Back to School Monster Glyph

Back to school time already?!?  Teachers return the last week of July in my system, so at this point we've had kids for almost 2 weeks.  My team has a new schedule this year with two 45-minute blocks in the afternoon for RTI.  Since we are just getting to know our kiddos, I created a fun Back to School Monster Glyph that they really enjoyed doing during that time.

Here is the glyph, available for download on TpT for $3.  There is a Back to School version included as well as a generic version that could be used at any point in the year.

Just a quick note: I shrunk down the monster to half size (printed 2 pages per sheet on the copier) because all 65 third graders' monsters were going to be displayed in the hallway along with the pieces they wrote to go along with the glyphs.  Half size was the only way everything could fit on the bulletin boards.

You can either have students color the pieces of white paper to cut out themselves, cut out the pieces for them ahead of time so they can assemble them, or make a template for students to trace and cut out which is what I did.  I copied the monster pieces on colored card stock, laminated them, and labeled them with a Sharpie.  

The color of the head/body is part of the glyph key so kids asked if they could do the arms and legs different colors.  When I had some former students do a trial run of the glyph, one chose different colors and the other matched her arms and legs to color of the face.  I thought the same-color monsters turned out so much better that when my kids asked I told them to do the same colors.  It helped with saving construction paper also since most students were able to fit all of their parts on one sheet of construction paper.

After they made their glyphs, they wrote about what they hope for this school year.  The last step before hanging them was for the students to graph the data for each monster in an organized fashion. 

I equipped the kids with clipboards and had them lay their monsters at their seats.  I printed the graphs 4-pages-per-sheet and directed students to the first graph.  They graphed their own data for that first graph on their paper, then I directed them to graph the other monsters at their tables.  I counted down from 10 to "monster" at which point they rotated to the next table, graphed it while I counted down again, and so on.  When they got back to their own tables we compared the data to see if everyone recorded correctly and discussed the results.  We did the same thing for each of the 6 graphs.

While it sounds very time consuming as I type this, it really wasn't bad at all and was the best way I came up with to ensure that each child graphed each monster.  The kids loved it and were asking when the next glyph would be coming before they even finished the first.

The entire process lasted about a week with 2 days to create the monsters, 2 to write, and 1 to graph.