QC Language Arts‎ > ‎

Shel's World

Merging literature with drawing.

Shel Silverstein’s precise language is cherished by children who learn that clever lines both tickle the funny bone as well as add insights into the process of discovering the self. Students naturally want to read his poems over-and-over again and begin to invent their own. In this class we read stories, and then inspired by the images we produce in our minds, craft and create our very own visual poems by using various mediums of art.

In a class that is meant to be shared with a cohort of creative friends, we develop an understanding of imaginative storytelling as we create the voices for our fabulous characters. Active image making, and clarity of speech is at the heart of this engaging class.

Get ready for an art premiere of inspired drawings and paintings, recitals of poetry, a reader’s theatre event of student created picture books, and a performance of a group puppet play of an original work created from the fictive minds of teachers and students as a penultimate act of bravery and joy.

Personalized for the Student

When I speak in a funny voice I tend to remember what I read more.

Reading expressively means that each word carries an emotional weight. For example, when I speak a sad word, I have to speak it in a sad way or the story doesn’t sound right.

I couldn’t stop thinking of the story we read today in class. My mind kept making new pictures. I think I’ll draw my own version of the original. Maybe I’ll make my own comic book in the style of Silverstein.

My world will never be the same after today. My mom’s MacBook Pro breathes very much like a human, the tail-lights of a Charger looks like a mean man growling. The moss in my mom’s planter reminds me of my Aunt Shirley’s crazy hair. 

I learned that I can take ideas about characters from my own life, but that it’s also okay to make up new ideas about how people think and live. I might even try writing characters that are different than I am.

Stories are great places to learn about what not to do. It’s a great place to try out bad ideas so I NEVER have to do them in my life.

I learned that I was able to empathize with a variety of different people. Whether they had shoes with holes in them that hurt their feet, or wore golden bracelets, I was able to get to think like they did.

I learned that by putting a piece of my writing away, and then returning to it a few days later, my thinking had changed on the piece. That’s why I had to revise it.

I think that if I made a mistake on stage, nobody would know about it. That’s because I know my story so well that I can add to it.

I’m not done with my story. I think that I will continue to write my own children’s book of poetry and pictures. I now know that writing is a process. The first version might be messy, but I should keep going and revise, revise, revise.

Reading Material
  • Where the Sidewalk Ends
  • A Light in the Attic
  • Everything On It
  • writer’s workshop
  • presentation and reading of selected short stories of Shel Silverstein
Skills & Activities
  • active listening
  • expressive reading
  • the craft of storytelling
  • personification stories of inanimate objects
  • identifying archetypical characters, round characters, flat characters
  • cause and effect relationships, Rockwell and the art of illustration
  • writing in different voices and the importance of dialogue
  • writing a final draft and finalizing my art, how to give and accept criticism
  • practicing the art of storytelling, and getting ready for the presentation
  • presentation and feedback