Pagoo's Adventure in Deep Hole

We have been doing mini-terms of six weeks each for the last few months, and I really like this format, as it gives the routines a chance to settle in, as well as allowing us to change up what is not working after six weeks. All of that to say we are having exams for the last three days of this week, and I want to share one of Cornflower's exam narrations. She considers _Pagoo_ by Holling C. Holling one of her "worst books", but did a detailed and dramatic retelling of Pagoo's adventure in Deep Hole-- just goes to show that even a book that a child isn't fond of may catch his or her imagination. (There are a couple of vocabulary mix-ups that we talked about later.) This was an oral narration recorded onto the computer-- I typed it out afterward.

I am going to tell you about Pagoo's adventure in Deep Hole. Now, Pagoo had-- there was a fish darting at Pagoo, and there was this big hole that the fish wouldn't go in, so Pagoo jumped into the hole, and the fish kept on staring at him for awhile until he got bored of staring at him!

Now, there was a cave in this hole, and in that cave was an octopus. And I will describe the octopus to you soon. And he-- the octopus had went-- there were a lot of shells there, and the one that Pagoo was wearing was too small, and Old Instinct said for him not to go over there to get some shells! But Pagoo was tired of Old Instinct! He did not want to listen to him anymore. He decided, "I will do what I want!"

So he went over and got some shells-- and picked out a shell-- and then he saw the octopus. He was eating a hermit crab [Mom's note: it was actually a snail]. Pagoo was very scared. Now, this is how the octopus ate the hermit crab. Now, you see, the octopus didn't just take its fin and grab the hermit crab. He took his tentacles on his arm-- little things that look like little-- I don't know what you call them, but they stick to your counter*. And they were on the inside of his arm, on the side where our palm is. They're little circle round things, and he caught him in one tentacle and gave the hermit crab to the other tentacle and he made the other tentacle give it to the other tentacle and so on and so on.

Now, Pagoo was very scared. He wanted to run, so he started, and he tried to climb up the deep hole, but the octopus caught sight of him and grabbed him. But he had a good getaway. He wasn't eaten.

*She means suction cups.