Frequent Speech Sounds:

/p/ initial and medial
/n/ medial
/l/ medial
/kl/ initial
/s/ medial and final
/m/ initial and medial

Themes:

back to school
dinosaur

Book Details:

Diverse Characters: Yes

Age Recommendation: Elementary

We Don’t Eat Our Classmates

By Ryan T. Higgins

It’s the first day of school for Penelope Rex, and she can’t wait to meet her classmates. But it’s hard to make human friends when they’re so darn delicious! That is, until Penelope gets a taste of her own medicine and finds she may not be at the top of the food chain after all.

This funny back to school and dinosaur book can be used in speech therapy to address social/emotional issues like fitting in. It is also great for noticing character expressions and for targeting problem solving as well as for describing! Discover more of the speech and language teaching concepts for using We Don’t Eat Our Classmates in speech therapy below:

Key Teaching Concepts

Narrative Structure:

complete episode

Narrative Concepts:

vocabulary
problem solving
character analysis
illustration study
inferencing
text features
social/emotional
adjectives
verbs (action)
verbs (irregular past tense)
verbs (present progressive)
verbs (linguistic verbs)

Vocabulary:

nervous, surprised, delicious, determined, embarrassed, lonely, afraid, appetite

Character Analysis:

Penelope is nervous about making friends and fitting in at school. She feels embarrassed when she keeps eating the children but just can’t stop until Walter gives her a taste of her own medicine.

Social/Emotional:

Penelope tries to fit in but keeps standing out when she eats her classmates and struggled to put herself in their shoes until Walter bites her.

Grammar:

adjectives
verbs (action)
verbs (irregular past tense)
verbs (present progressive)
verbs (linguistic verbs)

Text Features:

capitals
dialogue
speech bubbles
change in text size

Inferencing:

How did Penelope feel about her first day at school?
What was she thinking it would be like?
Why do you think her mom bought her a new backpack?
What was Penelope thinking when she saw her class full of children?
What did her teacher think when Penelope ate all the children?
How did the children feel about Penelope?
How did Penelope feel when she spit them out?
Why do you think Penelope wasn’t making any friends?
What did Penelope think about for the next day?
How did Penelope feel when Walter bit her finger?
Why do you think she didn’t want to eat children anymore?
Why does Walter lick his lips and look at her sometimes?

Problem Solving:

Penelope wants to make a good impression on her first day at school but she keeps eating her classmates and needs some help to stop.

If you are interested in seeing other back to school and dinosaur books to use in therapy, then check out the Narrative Teaching Points Book List for a printable copy.

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Frequent Speech Sounds:

Themes:

Book Details:

We Don’t Eat Our Classmates

Key Teaching Concepts

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