created by Lisa Bell

Grade Level: 4 - 7

Critical Challenge: Write your own story about how a toy becomes REAL, based on your inferred judgments from being introduced to the story of "The Velveteen Rabbit".

Overview : Students will become familiar with the story, "The Velveteen Rabbit". After discussing various aspects of the story, the students will then be asked to write their own story about how a toy becomes REAL.

• knowledge of ways in which toys can become real
• knowledge of what it means to be 'real'
• knowledge of contextual structure of a story (beginning, middle, end)

• are the students' ideas relevant to the topic?
• do the students have a clear understanding of the concepts of becoming 'real'?
• have the students demonstrated competency with the skills pertaining to writing a story?

• when thinking about ways in which a toy becomes REAL, the students need to be able to justify their ideas to anyone who may challenge them.
• the students will become more familiar with the components of writing a good story.
• the students will engage in a higher level of thinking in order to make reasoned judgments about the idea about 'real' and what it means to be 'real' if your are a toy.

• evoking strategies for making reasoned-judgments
• enhancing and promoting story-writing skills
• enhancing and promoting active critical thought

• independent-minded - a willingness to defend their own theories about how a toy becomes 'real'.
• critical attitude - learning to justify their decisions
• intellectual work ethic - expectation that they will complete all thinking tasks in a competent manner to their abilities.

 Suggested Activities:

• Introduce the students to the story of "The Velveteen Rabbit" by having them watch the video.
• Stop the video at various points to discuss the concept of becoming 'real'. Questions of critical interest may be as follows:
• When a child REALLY loves a toy, it becomes REAL.
• By the time a toy is REAL, most of its hair has been loved off.
• Once a toy is REAL, it can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.
• Once a toy becomes REAL, it can't become unreal again.
• After the movie, ( or reading the story) discuss with the students the story. Ask them if they liked the way the Velveteen Rabbit became real in this story, and why.
• The students would then be left to think of a way that a toy might become real, and then write their own story about how a toy becomes real.
• The students would be given paper to draw pictures to go with their story.
• They would need to make a nice cover for their books, and bind them with staples or yarn.
• As a class, ask students to share their books with the rest of the class, reading their idea about how a toy might become real.

• assess how well students are able to give clear and thoughtful responses for how a toy becomes REAL.
• assess the clarity through which the students are able to express their ideas in their stories.
• assess the structure of the stories for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

• have students do a circular story map of the story.
• have students write what they would have done if they were the boy with scarlet fever, and the rabbit went into the sack of things to burn.
• make finger puppets and retell the story in a puppet theater setting.

Grade 4, Grade 5, Grade 6, Grade 7

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