Writing Connections with Origami Yoda

by Mary Quattlebaum

Three childhood passions—drawing, origami and writing—come together for author/illustrator Tom Angleberger in his Origami Yoda series.  I had a chance to talk with Tom recently about the wildly popular seven-book series. These books make strong models for classroom writing and can jumpstart playful exercises.  Tom shared his thoughts and process, and below I offer a few writing exercises connected to the last book in the series, Emperor Pickletine Rides the Bus (Abrams, 2014, ages 8-12).  As Origami Yoda, the wise finger puppet, might say:  “Write you must.”

*  MAKING UP WORDS:  The middle-school characters in Emperor Pickletine Rides the Bus use a made-up word, “stooky,” which means “cool” or “awesome.”  Classroom Writing:  Have students separate into five or so groups.  Each group must make up three words, with one meaning “cool,” the second, “stupid,” and the third, “angry.”  How might the made-up words sound like what it means?  Or reflect something that seems representative of that word?  (For example, the made-up word “volnormous” might mean “very angry.”  Ask students to write their made-up words in a sentence or paragraph and/or use it conversation at some point during the day or at home.  What was their listeners’ reactions?   

*  PERCEPTION AND VOICE: The book is a wonderful example of multi-voiced narration.  Many young characters contribute and each voice is different.  Tom says that each book presents it own challenges and that a particular challenge for him with Origami Yoda was crafting girl voices.  “I had never worked with girl narrators before,” he said.  “I had to work hard to make their voices and thoughts seem believable.”

Classroom Discussion:  Ask students to look carefully at a few simultaneous chapters.  How does each character see a certain situation differently?  Also, what makes Tommy sound like Tommy?  Or Sara like Sara?  What makes each voice unique?  (Students might look at vocabulary, sentence structure, words frequently used by that character, character’s overall attitude towards things.)

Classroom Writing:  Have students put Harvey and Tommy (or Harvey and Sara) in a museum they have visited.  How does Harvey look at this thing (a sculpture, a dinosaur model, a historic airplane)?  Now, describe it in Harvey’s voice.  How about Tommy or Sara?

* SNACK FOOD FIGURES:  In the book, the characters make Star Wars figures from snack foods.  Students might do this for homework, take a photo, and post it on Tom’s origamiyoda.com website.  Or they might eat their creation, as Dwight does with his fruit roll-up creation Fruitigami Yoda.

* MORE “STOOKY” DETAILS ABOUT TOM:  Click here for my interview in KidsPost section of the Washington Post.

www.maryquattlebaum.com

READER'S THEATER (Part 2)

by Mary Quattlebaum

In my last post (June 4, 2012), I mentioned Reader’s Theater as a great motivator for classroom reading and writing.  And since this is summer, it can also be a playful camp or family experience. Both the group performance and no-need-to-memorize aspects take the stress out of the reading/performing experience for most kids.

And they also love the writing part.

Storyteller/children’s author Aaron Shepherd offers detailed tips on adapting a picture book or story for Reader’s Theater. Here are the basic steps:  

1.  Look for a book (or scenes) with dialogue, action, and a number of characters.  Are there places where you might “create” a role to be filled by a large number of kids so that everyone might participate, not just the relatively fewer kids with bigger roles as primary characters.  A pet who makes noises, perhaps?  A crowd that repeats a particular refrain?  Or a repeating sound effect?

2.  Break kids into teams of 2 or 3 people each.

3.  Assign each team a section of the story.

4.  Have them identify narration vs. dialogue and then identify each bit of dialogue as belonging to a specific character.

 5.  Assign roles of narrator(s) and various characters.

6.  Read and have fun!

But how, you might ask, are students doing any writing if, essentially, they are adapting an already written text?

1.  They are learning to read more analytically for certain elements, in this case dialogue, narration, and gesture.

2.  They are making careful choices as to what/how/how much to include (for example, details of setting or characterization).

3.  They might take a story they’ve written earlier in the year and adapt it for Reader’s Theater, gaining insight into how to improve that first story in the process.

Adults writing for children can also benefit from #3, learning to create more dynamic picture books and stories by examining, performing, and then revising the dialogue/story in various drafts.

I recently saw a performance of a powerful book of poems, I Lay My Stitches Down by Cynthia Grady (Eerdmans 2012).  These poems are in the voices of fictional slaves of the 19^th century, which students took on at the middle school where Grady is a librarian. The resulting performance was stunning.

http://www.maryquattlebaum.com/