Frindle - Novel Study

This year was the first time I tried an extended text as a read aloud. Extended text involves a lot of very close reading and asking the students to do more than just listen to the story or ask questions. It delves deeper into the text and the nuances of the novel, revealing more depth and meaning behind the text. The students need to do some serious thinking and interaction with the novel (insert groans and sighs from them here) but they come out on the other end understanding so much more.

Our first foray into this was Elizabeth George Banks's, Sign of the Beaver. I am ashamed to say I had never read it before. Once I did I really enjoyed it. It took us about three weeks to get through the entire novel. We did so many different activities that I pulled off of TpT for free that it got my brain thinking.

Our next novel was to be a little fun book by Andrew Clements. Scholastic had a sale on it in September for $1 so I bought the class their very own book. Now I could get them to do even more delving, this time with a highlighter! We've only read chapters one and two but already they are noticing things on their own and predicting about events to come. They love reading it and don't want me to stop.

As I was reading through it again for ideas, I started putting together a plan for what I wanted to teach. Well, that plan turned into an entire set of activities that I could use just from this short 135 page book. I worked on it over several days and finally had a product to put out for y'all to enjoy along with me.

But I had to know if it would actually work in a regular classroom, so I started using the activities in my classroom to get a feel for them.

And wouldn't you know it; they already noticed a mistake on one of the sheets. As we were going through the character sketch for Mrs. Granger, they saw that the textboxes actually referred to her as a 'he'. That's what i get for reusing a previous sheet. Don't worry. I already went back, fixed it, and  reloaded it.

I can't wait to try some of the other activities as well. So keep an eye out for further posts on this subject!

Oh, you can grab the Frindle Novel Study right here.