Kyla and I read “The Inquisitive Raven” to a Grade 6 class throughout or Read-Aloud, starting off the first time with a mind-map of the raven, Reuben. The students were shown to draw a raven in the middle of the page and include 4 different thought bubbles for what the raven:
– Thinks
– Feels
– Notices
– Wonders
This activity was a great way to introduce the character and get into his mindset. Most of the students were on track with what Kyla and I were thinking as far as ideas like jealousy, noticing the eagle’s great wings, wondering how he may soar like the eagle, etc. For students who did not catch on as well, we were able to show examples and spark some thinking through some 1-on-1 discussions. Any students who completed quickly were able to draw and decorate their raven.
The second class we chose to take some activities we had just learned from our Drama class with Phil, including “Conscience Alley” to help remember what we had worked on last week (with their mind-maps handed back to them). The students wrote down some thoughts the raven may have been having after that first part of the book and read them out as one student walked through the lines slowly. We then read a couple of pages before taking time for our next activity, a “soundscape” with students standing still as trees and rubbing their hands or blowing to imitate wind noises as they each got turns to “fly” through the trees like Reuben. Our final activity after finishing this section of the book for this class ended with a “tableau” where students were split into 4 groups and got to act out the raven’s crash in a snap-shot image and prompted to somehow make it bigger and spark some creativity. The students really loved this activity and those who wanted to did an extra big one at the end.
For the third and final read-aloud we read through the last third of the pages designated while briefly stopping for quick questions and discussions. Afterwards, the students were given printed out outlines of feathers to decorate and write a word or phrase that stuck out to them from the book or connected with them. Once they were finished their feathers, they glued them onto a large poster board where I had drawn a large outline of a raven. The poster board represented their class raven, with each of them representing a different feather to make the whole. We though this activity was a huge success and their teacher still has the poster in their class.
