Seventh Graders Study Old Yeller in Innovative Ways

Gone are the days of just reading a book, writing a report, and testing - at least in junior high English teacher, Mrs. Susan Mazur’s class at St. Joseph Parish School in Homewood.

“I try to do something innovative with each chapter of the novel,” said Mrs. Mazur. “The different projects I have the students do are a creative way to expand their comprehension of this classic piece of historical fiction.”

When the class began reading Fred Gipson’s Old Yeller, Mrs. Mazur led the class in a discussion of the Civil War and Texas Reconstruction as well as a short study of beloved dog stories. The class charted the advantages and disadvantages of stray animals and read the story, “The Three Javelinas” (a retelling of the Three Little Pigs) by Susan Lowell . Students created cornmeal dishes to share with the class because cornmeal is used daily at each meal in the book. They drew pictures to represent a snapshot of the most memorable event in a particular chapter and did a lot of webbing of characters and charting of their own lives versus main character Travis’ life. Crossword and word-search puzzles helped with vocabulary words. Students also wrote limericks that had something to do with an event from the novel. This combined reading comprehension with the skill of poetry writing. They wrote a letter to Papa as if they were Travis telling all that was happening in the book and created “how to” pamphlets to illustrate how Travis would have completed a certain task.

When the novel was finished, students wrote a Settlement Newspaper to summarize some of the events from the book in pictures and words. Since the novel does not have chapter titles, students created titles and drew pictures for each chapter. “That became a very good summary and study guide for the events of the book,” Mrs. Mazur said.

After the class tested on the book, they viewed the movie to see the differences Hollywood adds to classic literature. “They are all sad when the bullfight scene does not show up in the movie,” said Mrs. Mazur. “They also see that the ending of the movie drags out the shooting of Yeller.”