipulate them.  We talked about how movies and TV shows also have audio and moving images, but you can't control what moves or interact with the TV like you can an ebook.  I read the first few pages and showed them how to explore the ebook to find all the "hidden" content.  Then, students listened to the story and explored it on their own.  Some students were eager to get to the end of the story and missed all the interactivity.  Some thought there would be time to play fun games on the iPad, if they got through the story quick enough.  I sent everyone back through though.  The iPads are fun, but I really want them to learn about finding content within a program, like an ebook.  As they looked around and saw their classmates doing something neat (like creating a tornado inside the monster's eye, or working through a maze), they were asking each other "Hey, how'd you find that?"  So, it all worked out in the end!