Clam-I-Am By: Tish Rabe

Book Genre: Non-Fiction (book about the ocean)

Publishing Info: Random House Books for Young Readers (May 24, 2005)

Honors and Awards Receive: None listed

Summary: Norval, the fish is hosting a seaside talk show for the Fish Channel and the Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Thing Two appear as the camera crew. The little boy and girl get introduced to many sea creatures. Clam-I-Am, horseshow crab, hermit crabs, sea star, seagulls, jelly fish and sand fleas. They even get to learn about seaweed and ocean tides. Norval then goes on to explain the second part of his show. (Question/answer section) The book answers questions like (1) Why is the ocean blue? (2) Why is seawater salty? (3) What makes waves? This book is perfect for having a quick overview about the ocean.

Personal rating and reason for rating: ****Great! I really liked this book because it was not only illustrated brilliantly but it had simple facts about each of the sea creatures listed above. In our ocean unit we talk about each one of these animals. So I was thinking this would be a good book to introduce our ocean unit with. It gives a quick overview of each animal that I can add to when I actually teach about that specific animal. This book is full of a lot of our kindergarten sight words that would be great extra practice for the children.

Reading level: 3.4 (Third grade, fourth month)

Interest level: K-5

Possible uses of the text in integrated units of study:

Reading: Complete a circle map before we read the story and put the word ocean in the middle. Ask students what they think of when they hear the word ocean. Take their answers and branch it off the word ocean. While reading, I would ask comprehension questions, for example: after reading the page about star fish I would ask….What happens when a star fish looses one of its rays (arms)? I would hope that all children would be able to answer this question correctly. I would continue to use this technique throughout the story. At the conclusion I would ask the students to pick their three favorite sea creatures. We would vote until we found our favorite three. We would then complete a brace map. (As I publish this book on the blog the brace map format does not copy correctly) Sorry!


Ocean

Star Fish * If it looses a ray, it grows back. * Has five legs. *It moves slow. *Has tiny cups on it's rays.

Clam *Lives in the sand. *Has rings that tell how old it is. * Clams have one foot.

Seagulls *Can drink salt water. *They eat trash and left over food.


Writing: Students could pick their favorite sea creature from the book and tell me two facts that they learned. They will then need to illustrate their sentences with a detailed picture. You could also incorporate writing by having them copy the brace map. (Which we have learned is not very effective)


Potential problems or difficulties: None that I can see at this time.