Gooney Bird Greene

Calling all 2nd grade teachers: if you have never read Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry, do yourself a favor and go check it out right now!

Gooney Bird is a precocious and unique 2nd grader with a knack for telling stories about her life. All of her outrageous (at first) stories are filled with suspense and include a surprise ending (which turns the outrageous sounding story into a perfectly reasonable one).

During my first year of teaching, a friend of mine told me about this wonderful book. My second year, I kicked off narrative writing with this wonderful text and have not looked back since!

Today, my class finished up publishing their first big narrative piece.

I'm so proud of their work! They spent time revising, drafting, crafting, and self assessing this one piece. We finished up the book weeks ago, but Gooney Bird has continued to be a mentor to the class as writers. 

The checklist we built and revised together. 

A simple anchor chart to help us remember how to zoom in.

I created a unit of ideas and resources to use this book in your own narrative writing unit, and I have it on sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store right now! It includes a read aloud guide, rubrics, writing paper, crafting aids, skills practice, possible NB entries, and a game. I try to keep things pretty open ended by offering a variety of ways to approach the different skills that are gleaned from this mentor text. I also include different types of writing paper and levels of rubrics.

I really hope you'll check out this book and find a way to use it in your classroom! Have a great week!