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There’s “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs,” Then There’s “The True True Story”…
Last July, ICS 5th Grade Teacher Megan Welsh went to Las Vegas to attend a conference on differentiated instruction – a method for presenting educational material in a variety of ways to reach all learners. Ms. Welsh came back with an idea for an innovative classroom collaborative project, which she implemented right away. It was derived from a session on “Creating Engaging Reading and Writing Projects.” Ms. Welsh says, “This type of project is great because it teaches students the process of retelling a story. Summarizing is a critical skill for students to master to be successful in other subjects, particularly in reading, science, and social studies.”
To initiate the project, the class discussed the key elements of a children’s book. The students then read “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” by author Jon Scieszka for enjoyment. Next, Ms. Welsh read the story aloud to the class so they could focus on identifying greater details. The third time through, the class read the story for deeper meaning. During this reading, a small group of students acted out scenes from the book. Then the class collaboratively re-wrote the story (exercising writer’s license!), with the students’ collective personality shining through. “Generally, we kept to the storyline,” says Ms. Welsh, “but we made sure to add our own little quirks.”
Once the story was retold in the kids’ own words, every student was assigned a partner. Each pair of students was assigned the task of providing a colorful illustration for a single page. Ms. Welsh then bound the pages, thereby creating a new Irvington-generated version of “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.”
Of course, developing a children’s book – even recreating a new version of the original – isn’t all fun and games. Ms. Welsh comments, “One of the biggest challenges we found as a class in particular was to make sure the wolf (i.e., the main character, Alexander T. Wolf, who himself attempts to rewrite “history”) looked the same throughout the book, given that we had so many artists working on so many individual pages.”
Judging from the kids’ enthusiasm for the project and the final product, Ms. Welsh was quite satisfied with the results. “It showed me that the students mastered being able to effectively summarize a story. It also demonstrated the wonderful job they can do when they work together.”
Worth noting, the project met a number of Indiana Educational Standards, including:
- Reading 5.2.2: Analyze text that is organized in sequential or chronological order.
- Reading 5.3.2: Identify the main problem or conflict of the plot and explain how it is resolved.
- Reading 5.3.8: Identify the speaker or narrator in a selection and tell whether the speaker or narrator is a character involved in the story.
- Reading 5.5.7: Write summaries that contain the main ideas of the reading selection and the most significant details.