Picture Book Assignment: Just a Dream
Book: Just A Dream by Chris Van Allsburg
Grade Level: 3
Author: Chris Van Allsburg is a
Just a Dream is about a young careless boy named Walter who tosses rubbish on the grass, thinks recycling is a waste of time, and mocks his neighbor, Rose, for her delight in the tree she has just received for her birthday. Walter longs to live in the future, which he imagines to be full of robots, tiny personal planes, and machines that make life easier. One night when he falls asleep, his wish to live in the future comes true. However, his dreams carry him into a future not filled with the robots and machines he believes will make life better, but instead ravaged by the careless mistakes of the past. Walter travels in his sleep to the midst of an endless garbage dump situated on his own street, to a tree in a forest that is about to be cut down, to the top of a smokestack belching pollution, to the middle of a fishless sea, and to other places that show him possible negative versions of the future. When he wakes up, he is a changed…show more content… Specific Outcome: Understand forms and genres.
• Identify distinguishing features of a variety of oral, print and other media texts.
The context of this lesson is that we are in the middle of a “writer’s conference” and we want to learn how to write more powerful stories. Students have already started their stories, but we want to make them even better.
I will tell my students that one way writers make their stories powerful and interesting is to zoom in on one little moment in time and describe it in detail. When we focus in on one moment, our writing becomes more authentic because we are able to portray in detail what happened. Describing one small moment in the life of a character can also reveal a great deal about the character’s personality.
I will ask the students what they think the book is