Next week will be pure madness in the classroom...the good kind. We are hosting a Living Museum next Thursday on our tall tale heroes. If you've never heard of a Living Museum before...well...don't feel bad, I hadn't either until about six months ago! For a Living Museum, you have the kids dress up as historical characters (or whatever-I mean, we're doing tall tales because that's one of our standards) and "come to life" as that person when the visitors come through the "museum." To prepare for the Living Museum, we've been doing a lot of research and writing over the past few weeks! To start the project, I hung half sheets of chart paper around the room with pictures of the tall tale heroes. (In case you're not savvy on the Georgia standard...we're supposed to learn about Davey Crockett, Annie Oakley, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Johnny Appleseed. I added a couple of extras-Pecos Bill and Thunder Rose-so that my groups wouldn't get too big. I figure a little enrichment won't hurt!) The kids picked their tall tale hero knowing NOTHING about their person, which added to the fun!
Then the research began. I put out books about the people under the posters as well as simple passages from my good friend Bethany's Tall Tales unit. The kids read about their people and added facts on sticky notes to their poster. I walked around the room and provided extra support. (For example, for some groups I sat down with them and read their texts along with them. For other groups, we just chatted about what they learned and the facts that they put on their posters.) This past week we spent a lot of time crafting their scripts for the Museum...and I'm so impressed! They each have 5+ sentences about their tall tale hero. This weekend I'm going to laminate their final drafts for durability so next week they can practice with their groups during Read to Someone time.
Here's a couple of pictures I snapped...I need to take some more. Pecos Bill's group did an AMAZING job and have the cutest sentences...I'll try to remember to take some more pictures this week!
So much fun and what a great way to keep them actively engaged the week before a break. My friend Bethany and I (along with my favorite professor of all time at Georgia College) are going to present about the Living Museum at Literacy Research Association next month. We are so pumped! Just to give you an idea, we started working together LAST fall on informational writing and talked about how it would be amazing to present at LRA. Can't wait!
Aside from The Living Museum, next week I'm going to try to squeeze in some fun turkey time things around the madness. I did make another little reader for next week about Thanksgiving. It's a simple little book for some of my ELL kids who are going to experience their first Thanksgiving in America this year-isn't that awesome? Anyway, I posted the reader as a freebie in my TpT shop! I downloaded a bunch of other amazing Thanksgiving resources that other sellers are giving away as freebies so I thought I'd join in...you can find it here!
I will be back later this week with more pics from the Living Museum!
No comments