Pattern Books

We began our Pattern Book unit last week. In this unit I use ideas from First Grade Writers by Stephanie Parsons. We began by reading several pattern books over several days: A Party and Our Granny by Joy Cowley, In the Sky by Peter and Sheryl Sloan, This Train by Paul Collicutt, and When I Was Young by Jamie Lee Curtis. After we read each book, we talked about what the writer was doing in the book and how that affected us as readers. Then we worked to come up with a name for the pattern. We came up with names such as Making a List, Pairs of Opposites, and 1-2-1-2 (or see-saw). We are making a chart of these observations.

After we had analyzed several pattern books, I did a mini-lesson on deciding on a pattern to try and starting a book based on it. Now the students are working on their own pattern books. Over time we will read more books, analyze them, and add them to our chart. We will also see which of us are trying the different patterns and techniques in our own writing.