University of Iowa



Kyle Sustich

Scenario: This lesson was presented in a small group setting and was designed to help the students practice preparing for and writing their own tall tales. They were given a “Tall Tale Planner” by the teacher which gave the students a start to thinking about their stories’ main character. I read them a short tall tale story and one of my own that I created before class. I helped the students fill out a planner for each tale as guided practice before they started to write their own.

Title: Tall Tale Writing Date: 10/5/09

Grade: 5th Grade

Materials:

• “Tall Tale Planner” Worksheet – one for each student

• “Writing a Tall Tale” Worksheet – one for each student

• Grandpa’s Rail Tales Book

Purpose:

• To practice story concept mapping to meet the Standard: “Use an effective writing process.” and Benchmarks: “Pre-writing”.

• To practice tall tale story writing to meet the Standard: “Apply writing strategies to communicate in a variety of genres.” and Benchmark: “Narratives and Stories”.

Objective: After reading the book “Grandpa’s Rail Tales” to the group, students will complete the “Tall Tale Planner” worksheet and start to write their own tall tale story.

Attention Getter: Prepare a story of your own to read to the students before starting the lesson.

Activities:

• If any students have finished the Tall Tale Planner worksheet ahead of time, they should still go through the steps with the rest of the group

• Read the story Grandpa’s Rail Tales to the students or read the story together as a group. Explain to the students that you will be modeling how to fill out the Planner worksheet using the Grandpa’s Rail Tales story. Be sure to stop frequent times while reading to point out important information that could answer the questions on the worksheet in the future. Go through the worksheet one question at a time asking the students to recall the answers from the story.

• After filling out the worksheet for the story, start to fill out a Planner worksheet as a groups using suggestions from the members of the group. After finishing the Planner, the students should now be able to fill out the sheet on their own using their own characters.

• Have the students start to write the introductions to their own stories if time permits.

Accommodations: Some students will be at different stages in the process; some will already have the worksheet done while others will not. Be patient because most of the students will finish at different times. Some students will most likely have difficulty writing their own story based on their own ideas. Be sure to have plenty examples of possible answers to the questions that they are supposed to fill out themselves.

Assessment: Each student will have completed the “Tall Tale Planner” worksheet and have written the first paragraph of their story.

Closure: Have the students start to write or continue to write their stories. IF some finish early they can read them to the class.

Focus: I want to focus on preparing for the lesson more. I want to have a sufficient enough amount of answers to the questions on the worksheet so I will be ready for any problems the students have. I will do my best to not have any time where I’m struggling to find the words that will help them progress through the lesson.

Grandpa’s Rail Tales – Worksheet Guide

Main Character

• Name: Grandpa

• Qualities: Tells extravagant stories about trains and his past work

Setting

• Time: Early 1900’s

• Place: Trains all across the country

Events

• Problem: Grandpa likes to tell tall tales of his times when he was a train engineer

• Event One: Started working as a train engineer at the age of 9, worked as an assistant at the age of 3.

• Event Two: Rode the train on a blanket of fog

• Event Three: Told the story of the smartest dog that ever lived that blew the whistle to clear the track

• What is changed or created: Darlene thinks that Grandpa tells the funniest stories and plans to tell them to her father

My Story – “Flyin’ Ryan Saves the Day”

Flyin’ Ryan was a very special teenage boy. He had two things that made him very different than the other boys and girls in his school, he could fly faster than a plane and could lift a building with ease. He even used his skills once to save the President’s plane from crashing when one of its’ engines malfunctioned. He was happy with the skills he had and loved to help people out, but the thing he wanted to do most in his life was to see the Iowa Hawkeyes play in the college football national championship.

To his luck, in 2009 the Hawkeyes made it to the championship game in California and Ryan was very excited to go. But unfortunately for him the tickets sold out in seconds and he wasn’t able to get one. Ryan would do anything to go see the game.

As Ryan was sitting home by himself the morning of the championship game, he turned on the TV to check to watch the news. The top news story was about the Iowa football team! Apparently the Hawkeye’s plane ran out of fuel and they had no way to get to the game! Ryan knew that this was his chance to help the team that he loved.

He began to fly to the airport where the Hawkeye’s plane was sitting without fuel. On the way he picked up a gas truck off the highway and used his super strength to carry it to the airport. He had saved the day and the team now had the gas to make it to the game in time! Or did they…

Everyone soon found out that the gas truck could not fill up the plane fast enough to leave in time to make it for the game. They were stuck and had run out of options, but then Ryan had a great idea.

He could just pick up the plane and use his skills to fly it to the game on time!

Everyone went crazy for the idea and was very happy when it worked. Ryan put down the plane in the parking lot outside the stadium and the team walked into the stadium just before kickoff. The team even welcomed Ryan into the stadium to watch the game as their honored guest and he got to sit on the sidelines and watch the Hawkeyes win the championship game!

From then on the team hired Ryan as their personal plane transporter and never needed to worry about fueling up their plane because they had Ryan to fly it around for them. They even gave Ryan tickets so that he could see the team play every game they played in around the country. Ryan was very grateful to the team and wanted nothing more than to be a part of his favorite team. They even gave him a nickname, “Flyin’ Ryan”.

Flyin’ Ryan Saves the Day – Worksheet Guide

Main Character

• Name: Flyin’ Ryan

• Qualities: Super strength and can fly

Setting

• Time: Today

• Place: Iowa and California

Events

• Problem: The football team’s plane ran out of gas and wont be able to make it to the Championship Game on time

• Event One: Ryan picks up a gas truck and brings it to airport to fill up the plane

• Event Two: The gas truck doesn’t fill up the plane fast enough and everyone realizes that the team wont make it in time

• Event Three: Ryan picks up the plane and flies it to California and the team wins the Championship

• What is changed or created: Ryan gains the praise of his favorite football team and gets to go to every Hawkeye game from now on

Reflection – 10/6 (Teaching Lesson Reflection)

Today I taught my lesson on writing Tall Tales. My CT gave me the task of preparing the students to fill out their “Tall Tale Planner” worksheets and get a start on writing their own stories. At the end of the lesson I think that each student had a good idea of what to do on his or her planner.

I think the part of the lesson that worked the best was the guided practice and models I did with the students. I read them two stories, one written by another author and one written by myself, and we filled out the tall tale planner as a group. This guided practice really helped the students because it gave them a better idea of what my CT was looking for on each line of the sheet and it helped prepare them for writing on their own. I think that students especially liked the story that I wrote for them to listen to because I included people and phrases they were familiar with in their everyday lives, like the Iowa Hawkeye football team. It created a personal meaning for the students and was something they could all relate to.

Something I probably would change about the lesson if I did it again in the future is the time I spend on each portion. The reading itself took up a good majority of the lesson time and I would probably have the students read one of the stories individually before doing the lesson to save time. However, I think that by reading both stories together and filling out the worksheet two times the concepts I wanted to get across to the students were more concretely cemented into their minds.

I also did not have enough time for the students to start writing their stories as I had planned, but I think the lesson still worked out well anyway. In the future I would probably make that part into another lesson entirely. Spending time working on filling out the worksheet was the best thing to do for these students at this moment in time.

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