He talked about how when he was writing Bad Kitty and he got to the letter U he had thought of writing urchins or unicorns but he didn't love any of those ideas. That's when he thought of uncle and instead of writing Uncle "Anybody" he thought he'd use the name of one of his uncle's, Uncle Murray.
He also talked about how he got the idea for Bad Kitty. He told us that it is very intimidating for him to look at a blank piece of paper so he does some mental exercises with his brain to get ready to write. One of the mental exercises he does is simply write down a bunch of titles of possible books. After writing down a bunch that he liked (and didn't like) he thought one in particular would stick. Guess which one that one was? You got it...Bad Kitty! Next, he started thinking about all of the things this bad kitty would do and he thought it would be fun to make a list and put them in alphabetical order. And, since it's food that often gets kitties into trouble, he incorporated that into the original Bad Kitty book.
Here's a video clip of Bad Kitty interviewing Mr. Bruel. It's a great addition to your author study!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wblwpblGMXg
Do you and your students love Bad Kitty as much as we do? Are you looking for a way to teach your students some election terms AND laugh out loud in the process?
If so, then this giveaway is for you!
What's up for grabs?
1 5x7 photo of Nick Bruel
1 autographed copy of Bad Kitty for President
What do you have to do?
Leave a comment and tell us how you're incorporating the elections into your classroom this year
**Be sure to leave your email address**
We'll choose one winner using the Random Generator on October 17th!
Here's an activity to go along with the book.
Just click the image below to download it from Google Docs!
And here's a link to some Bad Kitty games and lessons:
18 comments:
We usually hold little mock elections within our grade level so our students actually vote on the candidates running in our area.
rmariemuniz@hotmail.com
We will vote on our favorite of two books. Teams will try to persuade everyone to vote for their book and then we'll have a secret ballot. (I try to keep away from choosing a person in our class as a leader.)
tokyoshoes (at) hotmail (dot) com
We usually have our classes vote for a class president and vice president. They have to be able to write their first and last name to register to vote.
lraines78@gmail.com
Vocabulary! You would be surprised at the words that kids don't "get."
We normally have mock elections, but this year my entire school is voting online on a website. It sounds pretty neat. I also got the election pack from Think, Wonder, Teach that I'm planning on using.
Erin
First with Franklin
emfranklin82@gmail.com
We're just half-day K and don't have much extra time, so we'll probably just read a book or two about elections or presidents and then discuss who the next president is after the election. :)
kroltgen (at) yahoo (dot) com
We will be incorporating a lot of vocabulary and writing craftivities!
kwelnicke@hotmail.com
We are incorporating the elections by using graphs and voting for our favorite things. I will also share some books and websites that tell about the vocabulary.
kellybrown28021@gmail.com
We hold a mock election in first grade. We use a voting booth. We graph after the vote. We read several books first.
Julie
wiersjul@gmail.com
I love it!! Perfect addition! We used your spider schema today and they loved it!
Rachel
We are holding class votes for different things throughout the next month. Reading some scholastic news to go along with it! bcronquist@isd221.net
I love doing a Cookie Election with third graders! Each group picks one store bought cookie and then creates a campaign for it. They make posters, buttons, speeches, etc. On NOvember 6 parents, teachers, and some classrooms come in and vote for the BEST COOKIE. My kiddos then tabulate the ballots and graph them by grade level, parents, teachers, ....we look at which cookie won in each area, we do recess polls, and on and on. One of my favorite ways to teach the election process! :) carmen.zeisler@mcpherson.com
We have been learning about the branches of the government. Then, we're going to have an election Theme Day, where are instruction is focused on elections.
Ashley
arclark2012@gmail.com
I have been teaching the branches of government and I used School House Rock to support these ideas. My students loved the "I'm just a Bill" song. We will also have a school wide mock election with precincts and voting booths.
Caralee
cdeherrera526@gmail.com
Hey!
I teach 3rd and I am incorporating the election with reading and social studies. In readers' workshop, we're are going to look at two characters in literature. Using their words and actions in the text, we're going to describe their character traits. Then in social studies, we're going to discuss what character traits we think a good leader should possess (using schema, looking at current and past leaders - we're doing biography book reports right now to help build our schema a little more.) Using the two characters we studied in RW, we're having an election on who would make the best leader (since all politicians are leaders). We're even connecting persuasive writing by writing speeches and campaign posters for the 2 character candidates. I bought some great materials from the Dollar Store - ballots, ballot box,"I Voted!" stickers for Election Day. We'd LOVE to study Bad Kitty as one of our characters :)
Kristin
kelomaa@gmail.com
Great ideas Kristin!!! I was really into the elections 4 yrs ago, but I was teaching PK at the time and we talked about what voting was and the process of voting. We did some graphing (ex: red apples, yellow apples and green apples) and talked about who "won" based on voting in the classroom.
This year I'm in 3rd and I'm personally not really into the elections this year. We're doing a school-wide election and our counselor has passed some things out that I need to look over and decide how to teach. BAD KITTY would be a cute way to teach about elections. I think I only have the Baby and Birthday book.
We have been reading different books about the election and government. We also watch videos about elections/government at the end of the day if we have any spare time. We have also used graphic organizers to conduct a writing assignment about what each student would do if they were president.
The school is also having a school wide election. I love the Bad Kitty book series and have most of the books already. I think this book would be a great addition. The students love Bad Kitty and I think it will be a fun way to learn about the election.
Amy
awhite7125@gmail.com
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