Pre-reading Activity: Book Discussion
Ask the class what they think a wordless book is. How does a wordless book tell a story? What clues can we use to understand what story the author is telling? Encourage the students to be specific with their response.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
Read Together

1. Show the class the cover of the book. What do they notice? What do they expect to see inside? If there were words in the book, what words would they expect to find just by looking at the cover? On chart paper, make a list of all the words they contribute.

2. As a whole group, look at the book page by page. Ask students what they notice. Prompt their thinking by asking questions: What kind of day is it if someone can draw on a bus window? What time of year is it if a child is wearing a hat with ear flaps? What are some things you can tell about this boy from this one picture?

3. As you go through the book, keep the running list of words students use to describe the pictures in the book. Some of these words may come up more than once. Rather than rewriting them, put a check next to the originally recorded word. This way, all students feel like they are contributing.

4. When the boy and his cloud-friend go to Sector 7, there is a lot to notice. These pages have a lot of visual and some textual information. Allow students to continue to contribute their observations. If they miss something, you can decide to let it go or to ask a leading question to help them notice it. For example, the words outside the Sector 7 building say, "Cloud Dispatch Center." What does this mean? What are the words on the tubes? What does "departure" mean? What does "arrival" mean?

   Within Sector 7, you may want to help students understand the intention of the pieces of paper the clouds are holding. Again, if they don't explain it on their own, ask students guiding questions to help them get an understanding independently. Ask questions such as, "What words do you see on this page?" "What is an assignment?" "What do you think happens at the Assignment Station?" "What does the boy do with the assignments?"

5. Once you have gone through the entire book, hang up the list of words and observations in a prominent place in the classroom.

Write the Words to Sector 7

1. Explain to class that they will come up with the words to tell the story. Work with students to decide what to name the main characters in this book. Take a few suggestions. If it is difficult to arrive at consensus, take a vote.

2. Then, split the class into three groups.
   Making Friends Group, Sector 7 Group, And Going Home Group

3. Cluster desks to facilitate this small-group set-up. Give each group a copy of the book, a stack of sentence strips, and magic markers or pencils. Each group should appoint a scribe — or they can take turns writing.

4. Explain that the small groups are going to author this story by thinking of the words to go along with the pictures. Each group will work on certain pages:
   • MAKING FRIENDS will write the words from the bus ride to the flight to Sector 7
   • SECTOR 7 will write the words for the boy's arrival to SECTOR 7 through the boy's separation from his friend.
   • GOING HOME will write the words for the pages from the boy's departure from Sector 7 to the end of the book.
   
   
   Each group will write one sentence per page. They should write something that makes sense based on the pictures. If they are not certain what to write, they can use the list of words from the Read Together pre-reading activity as a guide.

5. Read the book aloud to the class. You may want to have a spokesperson from each group read the pages written by that group.

6. Ask the students if there are some things that should change. Does the story make sense? Make appropriate changes.