Not Your Average Summer Reading Project

At the start of a new year, 5^th grade teachers and students quickly adapt to new routines and procedures in a way that is designed to honor each individual, as well as bring the community together. In addition to completing formal pre-assessments in areas like writing and math, students also reflect on their hopes and dreams for the year and discuss the privileges and responsibilities inherent in the kind of collaborative work Lowell excels at providing. 

To this end, 5th grade students launched the year’s reading program with a puppet show about their summer reading assignment, Holes, by Louis Sachar. But, the puppet show wasn’t merely a fun way to review the story and check to make sure everyone did the assignment. Instead, the project used the book as a jumping-off point to dive into reading skills—like making inferences and supporting them with quotes from the text—that students would be developing all year long.

As a class, students explored the idea of turning points in a story by identifying high and low points in Holes and discussing how these moments changed the direction of the story. To deepen their understanding of this concept, students also brainstormed turning points in their own lives—generating great topics for writing their narratives.

Having identified all of the turning points in Holes, students then broke into small groups to identify a turning point they wanted to portray through a puppet show. A task like this is not as easy as it may sound: it requires negotiation, listening, and flexibility to agree. Students were also tasked with identifying roles in the groups. Who would write the script? Who would design the set? Who would act? And, perhaps most important, how would each team member help their classmates be successful in their roles?

Elaborate sets were crafted, the staging was hammered out, lines were drafted and edited. Using iPads, the students then filmed their shows as a way to self-assess their work. Hearing and seeing their work challenged them to focus on details like production quality and public speaking. Meanwhile, teachers informally assessed groups’ progress, identifying areas of strength and areas of growth in both the academic and social realms.

These productions revealed a great deal about students’ comprehension of the story. By observing both group work and the puppet shows, teachers were able to answer key questions like:

As children worked toward a common goal (on a deadline!), they laughed together, argued with each other, and ultimately understood the text, themselves, and each other more deeply. It’s a project that brought together reading comprehension and oral rehearsal, community-building, and personal challenge. It’s learning made visible.