Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus

I read the book Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Parks which was a part of New York Times Best Selling chapter book Junie B. Jones series.

I absolutely love how the author writes just like a kindergartener would talk. That can be hard to bring vocabulary down, and it requires a lot of creativity. The book focuses on all the ups and downs of kindergarten, especially the "stupid smelly bus" that Junie B. goes through. In the end, after hiding in the supply closet after school, Junie B. agrees to ride the school bus to school with her new friend.

If I used this in my classroom, this would be a good book to read together as a class. This book is a chapter book, but it would be easy for students to follow along, and maybe read a chapter or two at the end of class each day. This book may be pretty simple, but I think kids will be able to relate to the book really easily because similar things happen to them as well. I think the appropriate grade level for this book is kindergarten to second grade. I could use parts of the book to do "compare and contrast" activities. For example, I could have kids use a Venn diagram to compare the "stupid smelly bus" and "daddy's car" from the book. Another ELA activity that can be used in the classroom would be writing chapter summaries. The chapters in this book are pretty short, and easy to understand, so this would be a good book to start learning about how to write summaries.

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