September’s Book of the Month – Bad Day at Riverbend
September’s Book of the Month, Bad Day at Riverbend, encourages student response to literature and expression of ideas in creative and artistic formats and genres. We hope you will sign your class up to hear Bad Day at Riverbend and complete the visualization activity that accompanies it. Plan to sign up for a one-hour block of time so that your students will have plenty of time to hear the story, complete the activity, and check out books.
About the book:
“Welcome to Riverbend, a sleepy Western outpost where nothing ever happens and, it seems, nothing ever will. But one fateful day the stagecoach rolls into town, its team of horses covered with an unidentifiable substance. As the strange stuff spreads into devastation, the terrified townspeople turn to their leader. Whatever this evil is, Sheriff Ned Hardy aims to put an end to it. He mounts his horse and leads a posse to hunt down the source of the curse, but just as they close in on their suspect, the cowboys are frozen in a mysterious light that suddenly fills the sky.”
Visualizing:
After introducing Chris Van Allsburg and some pictures of his work, we will read the story and show the pictures up to a certain point in the story. After that point, students will only hear the narrative. Then each student will receive a blank piece of paper and crayons. Students will be asked to create an illustration that shows what they are personally visualizing based on the narrative. (Students in grades 2-5 will be asked to record the words or quote that prompted the visualization and describe the picture they’ve drawn.)
At the end of the lesson, students will share their illustrations with the whole class or in small groups. Finally, we will read the end of the story and shown the illustrations.
