Teaching With Tomie dePaola Books Part 3: The Strega Nona Series & A Linky

We're well into week three of our Tomie dePaola author study 

and knee deep in Strega Nona's world!  My class has fallen 

in love with the characters in these books. Their folkloric quality, 

Big Anthony's bumbling, Bambolona's brusqueness and 

Strega Nona's endearing ways have captured their hearts 

and their attention.

We began this part of our study by reading Strega Nona and 

answering the question,  "What is a strega?" 

During our discussion my kiddos brainstormed examples 

and synonyms for the kindhearted "Grandma Witch". 

We then defined a strega with these pasta pot circle maps.

We've been comparing story elements along the way and one of the
things my class noticed immediately is that all of the Strega Nona
books take place in Calabria, Italy,  which is also the author's
ancestal home. We read Strega Nona's "biography", 

Strega Nona: Her Story, and  looked closer at some of the
"settings within the setting".  

We talked about how Strega Nona's house and kitchen are key
locations in many of the stories.  My class decided this
made perfect sense to them since Strega Nona has many visitors
come to her house and when company comes
where do you go?  The kitchen!

My kiddos pour over the illustrations in these books taking in
all of the details, and looking for the little visual extras
and references to other stories that Tomie dePaola 

so often includes. One of the things I love from a teaching
standpoint about his books is that the illustrations flow from
picture to story directly supporting the text.

 We used a brace map to decompose the elements of this setting.

After reading Strega Nona: Her Story and Big Anthony: His Story 

we compared the childhoods, life stories, and character traits 

of these two main characters.  We sorted them and some 

of my kiddos called these "sorting hats" just like in Harry Potter!

In many of his books, especially the Strega Nona series, Tomie dePaola 

includes lots of Italian words.

As we read through our books we collected these words and wrote 

them on sticky notes.   I pulled out my sticky note stash and it was 

a unanimous vote that we use the hearts! Of course it's because 

Tomie dePaola includes a little heart somewhere 

in many of his illustrations and my kiddos love to try to find it!

I reused our chart from last year by cutting off the artwork 

and gluing it to a new page since I had written on the previous one.

During our literacy centers we made Italian dictionaries.

My very favorite book in this series is Strega Nona Takes a Vacation. 

It's fun to see Strega Nona out of her element and my kiddos think 

the beach scenes with her in the old fashioned bathing suit are hysterical! 

After we read the book we talked about why Strega Nona might 

need a vacation and what destinations she might choose.  

The kids wrote in their notebooks about the kinds of things 

Strega Nona might do to relax on her trip and in our writing center 

they wrote postcards home to Calabria from Strega Nona's point of view. 

Strega Nona sent a postcard to remind Big Anthony to do his chores!

My kiddos love Big Anthony because he is such a goof!  

I love him because he's a walking example of cause and effect! 

We made these little trifolds to show the causes and effects of 

the fact that Big Anthony NEVER pays attention!

Not only is Anthony a disaster waiting to happen but he is 

extremely forgetful!  We did this little writing activity and 

I took pictures of my class with a string tied around their finger. 

 I had to explain the meaning of  "tie a string on your finger" 

to help you remember. They just couldn't get over the 

fact that anyone would do that rather than just setting a reminder 

on their phone! Ha!

"When you tell time, don't forget to look at the hour hand first 

and then the minute hand."

I can just hear this little one's mother saying, "When you cut 

something with a knife don't forget to put it away 

so your little brother doesn't cut his finger off!"

It's good to remember to always pay for your groceries!                  

We also did some pasta punctuation practice in our literacy centers.

I wrote sentences on strips and found these little salsa pots at the Dollar Tree.

You can download a copy of this {HERE}.

We found a lot of patterns in story events during our study 

and one of my boys noticed and thought it was pretty cool 

that "things overflow a lot in Tomie books!"  

We had just been talking the day before about Big Anthony 

being "overwhelmed" by all of the love sick ladies chasing him 

after he takes Strega Nona's magic ring and "turned hansdsome".  

I pointed out that both of those words began with the prefix "over" 

and that many of the events in these books are "over the top".  

It was music to my ears when my second graders started coming up 

with these big words and so we used them to compare Tomie

stories by forming analogies. (Ah, *teacher bliss*) 

We used this list to help us form analogies between events

and story elements.

This little friend piped up while sharing hers and said,

"The setting for these is OVERseas... well , except for Texas!"

I know this is the longest post ever, but before I go I wanted

to show you a little treasure I got this year.  It's the most beautiful

pop-up book!

And.....guess what??

I was looking around on the Barnes & Noble site and stumbled upon this...

A NEW Tomie book! Coming out in October 2014!

If you'd like to do this author study with your class you can! All of this and 

 so much more is included in my Tomie dePaola: An Author Study 

 

Click on the links below to see the rest this four-part series:

Teaching with Tomie dePaola Books : Little Grunt and the Big Egg
Teaching with Tomie dePaola Books: The Art Lesson & Tony's Bread
Teaching with Tomie dePaola Books: The Strega Nona Series
Teaching with Tomie dePaola Books:  Writing a Response to Literature

You might also enjoy my Tomie dePaola board on Pinterest!

  I'd love for you to link up and share how you teach 

with Tomie books in YOUR classroom!