Mrs. McGowan's
First Grade Spring Lake, NJ
| Tales
of a |
 |
Nothing
by Judy Blume |
A Collaborative
Project with students of
Mary Kreul, Grade 4
Richards Elementary School
Whitefish bay, Wisconsin
Dr. Rachel Karchmer
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, Virginia |
 We were invited to
participate in a literacy project with a fourth grade class in Wisconsin and student
teachers from Virginia Commonwealth University. We have been listening to Tales
of a Fourth Grade Nothing and discussing it in small groups and with the whole
class. Even firstgraders can appreciate Peter's difficulties, living with a little
brother like Fudge!
What a fun story!
Mrs. Kreul's 4th graders and Dr.
Karchmer's VCU students also read this book. The college students have been keypals
with the elementary students for the project. They wrote by email and told us about
their favorite parts of the story and we did the same.
While the 4th graders and college
students discussed the book in Literature Circles, we needed a format that was more
suitable for first grade. Our groups are called Story Circles.
This is our initial attempt at doing a
small group book talk. Our Story Circles consisted of two - four students with no
assigned roles. Everyone was expected to contribute their ideas and Mrs. M. was the
facilitator for all the groups.
The first time we gathered in groups
after listening to 3 chapters of the story, Mrs. M. asked the children to discuss
"what they thought of the book." One group was asked to have their Story
Circle with the rest of the class listening. They started to talk about their favorite
part of the book and that discussion idea carried over to the other groups when it was
their turn.
Subsequent Story Circles also had a
topic suggested by a student and was used by all the groups. Topics discussed were
favorite part after 3 chapters, character descriptions, and favorite part after book was
completed.
During the whole-class read aloud,
connections were frequently made to students' personal experiences. The class saw
the similarity of this story to the Junie B. Jones stories because Junie B. also has a
little brother who gets lots of attention. One of the most interesting connections
made during the reading was the frequency that Peter was asked to help persuade Fudge to
do something he didn't want to do.
Upon completion of the reading, our
VCU keypals suggested the acrostic poem and illustration response activities for us to do.
They wrote special acrostic Poems also. Our 4th grade
partners and their VCU keypals have a variety of literacy activities to share.
Make sure you visit their pages!
We wrote
acrostic poems (click to read more about acrostics) to show what we've
learned about some of the story characters. The students selected characters to
write about, shared words and phrases in their small group (2 - 4 students), and started
to write their poems. Mrs. M. came to each group and we reread what was written,
added new words as needed. Then the group read their poem to the class. When
we got stuck and couldn't think of a word, the whole class was asked to help. This
activity was a terrific example of student collaboration. All the children are very
proud of their shared writing. Click on a character's name to read our poems and see the illustration thumbnails (click on image to see larger
version). |
Peter
by C.J. & Tyler |
Sheila
by Victoria & Giana |
Mr. Hatcher
by Sean & Patrick |
Fudge
by Justin, Paige, John, Joanna |
Turtle, the Dog
by Erin, Steven & friends |
Dribble
by Steven, Erin, & friends |
| Additional Activities |
Jennie
by Connor & Sarah |
Standards |
| Literature Circles Online Resources |
Since
our students had become so familiar with the characters in Tales of a 4th Grade
Nothing, they were able to use a Venn Diagram to show similarities and differences
between Peter and Fudge. We made large circles on our chalkboard to show this
graphic organizer. The information dictated by our students is shown here in this
table:
Peter |
Both |
Fudge |
| 9 years old |
brothers |
3 years old |
| good kid |
boys |
had food on his head |
| not happy |
children |
swallowed teeth |
| Jimmy Fargo, a friend |
went to movie |
got lots of attention
and was naughty |
| wanted to be in Toddle
Bike commercial |
went to dad's work |
was in the commercial
ate Dribble |
| has a puppy |
went to commercial |
ate Dribble |
We had so much fun with this!
We continued doing the same comparison of two classmates and even Santa and the Easter
Bunny!
Another activity we tried was to explain certain
phrases that were in the story. This was not as easy as we thought it might be.
Here are a few that we did successfully:
| Mr.
Hatcher |
"Fudge, you will
eat that cereal or you will wear it!" |
| Erin |
He will dump it on
Fudge's head. |
| Sheila |
"Swell, Mrs.
Hatcher!" "Don't you worry. Fudgie will be just fine." |
| Giana |
Sheila wanted to watch Fudge at the
park. |
| Mrs.
Hatcher |
"Show them how, Peter. Take
a balloon and demonstrate." |
| Joanna |
She wanted Peter to show the kids at
Fudge's party how to dance with the balloon. |
| Mrs.
Hatcher |
"I don't like the
way he smells." |
| Connor |
She was talking about Peter's new
turtle, Dribble. |
| Fudge |
"Wanted to touch the bears."
"But bears are all gone." |
| Sarah |
He wanted to play with the bears on
the screen in the movies. |
|
|
