Teaching with Tomie dePaola Books Part 1: Little Grunt and the Big Egg & A Giveaway

 Do you have an all-time, very favorite author?   This is

the first in a series of posts about teaching with books by

my all time, most very favorite author, Tomie dePaola.

 I adore Tomie books and they have a very special place

 in my little teacher heart!

I have so much to show you that I’ve spread it

out into several parts. And…I’ve added a giveaway,

a linky, and some freebies along the way!  It’s a GIVE-A-LI-BEE!

OK, I just made that word up but if you love Tomie books

you definitely don’t want to miss the giveaway at the end of this post!

(*Update: The giveaway is now closed)

We’re working our way through my Tomie dePaola Author Study

and started out by reading Little Grunt and the Big Egg.

We spent some time discussing

story elements and created this class chart.

Later, during our literacy stations, the kids got to take their

ideas and make these movable dinosaur eggs.

To extend our discussion of story elements I had my kiddos

make these story maps.

You can download a copy {HERE}

This is a chart we made last year while working on drawing conclusions.

Since Little Grunt had a pet dinosaur, we realized he might

need some help learning how to take care of it.

So during our writing block we made these nonfiction writing templates

to write informational books on caring

for your prehistoric pets.  We’ve focused lot on using informational text

and the importance and purpose of its many features

so they were pretty confident about  how to go about it.

We started by doing some dinosaur research and taking notes to be able to

include truefacts in our “fictional informational” books.  One of my boys was

so excited,”Mrs. Kamp! Mrs. Kamp, I think we just created a new genre!”

Don’t you just love it when that happens?

Each book included a table of contents, diagrams,

multiple headings,and illustrations

with captions.They also included a glossary at the end.

I love how these turned out!  My kids took this very seriously and really tried

to include everything you would need to know to care for a prehistoric pet.

Almost all of them included a section on what to do if it had babies!

One of my little friends said,  “Well, in real life you should RUN!”

We’ve been talking a lot about word choice and

shades of meaning in our writing and I thought this would be a

vivid example of  how an author chooses just the right words

to help the reader “see” and “feel” the story.

Plus….my kids are OBSESSED with HOT LAVA!

After a second reading, we brainstormed words and phrases from

the text that helped us create  mental images and wrote them

on these sticky notes.

I have several copies of the book and in our small groups students

found and marked passages they felt provided them with a good mental

picture of an erupting volcano.  I also asked them to determine which of their

five senses added to their visualization.

They then recorded what they found.

On a side note, I’ve been doing something different with my

anchor charts this year. I love making them and my kids love it

when we use them.  They can’t wait to see what the next “picture”

is going to be! But it takes time, so in an effort to work smarter

not harder,I’ve been looking for ways to reuse them! Have you seen

these glue sticks?  Ummm… Yes, please! I cut out the shapes

I want or have my students do it and voila! instant sticky note!

Laminate is a valuable commodity at my school and in limited supply!

I stopped laminating charts for that reason but also because the light reflects

on the plastic and makes them hard to read from most places in my room.

I want my kiddos to refer back to them but that can’t happen

 if they can’t see them!So I started using packing tape to wrap and fortify

 the corners.  I then staple over the tape

when I hang the charts and they don’t tear when I remove them! Ha!

My kids usually need a lot of practice writing dialogue and using

quotation marks correctly.That and the fact that they love

ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that looks like a comic book

and or is remotely related to a graphic novel we wrote Cave Kids Comics!

We compared a caveman to a modern man.  I’m continually

 working with my kids to go deeper and use higher level

thinking when comparing and contrasting. None of this

 “They’re both boys” stuff. or “They both have hair.”

Makes me a little crazy. I asked them to think past the

“outside” and the obvious visual information on the page

and think instead about the “inside” of a modern man

and a cave man.

I was really impressed with what they came up with!
I love “goes to grocer”!Grocer was one of our spelling words
the week before(Yay! He remembered AND used it AND
spelled it correctly!) and not oneof my kiddos had ever heard it
before.  It turned into one of those”you could never
have planned it if you tried” teachable moments that we all love!
We ended up talking aboutequivalent weights and
measurement. It makes myteacher heart so happy when
that happens! Did you know that the root word
of grocery is grossus?  In latin it means “large, bulky, thick”.
The idea being that a grocer buys things in ‘grosses’ or large quantities
such as a ‘gross’. There’s your vocabulary lesson for the day!

You can find all of this and much more in my
Tomie dePaola Author Study

Click on the links below to see more posts in this series.

Win a copy of my Tomie Author Study and a 10-book set of Tomie dePaola books!

PLUS…The Art Lesson Interactive CD-ROM!

I found this little oldie but goodie on Amazon and my class LOVES it!

I loaded it onto my student computers to use during literacy centers and it’s been a huge hit!

Enter below to win!

Thanks so much for stopping by! For more ideas and activities to teach with Tomie books
visit my Tomie dePaola board on Pinterest!