A million fish... Serving up exaggeration

Students will become familiar with the term "exaggeration" and how it can be used in stories to catch the reader's attention. Students will create narrative stories of their own using exaggeration.

A lesson plan for grades 3–4 English Language Arts

By Jennie McGuire

Learn more

Related pages

• First Americans of North Carolina and the United States: This lesson will use shared reading, center time, hands-on projects, and journal writing to help learners discover facts about first Americans, particularly those in the region that is today North Carolina, while at the same time developing their English language skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• More vivid word choices: Said is dead: The students will expand their vocabulary and learn synonyms for overused words. By using the story Chicken Little by Stephen Kellogg, students will see how an acclaimed author uses many different words for "said."
• Along the Trail of Tears: A part of history is often forgotten when teaching younger students. This is the relocation of the Cherokee Indians when the white settlers wanted their property. The US Government moved whole groups of Indians under harsh conditions. This trip became known as the Trail of Tears. Using this as a background students will explore and experiment with persuasive writing as they try to express the position of Cherokee leaders.

Related topics

• Learn more about creative writing, exaggeration, language arts, and read-alouds.

Help

Please read our disclaimer for lesson plans.

Legal

Learning outcomes

Students will identify the meaning of the word “exaggeration” through a study of the book A Million Fish…More or Less. After reading the book, students will then use their background knowledge of narrative writing to compose an imaginative narrative story using exaggeration.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

2 Days

Materials/resources

• A Million Fish…More or Less by Patricia McKissack
• Paper
• Pencil

Pre-activities

Students should already be familiar with the narrative writing process and should be well practiced in revising and editing their own papers. I normally use this lesson when helping students develop “hooks” for their papers.

Activities

1. The students will listen to an oral reading of A Million Fish…More or Less. (This is a mathematics based story and works very well in a lesson on place value or estimation also.) Students will classify the story as fiction or non-fiction.
2. The term “exaggeration” will then be introduced. I usually write the word on the board and have students guess what it could mean. If no one knows, I then tell them what the definition is and follow by asking if the author of A Million Fish…More or Less used exaggeration in the story.
3. In collaborative pairs, students record ways in which exaggeration was used. These methods are then recorded on the board.
4. I ask the students if using exaggeration made the story more interesting than if the author had used true facts. They usually agree that it does make the story better! We then discuss how we could use exaggeration in our own writing and if exaggeration would be a good “hook” for a story.
5. In small groups the students develop ideas they could write about using exaggeration.
6. We record their ideas on the board. I then ask students if a story using exaggeration would be more of a personal or an imaginative narrative. Obviously, it would make a much better imaginative narrative.

Assessment

I keep an ongoing checklist for each student, identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses in each story they write.

Supplemental information

This is a good way to teach the Style feature of the writing rubric.

Students can also examine other tall tales for exaggeration, such as Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Calamity Jane, etc.

Comments

This is a good lesson to use as the writing test date is approaching. The students enjoy writing to prompts they develop themselves.