Today was my last day at Rawson Elementary School. I did a little bit of re-shelving of materials and helped administer some A.R. tests but the primary focus of the day was preparing and teaching my lesson on tall tales to third graders. I pulled six different tall tale books from the 398.2 section. The six main characters were John Henry, Mike Fink, Paul Bunyan, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett, Pecos Bill, and Johnny Appleseed. Five of the six books were written by Steven Kellogg.
The lesson consisted of breaking down the classes into six groups of 3-4 students. Each group would be given a book and would need to read it together and answer questions that I gave them in a handout. I wanted to emphasize the exaggerations that are mentioned in the books and generally in tall tales. I asked them if they knew what an exaggeration was and in each class a student was able to explain it and give an example. The questions I asked them in the handout were: Who is your tall tale about? What is their job? What is one exaggeration from the tall tale? and Do you think your character was a real person? Toward the end of the class I brought everyone back together and they shared their findings with the rest of the class.
I was a little worried when putting the lesson together that some of the information might be a little bit over a third grader's head, but for the most part they did pretty well and were able to answer the questions logically. I had to structure the groups a little more strictly toward the end of the day because a couple of the earlier classes misbehaved a bit. I gave them the freedom to choose where in the library their group would work, but I ended up scrapping that and then telling each group where to work. Of course, the last class went the best.
elementary hours today: 7
total elementary hours: 41
