Silly Morris!

One of the books I teach in my class for entering first graders is Morris the Moose, by B. Wiseman. It's a fun beginning reader story about a moose (named Morris) who meets a cow and thinks she's a moose. As Morris points out throughout the story, she has "four legs and a tail and things on her head" so she is obviously a moose. The cow spends a few pages trying to convince Morris otherwise. Eventually they seek the help of first a deer and then a horse, neither of which are any help, as they both just think that everyone else is the same kind of animal as themselves. I'll leave you in suspense as to how they eventually resolve Morris' "moose-take" - you'll have to read it for yourselves!

After reading it aloud to my class the first time, then having my students practice reading themselves, with support from their parents, one of the questions I asked was this: "If you were the cow, what would you have said to make Morris believe that you weren't a moose?"

Some of their answers were fairly straightforward, things I would have thought of myself:

"I would tell him that the things on my head are different from the things on his head!"

"He should look at the cow's body and see that they're not the same."

"They should look at the feet. The cow has different feet than Morris."

My favorite response, though, was a bit more direct:

"The cow should just tell Morris to be HONEST!"

Said with just that much emphasis.

Yeah, I think that might take care of the matter!