Arts Bridge Visit #3

I love visiting Mrs. Gile's class!! They get so excited when I walk into the room and I just love how engaged and enthusiastic 1st graders are! Every time I ask a question everyone raises their hand (even if they don't actually know the answer haha) and everyone wants to volunteer and participate! I love this class and age group!!

For this lesson we explored how to portray different characters while reading and working creatively with the book Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman.

To start out, I asked the kids what holiday is coming up at the end of the month. Then I asked several of the kids what characters they are going to dress up as for Halloween. When they responded I had them show me what this character looks like, sounds like, what kind of clothes they wear, etc.

Then I started reading the book Big Pumpkin. When each character was introduced I asked the kids to show me a frozen picture of what that character (witch, ghost, vampire, and mummy as the story goes on) looks like. I also had them say “Big Pumpkin” and the line “Drat!” in the way they think that specific character would. 

Once we got to the part where the bat is introduced and laughed at I stopped the story and asked them about why they think everyone laughed at the bat. We took a quick moment to discuss possible reasons (i.e. he is too small to help, doesn’t have hands so he couldn’t pull the pumpkin, etc.). I asked the students to choose one of the characters in their mind and asked them (after the count of 3) to pretend to be that character and laugh as their character and point/roll eyes/shake head etc. at the bat.  How do you think that made the bat feel? Then continued with the next few lines, “I may not be big and I may not be strong,” said the bat. But I have an idea.” I then told the students that we are going to “pause” the book for a bit, however, we will still find out what the bat’s idea was in just a bit.  

I had everyone sit in a big circle and told them that the person right next to them is their partner for the next activity. I went around to each of the partner groups and gave them a piece of paper that either said “Witch”, “Ghost”, “Mummy”, or “Vampire”. Once they were all assigned a character I had them work with their partner to think of another way that their specific character would try to get the pumpkin off the vine. For example, if they get “Witch”, what can a witch do to get a pumpkin off? What does she have at her house maybe that she can use? How would she act as she is trying to get the pumpkin off? I gave everyone a few minutes to talk about it and then we discussed what some of the groups came up with, having several of the groups that wanted to share their idea come up to the front and act it out.

Next I continued to read the book to the end. After the book was finished I asked the students what the bat’s idea was. Why did the pumpkin come off the vine when everyone pulled rather than when just one person tried? Have you ever had a time where you had to work together with other people to get something done?

If there was extra time (which did not end up happening :/) I would have had the students reflect again on how the bat felt when everyone laughed at him and how he probably feels now that his idea worked out. I would then have the students write letters to the bat (as the same character that they were for the partner exercise) saying whatever they think the bat needs to hear, whether that is apologizing to him for laughing, or thanking him for the great idea to work together.