After the dramatic reading with Jape, teachers can offer the following mini-lesson and writing prompt:
Goal: Students will use verbal, written and creative artistic expression to gain understanding of storytelling conventions.
Objectives:
Students will be exposed to the following terms: character, conflict and story
Students will link these terms to literary, TV and movie characters with which they are already familiar.
Students will articulate descriptive language to evaluate characters’ physical and personality traits.
Students will write and draw characters of their own invention.
Procedure:
Teacher shows students a variety of illustrations or images of familiar characters from books, TV and movies.
Students will identify characters’ names and traits.
Teacher will define character: someone who does something in a story. He or she usually has a problem that he or she must solve.
Students will brainstorm and briefly share the major events of a story they know.
Students will draw a character they invent. Students will write physical traits such as: dog/ red/ tall/ fury and personality traits such as: nice/ happy/ helpful.
Students will continue to decorate their illustrations with art supplies such as glitter, yarn, marker to create Popsicle stick puppets.
Students will collaborate in groups (3-4) to integrate characters into a story they devise together according to these guiding questions:
How do the characters get along?
What problem do they have?
What can they do to solve this problem?
Higher level learners can elaborate on their invented characters by writing a simple story.
Assessment:
Each group will present its story to the others. Teacher will evaluate each group using rubrics that qualify:
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Editorial Reviews
Book Description "This book is hysterically funny; I love it. I love Jape's sense of humor. He loves children and makes them laugh, hence this book. I would highly recommend this book and the future stories he will be releasing in this series" (Michelle Dunn, author of Mosquito Marketing). "The children at Annisquam Kindergarten love Jape's books! They have a permanent place on our bookshelf. I have also given them to my grandchildren who really enjoy the books. We are waiting for book number three" (Marlene Hodgkins, director and teacher). "'Jape the Grape Ape' is exciting and full of adventure! The kids fasten their imaginary seatbelts and take off to another planet where they meet funny characters like Karate Monkeys and the Grape Apes who eat golden grapes which give them super powers for twenty-four hours! The kids love saying that! It's a blast especially when Jape is telling the story. His books fly out of the library. The kids eagerly await book three" (Cathy Talty, children's librarian: Sawyer Free Library, Gloucester, MA).