Tomie dePaola and a Strega Nona Freebie

One of my very favorite authors is Tomie dePaola.  I just love his themes and his illustrations. I also love that you can just about find a Tomie book to teach any comprehension strategy or skill.  Many of his books are based on his memories from childhood and all of his books are a teacher's dream for teaching about text connections, point of view, author's purpose, generalizations, prior knowledge, drawing conclusions, cause and effect, problem/solution….I could go on and on! 

My team and I like to do author studies during our fourth quarter and include all of our projects as part of our end of the year open house.  Of course in our class, we learned all about Tomie dePaola and read every Tomie book we could squeeze in!  My kiddos were already familiar with this author as my district uses Houghton Mifflin Reading and two of his books are included in our second grade reading curriculum, The Art Lesson and Little Grunt and the Big Egg.  My kids love those stories and all things 
Tomie as much as I do! 

Here are some of the things we did during our author study:

We started out by reading The Art Lesson and talking about the author's viewpoint.  This was a bit tricky for some of my kiddos. It took a bit of discussion and some "I wonder if-ing" on my part to get my second graders in the mindset of putting themselves in the author's shoes, but once they got there they took off running!

As we created this anchor chart, we discussed some of the things the main character says and does   and what insight that might give us into how the author thinks and feels. 

We made a little author's viewpoint craftivity, but all I have is this sad little picture.  I thought I took pictures of some finished work but can't for the life of me find them now! Darn it.

Here are some of the things we did with  Little Grunt and the Big Egg.

I love these little problem/solution dinosaur eggs!

We spent the next two weeks reading many of the  Strega Nona books.  I love these books, they are my all time favorites!  We talked alot about theme, prior knowledge, text-to-text connections and cause and effect with these. 

Tomie dePaola uses a lot of Italian words in the Strega Nona stories so we began to collect them on an anchor chart.  Next year, I'll have students use sticky notes and add them as they find them in the stories.  We also made these little Italian dictionaries. The pages get cut apart and stapled into a little book.

 Here are a few of the graphic organizers my kiddos made.  We compared, described, defined and formed analogies every which way! I had students write text evidence in the frame of reference next to their entries.

 

                                          This is a problem/solution flap book we made.

These are some of the anchor charts we made beforehand.

I projected this little anchor chart on my SMARTBoard while reviewing cause and effect

with my kiddos. They then made Big Anthony cause and effect tri-folds. 

After reading Strega Nona Takes a Vacation, students imagined where else Strega Nona might travel and wrote postcards home from Strega Nona's point of view. 

On an "armadillo watch" in Texas!

Cruisin' in a limo in Hollywood!

The back says"  I wish you were here to stop this ride!

We also did this little writing activity to remind Big Anthony about some very important things!  The girls were Strega Nona, the boys Big Anthony. My kids had no idea what tying a string on your finger meant!   When I explained it, one little cutie said,
 "My dad just sets his phone."!

Of course, I was thrilled when most of my kids wrote about the important things to remember when regrouping, telling time, dividing words into syllables etc. and then there was
 "When it's time to go to bed, don't forget to turn off the tv if you hear your Mom coming."
I love that one!
 I really fell down on the job when it came to getting pictures of those!
Maybe I need a string on my finger to help me remember to take pictures!

 

"When you play with your Legos don't forget to put them away. If you don't there would be no more space for lunch and my baby brother could choke on them."

"When you are writing a letter don't forget to write a greeting and a closing because
 then it is't a letter its a note."   Sound advice don't you think?

 We talked alot about character traits and did a little sorting activity with the character traits of Strega Nona and Big Anthony.

Students also made a mini-art gallery of their favorite Tomie characters and wrote

character traits on the back of their "canvases".  They then displayed them

on their "museum floor".

I wouldn't want to run into Bambalona in a dark alley!

We made these nifty little author study folders to hold all of our projects and display on our desks!

We used the Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then strategy to help us write

"sandwich summaries" of Tony's Bread.

We used this grapic organizer to discuss and record how the main character changes during the story.

As promised, here's a little freebie. 

This is a whole to parts brace map to decompose the setting into its parts.
Students draw Strega Nona's kitchen including important details then break it down into its
individual parts.

Click {here}to download this freebie.

On a side note... I have to give a shout out to Michelle at 3am Teacher, who is oh so talented
(and generous!), and made the frames for this unit for me.

If you love Tomie books and would like to do this author study with your class,

I've put together all of these activities and many, many more

 in my Tomie dePaola Author Study Unit.

Click on the buttons below to  find it:

I hope you're all having a great summer so far!