1st Graders Write Similes Prior to a Read Aloud

Rather than responding to a read aloud last week I asked students to create a project and then I read them a related story. Along with the 2nd graders we have been studying similes. 1st graders have also been working on antonyms. I asked each of them to create a My Story book with 6 pages responding to 3 sets of antonyms and using a simile to do so. They were free to choose their own antonym pairs but we did brainstorm several such as cold/hot, tall/short, etc. The last direction was that each simile had to be about themselves.  Once they were finished I read them Audrey Wood's Quick as a Cricket. Finally they paired up and compared what they wrote to what they heard in Audrey Wood's book.