“Dragon Slayer” Week 28 Fourth Grade

Dragon Slayer (Fiction, Level 14, Stage 3) by Joy Cowley

The McDragon family is under siege from a man who wants to turn their bodies into burgers and their skins into armor, and it’s up to Robbie to save them all. So how does he do it? You’ll have to read the book to find out. This book was so fun for my fourth grader that he didn’t even protest when I asked him to read it aloud all by himself. He smiled with every page, and his little brother listened with all ears.

The activity I want to highlight this week is the writing prompts provided for this book. The Guided Lesson outlines suggested activities for using this book alone or with a non-fiction book about dragons that will be in next week’s kit, and it contains 3 writing prompts along with a graphic organizer. Each of these was instrumental in helping Elijah fully comprehend the book and make sense of the content. The 3 writing prompts are as follows: Ask each student to think about and then write how he/she would react to Grandfather’s story about George. Ask each student to think about and then write about how it is best to let talking solve problems, not violence. Ask each student to think about and then write a paragraph about dragons by including many of the facts learned this week. For each one it took a few minutes for Elijah to think, but because he likes dragons and finds it easy to imagine something like this actually being true, he was eager to write for these prompts.

I love it that we are able to use books for school that interest my boys, and with AlphaSkills we are never disappointed! We can’t wait to see what’s in store next week! For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.