Touchstone Text: Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies & Illustrated by Sarah-Fox Davies

  

   Are you looking for a nonfiction read aloud to add to your genre study of nonfiction reading and writing? Here is a touchstone text called Bat Loves the Night written by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Sarah Fox-Davies (Candlewick Press, 2001.)  After an interactive read aloud of the text, one aspect about the writer's craft that can be highlighted is the author's rich use of descriptive language. Using the document camera, you can revisit the text and notice the adjectives used to describe the bat and other aspects within the story. The second part of the author's craft that can be noticed is how Davies made comparisons to help illustrate points. You can discuss how she does this in order to connect to the children's existing background knowledge. She particularly uses a lot of similes in the text, as you can see in the second portion of the anchor chart. 




A lesson chart by Wendy Melzer for Bat Loves the Night written by Nicola Davies  
(Candlewick Press, 2001) 


 

Looking for more ways to use this anchor text in your classroom? Check out a few of these resourceful links! :)



• Continue with an author study of Nicola Davies and her style of narrative nonfiction writing. Click here to go to Walker Books and read more about her in her own words.  Check out other books by her in the nonfiction "Read and Wonder" collection from Candlewick Press. Also on the "Read and Wonder" link, you can see additional books written by different authors as well.  

• This link will take you to Candlewick Press and their "Read and Wonder" PDF Teacher's Guide. (I happen to have a printed version they sent me if you would like to see it.)

• On Read Write Think, you can explore this lesson called Four Simple Steps to Small-Group Guided Writing created by Dr. Sharan Gibson. It uses Bat Loves the Night.

• I am a big fan of National Geographic for Kids. You can extend the lesson by modeling how to synthesize information from an online article by sharing this nonfiction article about The Amazing Bats of Braken Cave.

• Here is a wealth of additional ideas to peruse from the Oregon Reading Association's website. The document was created by Karen Antikajian. Check it out here at Oregon Reads: Learning Ideas for Bat Loves the Night.

Feel free to share your ideas in the comments section below. Do you have ideas with this book? The series? The author for an author study? I'd love to hear your ideas! :)