Tall Tale Extravaganza...

We had such a great time learning about tall tales this year.   It's honestly one of my favorite units in second grade.   Slue-Foot Sue has always been ones of my absolute favorite tall tale heroes.  I mean she rode a catfish the size of a whale...you just gotta love her!  I found the Idiom worksheet below, which is part of the Evan Moor's Tall Tale Literature Pockets resource.  When I saw the title of the page...I knew I'd have to create a downright silly Slue-Foot Sue to match.  They had so much fun with idioms, and it certainly looks like Slue-Foot Sue bit off more than she could chew!

I get all of the Tall Tale stories that I read aloud to my students from the Evan-Moor Resource.  It's an amazing resource.  The Slue Foot Sue template we used can be downloaded below for FREE.

You certainly can't learn about Slue-Foot Sue without learning about Pecos Bill.  I mean she is his better half.  We worked on these webs after learning about Pecos Bill.  Click here to get the free download.

We made the same posters as last year and I really fell in love with their illustrations! You can check out last year's post here if you're interested in reading more about the posters.

We always learn about the four tall tale heroes in the graph above.  But, this year we added a new tale to our list.  I had the opportunity to correspond with the author of the story, A Rip Snortin' Tale of a Toad.  The author is Ruth Bates and I was super excited when she reached out to me to share her adorable tale.  I really couldn't wait to share it with my students.   I'm always thrilled any time there is an opportunity to incorporate new books about Texas into the curriculum.  My students just fell in love with Rip and they are still talking about him today.  I also found out via Instagram that apparently there in a parade for Rip each year in Eastland, Texas.  If only, we could travel that far for a field trip.  How cool would that be?

Here are a few of the activities we did along with the book.  There are so many cross-curricular activities that could be done with this book.  We spent a week on this story, but we could have easily spent another week on it.

 

All of the Rip activities can be found by clicking the image below.

If you are interested in this adorable book, you can purchase A Rip Snortin' Tale...of a Toad directly from the author, Ruth Bates.  Her e-mail is listed in the image above. 

 I'd love to give away a free autographed copy to one lucky reader.  Simply leave a comment below with your e-mail and I will contact the winner via e-mail.  I will choose a winner Friday, April 3, 2015.

 

Tall Tale Freebies

Spring Break is finally here and I am looking forward to some much needed R&R.  My class learned all about Tall Tales before the break and I'm so glad they enjoyed them.  It was a nice change of pace from our basal stories.  I wanted to share a little of what they worked on.

We created a poster for each of the tall tale characters we learned about.  Here is a list of the characters we covered.

* Pecos Bill

* Slue-Foot Sue

* Paul Bunyan

* Davy Crockett

I had my students work in groups to complete  the pages that made up our class posters.  Anytime I can get them working together in groups, I go for it.  I love to see them problem solving and working cooperatively.

Here are their posters:

You can get the templates by clicking the image below.  I am not able to include the title page for each poster because the images are copyrighted.  However, they are all coloring pages available for free on-line.  I just did a google search for each tall tale character.   I simply added my own title for each one. Click the image below for the free download of the other pages. 

I f you are wondering where I get the stories for this unit.  Please check out my post from last year by clicking here.   You will find a few other Tall Tale activities along with  a couple of free downloads.  You can also click the image below to head there:

This year, I also bought Hope King's Tall Tale unit.  I absolutely LOVED all of her activities. This little guy is from her unit.  I decided to create a summarizing page to go in the middle of her adorable Pecos Bill!

This poster is also from Hope's unit.  One of my teacher buddies had the idea of using a bandana to tie the posters together.  Love how it turned out!

We ended our week with a Tall Tale graph.  It was the perfect way to integrate literacy and math.

Click above to grab this freebie.  I also use this same template to create graphs for a lot of our different read alouds throughout the year.

It looks like our Texas cold weather may behind us.  It's starting to feel more like spring around here.   I LOVE that our Texas bluebonnets have started blooming.  I found this lovely little flower in my mom's front yard.

Tall Tales

I just had to share what our class did during our Tall Tall Unit.  I was originally going to create a unit, but this Literature Pocket Unit by Evan Moor was too good to pass up.  We didn't have a lot of time to use the entire unit and create all of the pockets, so we just made a smaller booklet instead.  We decided to focus on just four of the Tall Tall Characters, but this unit has many, many more to choose from.  It is intended for grades 4-6, but my second graders had no problem with it, and really enjoyed the entire unit.  

 There is a 2 pager story for each of the Tall Tales.  

Each Tall Tale also comes with the chart below and several activities to go along with each person.  I unfortunately can't share all the activities we did, because I sent them home already!

 These coloring pages did not come from the Evan Moor Unit, but I just had to include them. Second graders love coloring.  I found them at this website:

 http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/jgriffin/tall.cfm.

The coloring page of Davy Crockett is from http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/color-davy-crockett

 I created this little thinking map to go along with Paul Bunyan.  You can get it for free here.

One of the activities in the Literature Pocket Tall Tale Unit was a simile activity.  We simply cut the boxes apart on the worksheet and attached the pieces to a sentence strip.  It was a great opportunity to talk about similes, while learning about Tall Tales.  The picture of Paul Bunyan came from the coloring page document I linked to above.

This is a picture of Evan Moor's Book, in case you are interested.  It truly is a super resource.

 We decided to use the following Tall Tale characters in our unit:

* Pecos Bill

* Slue-Foot Sue

* Paul Bunyan

* Davy Crockett

 We finished up, by completing this Tall Tale writing piece.   You can click on the image below to download it for free.