Collaborating Teachers discussion

In the fall, I found a collection of new edition Roald Dahl books - 15 of them to be exact, including all the classics and a few I hadn't heard of - for a great deal so I bought it. I brought it to class and decided on reading the BFG as a read aloud. My Grade 5/6s absolutely loved the book and something very cool happened. They all started choosing other Roald Dahl books for their choice time. One student who had continually read and reread Diary of a Whimpy Kid even branched out and chose a Dahl book completely on his own. Then they started talking about the books with others in and out of class! At reading conferences I had students start talking about Dahl's humour, tone, word choice and other elements of his writing style that previously was a conversation they struggled to have. Organically and without intent, most of my class had undertaken an authors study of Roald Dahl and it was just one of those moments that really surprised me in a good way.

I'm sharing this because I think Roald Dahl's books are excellent choices for Grade 3-6 readers and I do feel that his books are not used as much as they used to be. Selections have been great to use as mentor texts in our writers workshop as well. I also wanted to share the official Roald Dahl website which provides, for free, complete units of study for many of his books!

http://www.roalddahl.com/create-and-l...

The BFG was also last year's book choice for Pernille Ripp's global read aloud. Has anyone participated in the GRA or used Dahl's books with their class?

I was working with a group of students on writing book reviews and a few chose James and the Giant Peach because a teacher had read it aloud to them. There writing was clearly influenced by the read aloud. Anyone else have examples of author study in reading benefitting student writing?