Make Your Masterpiece

It’s Week 3 of the TPT Seller Challenge and luckily it was a 1½ week challenge because I’m coming in at the last minute!  This week, the assignment was “Make Your Masterpiece” and I decided to add another FREE Novel Unit to my TPT Store.

I recently created a “blog button” (see sidebar to the right near the bottom) and chose a polka dot bow for the graphic.  One of my favorite things about my Novel Units, and the reason I started creating them for my own classroom originally, is that I wanted to have everything I needed to teach a novel WELL, covering as many standards as possible, tied up in one neat package.  While my free products aren’t bundled together due to the ten page limit for free items, you can still find everything you need to teach the novel following the links to each free product.

It’s no secret that I love Roald Dahl.  My Comprehension Packet for The BFG is my best selling product and I now have eight different Novel Units for Roald Dahl books available in my store (three of them are FREE).  The Twits was an easy choice for this challenge because I can easily exhibit everything my Novel Units encompass with any Roald Dahl book.  Dahl’s strong characters, plot twists, rich vocabulary and relatable humor have kept his books favorites in most every elementary school classroom since I was a child. 

A popular Roald Dahl quote reads, “If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”  I didn’t realize until writing this Novel Unit that the quote comes from this book. (The Twits, p. 9)  That isn’t the only treasure found in this little novel, as Dahl snuck in several important life lessons amid the humor.  The theme is clear: the way you live your life will catch up with you in the end- good or bad.  It’s never too early to learn that lesson!

Make sure you snatch this freebie and while you’re there, check out my freebies for The Magic Finger and Esio Trot as well. 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Last night Brent asked what I was working on.  “A novel unit for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” I answered.  He said, “That was a book before it was a movie?”  I just looked at him, blankly.  Sometimes I forget the difference in regular street knowledge and teacher knowledge.  “Of course it was a book before it was a movie!” I answered, “Don’t you remember reading it as a kid?”  Brent shook his head so I checked the copyright on the book.  It was written in 1964, over a decade even before my older man was born.  “A classic!” I told him.

There’s something extra special about writing a novel unit for a book I loved as a kid.  I found myself rereading passages, both as I relived the way I pictured them 20 years ago and in awe of how exactly they planned the original movie to match the book (think Gene Wilder, not Johnny Depp).  This may very well be THE most fun children’s book to read and then watch the movie adaptation for—it’s just delightful the way the characters and setting were brought to life to life so accurately 40 years ago without the benefit of computer technology.

This novel unit finishes off a set of Roald Dahl units that I plan to use in my own classroom in April for a Roald Dahl author study.  I simply love Roald Dahl.  None of his books are necessarily my very favorite stand-alone children’s book, but he IS my favorite all-around children’s author.  He was a creative genius, plain and simple and his books are rich with inspiring and heart-warming themes. 

It’s always different to study a book as an adult than it was when I was younger, and this time I was struck by the fact that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is about a whole lot more than Oompa-Loompas and chocolate rivers.  It’s about hope and a mind-blowing turn of events for a boy named Charlie Bucket whose life had seemed hopeless.  As Willy Wonka told Charlie in the last chapter,  “You mustn’t despair!  Nothing is impossible!” (p. 152)  Let this classic novel remind you…

(20% off in my TPT store through Saturday)

A Snicker of Magic

“So you keep catching them words, you hear?  Pluck them out of the wind.  String them together like the finest set of pearls.  Line them up on paper.  And if it hurts too much to say them, then you sing them, or whisper them, or write them into a story.  But don’t waste them.  Your words matter more than you know.” (p. 181)

I love words.  Whether I’m writing, reading, teaching, or playing a word game, they captivate me.  The lyrics in a song, the way a student responds to a question, a text from a friend, words off the page in a book…it all gets in my head, and, often, the words work their way deep into my soul.

Such was the case with my latest novel unit.  Typically, I highlight as I read children’s books- vocabulary words, quotations for analysis, figurative language… But as I read this book, I found myself highlighting for entirely different reasons.  This author truly has a way with words and I found myself marking quotation after quotation- life-applicable and attitude-altering ideas, not just words to fill the page of a children’s book. When an author puts into words a feeling you’ve experienced but have yet to articulate…there’s nothing else like it.  In A Snicker of Magic, Natalie Lloyd did that for me again and again.

If my current enthusiasm doesn’t fade, this book will remain on my personal all-time top three children’s books list.  The novel is nothing short of amazing; the clever plot, endearing characters and (the aptly named) snicker of magic held my attention from cover to cover.  Moreover, the life lessons embedded within the plot are priceless.  The main character of the book, Felicity Pickle, has a gift that enables her to see words hovering around people- their thoughts, feelings, wishes… the very core of who they are.  Such an interesting concept… how different our world would be if we could see each other that way.  Her gift also applied to objects, and it left me thinking about what words I would see hovering around this book if I had her gift.  I decided on these three:

Hardships.

“Everything you touch, everything you smell, everything you taste, every picture you see – all of that has the potential to call up a sad memory.  You can’t choose what comes up first.  But you can choose to replace it with something good.” (p. 265)

Home. 

“Home isn’t just a house or a city or a place; home is what happens when you’re brave enough to love people.” (p. 302)

 Hope.

“Hope doesn’t fizzle or flicker or burn out.  Hope isn’t the same as other words.  Hope holds steady.” (p. 174)

The themes of this book resonated deep inside me, and the words the author used grabbed hold of me… perhaps because we all have those three words hovering around us.  We’re all stumbling through hardships, searching for a place that feels like home, and holding onto hope, just like Felicity Pickle.  I have found that these truths hold whether we’re ten years old or a hundred years old, and whether you’re on either end of that spectrum or somewhere in between, I believe A Snicker of Magic will speak to your soul, as it did mine.

20% off through Tuesday, February 3rd

Sideways Stories from Wayside School

I recently completed my 30^th Novel Unit for my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  With this milestone, I’ve been trying to think up new ways to promote my products.  One change I made in hopes of gaining more followers (follow me on TPT here) is that new products are 20% off for the first 48 hours they’re posted.  However, that’s left me thinking about how the first 29 novel units never got their moment in the spotlight.  So, I’ve decided to highlight a novel unit every so often and put it on sale (20% off) for a few days following…

Introducing my first Novel Unit Spotlight: Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar.  It’s an odd choice perhaps because I’ve never even used this particular novel unit in my classroom, but I’m planning to use it next quarter, and I’m excited about it.  There’s always something fun about teaching a novel that I read as a child…this book was written in 1978!  It’s pretty silly and strange, but kids love the offbeat humor and unpredictability.

I chose this novel to support my unit on summarizing.  The short chapters will be perfect for practicing this skill, and I’m not the only person who thought so.  One of my favorite TPT authors, Deb Hanson, uses the novel in her SummarizingPowerPoint.  On my Final Test for the book, the constructed response question asks students to choose one chapter and change it to a short play in order to test both summarizing skills and knowledge of drama.  And of course, every page of my Comprehension Packets requires students to summarize the pages they read that day.

An added bonus is that Scholastic Book Clubs has this novel on sale for only $1 in this month’s 4^th Graders flyer!

In my opinion, the best part about reading children’s literature is finding new favorite quotations…lines that make me think, make me laugh, warm my heart, or stop me in my tracks so that I can read them again.  There are treasures like this in every quality children’s book, even the silly ones where you may not expect it.  My favorite quote from Louis Sachar in Sideways Stories from Wayside School comes in Chapter 16: “You need a reason to be sad.  You don’t need a reason to be happy.” (p. 73)  If you give this book a try, hope it gives you a reason to be happy, even though you don’t really need one!

Here’s a preview of my Sideways Stories from Wayside School Novel Unit... All my products from this novel will be on sale (20% off) now through Saturday.  (Link to my TPT store at top of home page.) Happy reading!