The Big Friendly Giant
Teachers in kindergarten through fifth-grade have been working on a collaborative learning unit based around the acclaimed book by Roald Dahl, “The BFG.” As each class reads aloud the classic novel, each group takes on a new element of the story and expands it through various disciplines across their curriculum.
Kindergarteners created Dream Catchers for the hall in art class and have been working on creating sentences from the story and graphics to accompany them during technology class.
Kindergartner Landon Brock said, “We just pick our favorite and illustrate it.”
Mrs. Teri Merkle’s third-graders have been focusing on learning “colossal” vocabulary words from the story to create synonym diamante poems as they listen to the audio version of the text, which includes humorous sound effects and accents. They are going to work with the first-grade class to measure the “windows” in the hallway to design and build ladders, which could be used to reach up as Sophie did in the BFG.
Student Dominic Frisco said, “the BFG works on collecting dreams to share” so student dream jars can be found throughout the school as well narrating through some of the students craziest dreams.
In music class, Ms. Kristina Romano is working with matching rhythms to words from the story and the fourth- and fifth-graders are using those rhythms and words to compose their own sound stories with classroom percussion instruments as well as recorders. The fifth-graders also created their own greater than life-sized giants to hang in the hall while the fourth grade focused on Witching Hour paintings. Walking through the halls is like walking into the book itself and each class spends time admiring other grades work, knowing that they are all having a shared experience with the same novel.
Fifth-grade teacher Jenny Rodriguez said, “We are halfway through the book this week and the excitement in the halls is contagious. All the hard work is well worth it to see the kids so excited about reading.”
Come visit the school and see the collaborative project on April 6 from 6-7:30 p.m. for the school’s annual Learning Fair. This year will also include the student’s own Young Author’s books, art displays, Lego cities, STEM projects and the free tuition raffle drawing for next school year. The event is free and open to the community. Preschool through eighth-grade classrooms and teachers will be available to help visitors learn more about the school and see all the great things that are going on.
