From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 09:19:40 -0500

Making Up Megaboy is a book I have come to like quite a bit. As an English teacher, I like books that work well in the classroom, inspiring discussions, writings and other activities. I was asked to do a creative writing project with the fifth grade at my school, a point of view exercise to prepare the class for a visit by Virginia Euwer Wolff. The class had read Bat 6 and had developed a reader's theater performance for Virginia, so they were learning about multiple narratives and point of view. I used Making Up Megaboy for my lesson. I read aloud several narratives from the novel and asked students to think of a situation and tell it from several points of view. I divided the class into groups of three students. Each group came up with a situation, and each student contributed two narratives, so that each group wrote a minibook told in six voices. Situations we discussed before their writing included:
        * Inviting a friend to go out to dinner with your family and discovering that your friend is a gross eater. Tell the scene from various points of view: your mom's, your dad's, the waiter's, the busboy's, etc.
        * You are out on the playground and someone gets hurt....
        * You are downtown and see someone drop a wallet....

It was a project that went very well. Making Up Megaboy worked well as a read-aloud,and it was easy to use to create a well-focused writing project. Many students came to the library afterwards to read the book for themselves. They seemed to like the mysteriousness of the book and the fact that I didn't have all the answers about the design and illustrations....
Received on Fri 02 Oct 1998 09:19:40 AM CDT