A Whale of a Tale: Tall Tales Flash Giveaway

I absolutely LOVE teaching Tall Tales!  I am so excited about starting this genre!

We always have sooooo much fun with it!  We read, put on plays, create puppets, write our own puppet scripts, write our own tall tale stories with exaggerations, sing songs, and hold a tall tale tea.....it's fantastic!  I'll be posting more about all of these as we go through the unit.

Now, I can add one more item to that list.  The students have been having a ball with our new craftivities this week.  Take a look at these....
I am definitely not an artist, but I do think they turned out pretty cute!  Each craftivity comes with all of the tracer templates needed to create the character and an "Is - Can - Has" chart (both in present and past-tense).

We've started using them this week and they've been FANTASTIC!!  Here's a little about how I've used them...

Completion:
After we read a tall tale about a character students work in small groups of 3 students to complete a craftivity.  I decided that it would take WAY tooooo long and use WAY tooooo much construction paper for each student to create each one on their own.  So, I give each small group the tracers and materials they need and they have to work together to trace, cut-out, and assemble the character.  Then they also work together to come up with facts they've learned about the characters to complete the charts.

It has been a GREAT teamwork activity!  They are so focused and serious about it! ;)  And, the charts and their discussions (as I roam around) really let me know what they have learned about that character and story.

Organization:
One reason that it has went so smoothly is because I think I did a good job of organizing the materials beforehand.  I knew that I wanted each small group to have their own tracers, so I printed 8 sets of each character's tracers.  {I know, I know...that is a lot of cutting.  I sent an email out to my parents to see if any of them would be willing to cut at home (you know that while most parents may not have time to volunteer AT school, they would LOVE to be involved and help from home) and I had 10 parents respond!!  Those babies were cut out and ready to be bagged in no time!}

I printed each set on a different color of cardstock.  You know there are always pieces left behind at clean-up time and I wanted to be able to easily locate the set with the missing piece if this was the case.  The great thing about the tracers is they have the character's initials on it and a label telling students what it is (for example, the tracer for John Henry's hat trim would say "JH hat trim" on it).

I put each set in a gallon-sized ziploc bag and then put all 8 sets in a 2-gallon ziploc bag labeled with the character's name.  I punched a hole in the top of the bags and hung them on a 3M hook in our class restroom for easy storage. (Hey, I use every inch of space in our room!)

Here's a look at a couple of the students' finished products this week....

I forgot to snap a pic of our John Henry products today, so I'll add that (along with Davy and Sally Ann Crockett) to tomorrow's Friday Flashback!

My plan is to make ANOTHER pack so I'll have all of the characters on-hand, but that's going to have to wait a bit because I'm in the middle of finishing up my Memoir Writing Unit....hopefully this weekend!

Would you like to be one of the first to own this Craftivity Pack?  I'll be giving one away to a commenter using the random number generator in a FLASH GIVEAWAY!! 

You can leave up to 4 comments -
1) comment once if you're a follower of Teacher's Clubhouse on Facebook

2) comment once if you're a follower of Teacher's Clubhouse on TPT

3) comment once if you're a follower of Lightbulb Minds on Facebook

3) comment once if you're a follower of Lightbulb Minds on TPT

I'll choose a winner TOMORROW when I post for the Friday Flashback!  Hope you'll join me! ;)
Congratulations to Cathy for winning this unit!!

66 comments

  1. These look super fun! I follow Teacher's Clubhouse on Facebook!
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  5. I love this idea! I follow Teacher's Clubhouse on TPT.
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  6. I saw these on Facebook yesterday and thought they were so cool! I follow Teacher's Clubhouse on FB!

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  37. Hi! I am a follower of Light Bulb Minds on TPT (kconsoli) Love the craftivity! Thanks for sharing!
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  38. I am a follower of Teacher's Clubhouse on TPT (kconsoli). Thanks again for sharing!

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