Tomie dePaola's 26 Fairmount Avenue is a collection of stories from his childhood. Read the stories to your students and help them to understand that Tomie is writing about memories that happened at this address. Your students will be able to make connections to all the adventures that Tomie writes about. After discussing personal stories, the students could create the facade of what their house looks like using paints, markers or oil pastels. The last step is to write the address at the top of the page and see what story evolves. This usually brings up questions about which address to use and leads us to explore what defines one's home or sense of place? Is it where you were born, where you were raised, or where you live now?
What will you do? Please try this writing assignment and bring to the next class meeting.
Here are some excerpts from students and teachers:
- Sisters jumped from trees, brothers build model planes. Grandparents blew into town from far flung West Texas every two weeks to spoil us kids rotten.
- I remember when I moved to my house I hugged my stuffed animals. I snuggled in bed every night.
- Hey - there's this kid on my street, he has orange hair, his name is Jimmy
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