Books as Metaphors for Year-Long Messages

Any book has the potential for exploration through sound, image, movement, and/or drama. It can be a culminating step, or an introduction to an idea. It can stand alone, or be paired with other pieces of literature.

Here are some messages, the book title, and a brief description of a getting started activity. They are just models, and you can modify them, or find other books that work with these same activities. Have fun!

Message: Each day is a new start, and should be used to the fullest.

Book: The Way to Start the Day, by Byrd Baylor, illustrated by Peter Parnall

Activity:

• Read the book to the second page of text. Stop at “Just sing it.” Or read the book through if students seem interested.
• Think about and suggest possible words that would be important to say to begin each day.
• Write these phrases on sentence strips or the board, then combine and recombine them, adding new words until it has a flow.
• Write this morning greeting on beautiful paper with illustrations, and put it up to read as the classes greets every day.
• Add movement or instruments as it make sense.

Message: Sometimes our body language says more than our words.

Book: Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka

Activity:

• In pairs, each choose one of the characters to portray.
• On each page, make a statue of character, showing the body shape and facial expression. Work on the details. Is there eye contact? How are the shoulders held? What is the emotion being expressed?
• Now go back and repeat, adding the text.
• Leave the book at a center for pairs to practice and enjoy.

Message: Everyone is important in lots of little ways, and one big way.

Book: The Important Book, by Margaret Wise Brown.
Another Important Book, by Margaret Wise Brown, illus. by Chris Raschka

Activity:

• Read the book and discover the pattern.
• Decide on a writing project to create a class “Important Book,” using some category such as individuals in the class, behaviors, subjects they will study during the year, people in the school community, or objects they use to learn such as pencils, musical instruments, hula hoops, crayons, paper, the board, books, and so on.
• Decide how they will collect ideas for each item. For example: a flip chart page could be put up for each one, and they could walk around and put their ideas on those pages. Then each pair or small group could be responsible for turning the ideas into a page or series of pages for the book, with illustrations.
• Compare the illustrations of the two Important Books, and choose a style. (The art teacher could probably help with this!)
• Construct a first draft, conference and edit, revise, and finally publish.
• Be sure you are all working on the same size paper.

Message: Sometimes literature is not just words.

Book (Literature/Speech Piece): “Bakery Shop,” collected from Margaret Campbelle-Holman, in Share the Music, Grade 1.

Activity:

• Teach the poem by echo.
• Listen and tell it back.
• Listen to each phrase and move it, then tell it back.
• Clarify any missing words.
• Add movement – hand clapping game (steady beat, pattern, sequence, unilateral movement, both sides of the brain)
• Write the phrase chunks, and plan what will go on each page.
• Make an illustrated book.
  

Message: Understanding the process is more important that having the product. When you copy someone else’s work, you have one idea. If you learn the process and create your own, you have a thousand ideas.

Book: The Spider Weaver, by Margaret Musgrove and Julia Cairns

Activity:

• Cut shapes of construction paper, and have the students each write a dream or a goal for the year on the paper. Put these pieces on a spider web made of string or yarn, on the bulletin board or sticky nylon sheet.
• Preview the story, finding the shapes on each page.
• Read and dramatize the story, either choosing roles, or all acting out each role.
• Invent music to represent the web by choosing different sounds for each shape.
• Invent weaving movement to show how the web weaves pathways of different shapes that are all part of the picture.
• Design their own Kente cloth designs to repesent themselves, and use it as a border and design for a self portrait.
• Debrief and discuss the message of the book. Consider what goals for the coming year can be set, including using imagination, taking risks, and thinking about how they can use the ideas they learn.

Now you add your own books and activities to this list!

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