Just before Easter break I read 'Mutt Dog' by Stephen Michael King to the Preps. Our Learning Intention was - We are learning about settings in stories
I had been reading books and pointing out the setting and not making a big deal about it until now.
Next term we are doing Fairy Tales and will be studying lots about setting, plot and characters.
The reason I do this now is to prepare them for what is called the reciprocity of reading and writing. i.e., if we know and look for settings in books that we read- we can write great stories because we know what they need to have in them.
This makes the writing process fluid and meaningful.
After reading the book - we discuss the two settings in the book. Each child gets an A3 sheet and we fold it in half - a task in itself. On one half we draw the city and the other half we draw the country. 
We look at colour, background and detail in the text and then in our own drawings. Half way through we go for a 'gallery walk' (Claire I worked with last introduced this to me). The children tidy their space and walk around the room looking at how other student's have used colour, background and detail and then go back and make changes/improvements to their own work. 
Then when this is done I gave them a picture of Mutt Dog to colour and cut and then glue on one side of the page. They then sit with a buddy and talk about why they chose that setting.
This can be used as a writing task to record what we know about settings or beginning and end of the story.
They look super cute on display.
