Teaching with Tomie dePaola Books Part 2: The Art Lesson & Tony's Bread

We're knee deep now in our Tomie dePaola author study! 

Each time I read The Art LessonI'm reminded and amazed 

all over again at the acute recollection Tomie dePaola has of 

his childhood.  Down to the last detail.  It's those little details 

in the story and illustrations that draw me in and make

 The Art Lesson one of my favorite books to teach with.  

I always say that Tomie books are every teacher's dream. 

 I love his simple, relevant themes and his books work so perfectly 

for teaching just about about any comprehension strategy 

and story structure.  All the things you can do with these books 

for cause/effect, problem/solution, drawing conclusions, 

analyzing characters, their traits, and how 

they change is limitless! 

Many are autobiographical tales and lend themselves 

so perfectly to teaching about an author's viewpoint which 

can be a bit tricky for young readers. And text-to-text connections?   

You could practically create a timeline of this author's life 

just through the characters in his books!

I have a deep connection to The Art Lesson because

I can relate so well to the main character,Tommy. 

Some of my earliest memories are of coloring with my mother. 

My mother loved everything I drew (bless her heart) 

and saved it all. I loved art as a child and spent 

hours upon hours drawing. I changed schools in first grade mid year 

and I was terrified!  Art class was my safe place and after school 

art lessons were my absolute joy! I drew my way through 

elementary school and on into high school where my art teacher's 

name was Mrs. Josie Brower. True story. 

 As a clueless 17 year old, she helped me create a portfolio 

and apply to a prestigious art school in Chicago. I didn't realize 

the magnitude or the accomplishment of that at the time 

and downtown Chicago was quite a shock to a naive and fairly 

sheltered Ohio girl.As a student I had access to 

The Art Institute of Chicago and The Goodman Theater

 anytime I wanted and I spent countless hours wandering 

in wonder through those halls. I often think about Mrs. Brower 

and wonder what a different turn my life would have taken 

without her influence and help and I'm so grateful to her. 

Teachers truly are amazing people aren't they?

 But, enough of my digression down memory lane!

I wanted to share some of the wonderful learning we did 

with The Art Lesson. I love to use this book for teaching 

about an author's viewpoint.  After reading it aloud we talked 

about how sometimes a reader can tell how the author 

thinks or feels by what their characters say and do.

This can take a bit of a leap in thinking and takes a fair amount 

of modeling on my part. I learned last year that some of my kids 

get stuck on identifying an event that they can infer something from 

so this year I placed them in small discussion groups and gave them 

these thinking prompts. 

After talking with their groups we made this class chart.

The blue is what we can infer about the author's viewpoint

from story events and the character's actions.  The orange is the 

evidence from the text to support our inferences. 

Each student then made their own Tommy and wrote 

their thoughts and inferences about the author's viewpoint 

as well as evidence and events from the text to support them.

Throughout our author study we compared story elements 

from several of the books.

"Love sick" is the new word in my classroom!  

My kids are getting to the age and time of year (It must be 

a spring thing!) when they start to whisper about who has 

a crush on who and thewords "love sick" are being 

whispered a lot! 

As one of our literacy centers my kids reviewed fact and opinion.

We made these mini-art galleries of characters with 

character traits written on the backs of the "canvases". 

We'll set these, along with all of our Tomie projects,
out on little "museum floors" for our end of year open house.

This is one from last year with the little museum floor.
How cute is that?

The next book we worked with in our study is Tony's Bread.  

This book lends itself really well to teaching about how a 

character changes in a story.

I had my kiddos work in pairs then gave them either beginning, 

middle, or end.I asked them to think about and choose adjectives 

to describe Tony during their given part of the story.

Both brainstormed and one recorded on these little 

bread shapes. (I drew them first on paper then copied them 

onto construction paper.  You can see how I make instant 

sticky notes with the shapes I want and reuse my charts HERE)

 We created a bubble map inside of a flow map describing how 

Tony changes.  One of my kiddos LOVES to come up with new 

names for all of the combos of thinking maps we make so here it is...

it's a...... FLUBBLE MAP.  Not sure if the Thinking Maps people 

would agree but that is the official name in my classroom!

As always, I asked them provide evidence from the text to justify
their adjective choices.

Next, each kiddo got to make their own.  This way they got to address 

each part, beginning,middle and end of the story as well as use

their own  ideas and adjectives.

BECAUSE...is an important word in our classroom and they wrote 

why and explained their thinking  inside each frame of reference.

We used  Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then to help us decompose the story.

You can download a FREE copy {HERE}

We then used these to help us write "sandwich summaries" of Tony's Bread.

Well, that about wraps it up for now!

If you'd like to do this Tomie dePaola author study with your class

click the pic below to see the unit.

         

 Be sure to stop back for Part 3 when I show you all of our learning
with the Strega Nona series!

To see all four parts of this series click the links below:

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

Happy teaching with Tomie books, friends!