[LM_NET] Instant tall tale, here it is

[jo turrentine <joturrentine@YAHOO.COM>]

Hi all, Judy gave me permission to post this to the list. I have great success with 
this with 5th graders. I just have to caution that I will edit so they might as 
well leave out the stuff they think impresses the other 5th graders. "dirty words 
and guns and such"
  I have the students type the tale in MS Word in a column. They print it and paste 
it on long paper and I made a tall book out of it.
   
  CREATE AN INSTANT TALL TALE

(from Judy Freeman's Books Kids Will Sit Still For 3; Libraries 
Unlimited, 
2006)

How do you explain the humor and exaggeration of tall tales? I have 
observed 
that younger children have literal senses of humor, and the dry, 
straight-faced humor of tall tales often flies over their heads. 

I learned the following simple, hilarious, entertaining, and 
instructive 
activity, a composite story exercise, from one of my students at Pratt 
Institute. 
I asked her if I could use it, and she said, "Oh, sure. I got it from 
someone 
else, though." So I fiddled with it and made it my own. It's magical 
doing 
this activity with children to introduce or culminate a tall tales 
unit. You're 
reinforcing the Five W's—who, what, where, why, and when—in a 
Mad-Libs kind of 
way, and you're demonstrating how exaggeration works. 

When third grade teacher, Nancy Havran, did this with her students at 
Van 
Holten School in Bridgewater, New Jersey, they laughed and laughed. 
When I came 
back to visit her classroom later that day, they all wanted to share 
their 
composite stories. What I didn't expect, as the children regaled me 
with their 
very silly tall tales, was that they were already able to recite them 
aloud from 
memory.

OBJECTIVE: 
To reinforce the Five W's: Who, What, Where, When, Why
To introduce the concept of absurdity in tall tales

SUPPLIES NEEDED: 
1 long strip of legal sized paper, cut in half the long way (4" x 14"), 
for 
each person; a pencil for each person

PROCEDURE:
1. To construct an instant absurd TALL TALE, each person in a group of 
seven 
writes down a response to your first writing prompt (below), folds over 
a flap 
of the paper to cover up the writing, and passes it on to the person on 
the 
right. On receiving a new paper from the person on the left, each 
person writes 
an answer for the second prompt, folds the paper over again, and passes 
it to 
the right again.

2. At the end of the exercise, each person will have written one answer 
to 
each prompt, but on seven different strips of paper. Each writer then 
unfolds 
his or her paper and reads aloud the usually hilarious composite 
sentence to the 
group or entire class.

3. Children can copy over their composite tall tales on a long piece of 
drawing paper—a piece of 24" X 36" paper, cut in half the long way, 
would work 
fine—and illustrate each line. This makes a very cute bulletin board, 
"Heard any 
TALL TALES lately?"

LEADER'S PROMPTS:
1. Who (Think of a real or fictional person's name, from books, or real 
life 
or movies or your own mother, such as: The Stinky Cheese Man or Elvis 
Presley.)

2. Did What (Describe an activity, using an action verb, such as: 
Climbed Mt. 
Everest or Baked a Cake.)

3. With Whom (Think of another real or fictional person's name, and use 
the 
preposition "with": with Cinderella or George Washington.)

4. Where (Think of a place or a location, and start with a preposition 
like 
"in" or "on": On the back of a chicken or in Nome, Alaska.)

5. When (Give a time, such as: Last Tuesday or in 1776.)

6. Why (Give a reason, starting with the word "because": Because roses 
are 
red and violets are blue or Because I said so.)

7. And all the people said: (Think of a quote, and start it with the 
words, 
"And all the people said": And all the people said,"To be or not to be. 
That is 
the question.")

8. Unfold your paper and let's share our new tall tales.

And here is the final, composite, cheerfully absurd, Tall Tale 
sentence, as 
composed by seven individual writers:

The Stinky Cheese Man
Climbed Mt. Everest
with Cinderella
On the back of a chicken
Last Tuesday
Because roses are red and violets are blue
And all the people said
"To be or not to be. That is the question."




                                
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