Body Biography Activity

Don't you love when you find an activity that actually went swimmingly the first time around? Good enough that you can use it again the next year? This honestly hardly ever happens to me! However, I found this activity last year when I was desperate for an activity to go with the novel A Light in the Forest. I read this with my American Studies students (gifted class, combined English and History). I love teaching this novel but there are absolutely no good activities online for this great book! It's a bummer for a begger/borrower/stealer like me! :) I've had to get creative and honestly, I don't always have time to do that. So I was stoked when I found this activity on TPT. Best part?? It's totally free. Go download it NOW. Find it HERE. Major props to Danielle Knight for creating such a great resource.

 This activity deals a lot with symbolism, which is a great way to teach them what that means. After reading the novel, students had to think about certain things to place on the poster. For example, the heart represents what the character loves most. The hands should be holding what the character seeks to control. The eyes should represent how the character appraise to others on the outside. There are about 10 things that the student needs to include, including outside sources and quotes from the book. The students have fun with this every single year. They think tracing their bodies are so funny! It also gets super chaotic in my room trying to fit 12-15 of these huge posters on the floor but the kids love it and have great discussions with their groups as to what to include on the poster. It's a great wrap up activity because they have to go searching all through the book to find information for their poster. 

I would highly recommend this activity. I love seeing what the students come up with!

Isn't this poster amazing? This was from a student who never does anything for me. I wanted to laminate it but it was too big for our laminator! It also had 2/10 things it needed to have on it...*sigh*. 

Thanks so much to Danielle Knight for letting me steal this activity! I'm a huge fan.