Do You Have a Class Pet?

If you do … you have to read the book, “The World According to Humphrey” by Betty Birney.  I heard about it last year and since I have class pets I thought it would be a great read-aloud. It was a hit. My students talked about this hamster named Humphrey all year. 

The book became a class favorite quickly.  It is about a hamster, named Humphrey, which lives in a room 26 and has many adventures in the classroom and on his weekend trips to the students’ houses.  He gets into some trouble and is worried about the teacher, but everyone who spends some time with him is changed.  Since my students loved it the librarian ordered the whole series for the library and a few parents and grandparents ordered them for Christmas presents. 

 “The World According to Humphrey” will be my first read-aloud this coming school year because I plan on doing it before bringing in our class rats and guppies. 

I am working on lesson plans for it in my daily read-aloud time including extensions for my gifted students using other books in the series. There are 7 books in the Humphrey series with a couple more coming this summer.  The books are between the Accelerated reading levels 4.0- 4.4, which is perfect for my above average readers.  In "The World According to Humphrey" plan  I will include vocabulary study, geography, role-play, creative writing, research, and more.  I also plan on including some hands-on work with our own class pets. The author’s website, http://bettybirney.com/index.html, is great and I plan on leading students there, too. 

Please let me know if you have class pets and how you handle them in your classroom.