Fortunately, Unfortunately

Elaine's class next door seemed to be doing something that elicited lots of excitement and laughter. I asked what was going on, and Elaine told me that they were working on a book together. After I heard about it, I knew we wanted to try it too. It is another type of pattern writing, similar to the writing we did at the beginning of the year with The Important Book. This time, the inspiration came from two different books:

After reading these stories over a couple days, we heard the children having a lot of fun with the pattern. Fortunately, unfortunately statements have been told throughout the day - "Fortunately, there is ice on our playground to skate on. Unfortunately, the ice wasn't thick enough and we got soaked!"

This morning, Elaine's class and mine will share our class stories with each other. I believe Elaine's class wrote about a birthday. We wrote about a class trip to the zoo, with many twists and turns.

It starts out well enough: "Fortunately, one day Mrs. Carpenter's class went on a field trip to the zoo."

But then things take a turn for the worse: "Unfortunately, they got separated from their teacher."

Here is one of my favoriate pages. In case you can't tell, that's me riding on the back of a lion.

Each student has a copy of their own, with a blank cover. This is so they can make their book look any way they like. Please enjoy this group project with your child!