WI Golden Archer Awards - Week Three - Polo and the Dragon

It is week three of our Golden Archer Awards program and we are reading Polo and the Dragon by Regis Faller.  This is a wordless book in which a little dog has some trouble with his boat and enters a jungle only to meet a fearsome dragon!  Nah, the dragon turns out the be nice and helps the dog with his boat trouble.  

Many of my classes had not read a wordless book before so to introduce the process, I showed one page from another nominee and 2012 Caldecott winner, A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka.  Students learned how to navigate a wordless page by starting to read from the upper left corner, just like if there were text there.  We examined an entire two page set before moving on to read Polo and the Dragon.

When reading the story, students were awesome at coming up with text to accompany the pictures.  In almost every class it took the entire 30 minute period to tell the story.  Students were engaged with bright eyes and sharp minds.  They especially loved when I screamed because there was a dragon behind Polo in the book!  (Again, maybe you had to be there...)

This book won over several students who I thought it wouldn't.  Yes, it's that good.  I really am starting to wonder who is going to get the most votes here at my schools for the Golden Archer Award.  Only two more books to go and then we will find out!