David Goes to School

David Goes to School

Written by David Shannon

Grades K - 2

Realistic Fiction

Have you ever felt like nothing was going your way? Maybe your teacher had to keep calling your name, or no one would believe that you didn’t begin a food fight in the cafeteria! In the book David Goes to School, David feels like his school day is never-ending, but receives a reward at the end of the day. Read on to find out what happens!

            David Goes to School begins with a drawn picture of David that reads, “David’s teacher always said… No, David! No yelling. No pushing. No running in the halls.” This is a picture that looks like something David had created himself, leading me to believe that he heard these phrases from his teacher quite a bit. The first page shows David sneaking into the classroom door with the words, “David! You’re tardy!” The picture makes it look like he was trying to get into the classroom without the teacher noticing. Also, on the door is a picture of labeled fish with the names of the colors on the fish. This makes me think that David may be in kindergarten or first grade. The next page shows David goofing off while he is at the chalk board working on a math problem. Next we can see David playing with the gum that is in his mouth while he is supposed to be reading. The text on the page let us know that David shouldn’t be chewing gum in class. The following page shows David shouting out an answer in class when he should be raising his hand and waiting to be called on. When playing with paint, David can be seen reaching over to put his messy hands on a classmate. The teacher reminds him to keep his hands to himself. A daydreaming David can next be seem looking out the window, imagining the clouds as different shapes. He is told to pay attention! During lunch time, David can be seen cutting the line for spaghetti and meatballs. He needs to be told to wait in line just like everyone else. There was a food fight during lunch! Both messy students are pointing to one another as if to motion that the other had begun the fight, but the text reads, “I don’t care who started it!” After lunch David was dawdling to come in from recess, so his teacher then yelled to him, “David! Recess is over!” While they were in the library quietly reading, a noisy David was drumming on this book with pencils, and it looks like he was yelling too! On the next page it looks like David is trying to keep himself from going to the bathroom. We can see that the text reads, “Again?!” Next is an up-close view of David’s desk which has been drawn all over. David’s teacher notices it and makes him stay after school to clean all of the desks, as seen on the next page. Once the desks are perfectly clean she gives him a gold star and says, “Good job, David!” David is seen with a smile on his face, letting us know that he is happy to have received the star from his teacher. On the last page, David is seen going towards a neighborhood of children and the teacher telling him, “Yes, David…You can go home now.

            I like how this book follows David through his day in school and shows everything that he does during the day. The illustrations in the story look like those which may have drawn by a student, and the text as quoted by the teacher looks like it was written on lined paper. The book has very few words on the pages and the pictures support the text. The size and spacing of the font allow the students to follow the test with their fingers. The story could allow for a discussion about punctuation. This story could very well be David Shannon’s experience in the classroom, especially since the character’s name is David. I feel like if I were a young child who had to stay after school to wash all of the desks, I too would recall this years later. This story could be read at the beginning of the school year to talk about the rules of the classroom and the school. This would also be an easy book for a student to read based on the contextual clues, the spacing between words, and the fact that the pictures match the text.

RL K.3: With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

RL 1.3: Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

RL 1.4: Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.

RL 1.7: Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

RL 2.1: Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.

RL 2.5: Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.

RL 2.6: Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.

RL2.7 - Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.

RL 2.8A: . Identify dialogue as words spoken by characters (usually enclosed in quotation marks) and explain what dialogue adds to a particular story or poem.