‘Max’s Words’ Craftivity

I have gotten BIG into using books during speech therapy.  Recently a colleage told me about a book called ‘The Boy Who Loved Words’ by Roni Schotter.

It is about a boy who, you guessed it, loves words. This is my kinda kid! Throughout the story he collects words that he likes. As the story progresses the boy ( Selig ) begins to feel like an outsider, until he finds his passion is sharing his words. He sets out on a mission to share his words with those in need of them. This is a lovely story about finding something your passionate about and of course words. Now the vocabulary in this charming tale is a bit high so I would recommend it for 5th grade and junior high.

Here is a YouTube video that reads the story if you do not have it in your library: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTScRTNvIcI

I looked in my school’s library for something similar and found ‘Max’s Words’. This has a similar plot to ‘The Boy Who Loved Words’ but the language is at a simpler level.

The story is about a boy name Max. Max’s brothers collect coins and stamps and will not let him in on their precious hobbies. So, Max decides he will collect words. He collects them on slips of paper that start to take over his house. Then, Max begins to turn his words into stories and his brothers begin to admire his new hobby. I grabbed some construction paper and regular printer paper. I did my best to draw the outline of some book pages for the kids to write and draw on since I couldn’t find any I liked online.

Before reading ‘Max’s Words’ to my students I had them write down all the words they could think of. I told them to write words that made them happy, words that made them laugh, words that liked. Then we read the book. It took about 5 minutes. After that, they got to make their own tales just like Max. We arranged the words into funny stories on one side of the page. On the other they got to illustrate an event from their story.

We had some great stories! This ‘craftivity’ allowed my students to work on describing, syntax, sequencing, and expressive language. And the best thing was that they didn’t even realize they were working on these goals because they were so engaged 🙂