Elves everywhere!

One of my favorite projects to work on with my second graders near christmas time is our Elf Project! 

In October my students create Halloween characters and write third person narratives about them, but in December my students write first person narratives about what its like to be an elf living at the North Pole with Santa! We start by brainstorming what we believe the North Pole might be like. We then read the book, "The little Christmas Elf." We map out the story on the board, and compare Nina's story with our brainstorm of the North Pole. 

The Little Christmas Elf

The next day we watch a youtube clip showing the funniest moments from Will Ferrel's movie, Elf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zhy_5aD7ks This helps us imagine what its like for an Elf in our world and wonder what it would be like for us to be elves too. 

We then discuss first person perspective. We learn that this means writing in a character's voice and not in our own voice as an author. I show them examples of books that we've read as a class that are from a first person character perspective and we compare them to books from the an author's perspective. We then do a simple assessment. I put my students in groups and hand each group 6 index cards that have a 3 to 4 sentence passage on them. Students group the index cards as either first person character perspective or third person author perspective. Its a quick and effective way to gauge immediately who is beginning to understand the concept.  

The next day... I then surprise them by showing them the Elf Yourself videos that I created! I make each and every one of my students into an elf that dances!  Every Christmas Office Max joins with Jib Jab to make it easy to send Elf dancing videos.

My students love it! It helps them truly imagine what it would be like to be an elf and gets their brain thinking from an elf's perspective.  We then do some ART! The one below is my teacher model. The students' elves were sooo cute. But how could they not be? 

Its hard not to be adorable when wearing elf clothes!!

Then we spend a full week using the Writing Process to create our stories. My students pick an Elf job and write a story about a time when they were doing that job. Each and every one of them turn out unique and creative. 

We hang their stories in our hallway and have their elf art hang next to the stories. 

I love doing this project! My students are always highly engaged and write a ton. 

Elf Names

Next year we're going to figure out our elf names too! I wish I had found this sooner!