Charlotte's Web: Read Like A Writer!

Hello! Once again, it is Tuesday, so it is blog post time!

This week, I chose to read Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, which was one of my all-time favorites as a child. Instead of simply reading this book for pleasure from my point of view, I decided to read this book like a writer. I was curious if there were any writing mini-lessons within this story that I could pull out and teach to an elementary class. To my surprise, there were quite a few, but I will only share one.

First, to give some background information on the book, E.B. White does a phenomenal job at making the animals come to life through their dialogue with one another, not to mention, the underlying theme of friendship, trust, and support that is evident throughout the book. This theme alone is a great reason to read this story to an elementary classroom, as they can learn a valuable lesson from this book, all while enjoying the adventures of the animals on the Zuckerman farm.

A young girl named Fern begs her father to save the little runt piglet from the litter that was just born, and much to her surprise, he chooses to save the piglet if she agrees to take care of him. Fern names the baby pig Wilbur and nourishes him to health until her family sells him to her Uncle Homer. Fern visits Wilbur frequently, but Wilbur becomes very sad when he discovers that Uncle Homer is only being nice to him in order to fatten him up and kill him. Wilbur's other barn friends do not seem to help the cause and continue to worry him, but a little spider named Charlotte, Wilbur's best friend, promises that she will save him. Wilbur becomes a well-known, prize-winning pig, and then returns the favor of friendship to Charlotte at the end of the book. I will let you read the book for yourself to discover just exactly what happens and how their friendship continues forever.

As I mentioned before, E.B. White does a fantastic job of making the animals come to life and have human-like qualities. While reading Charlotte's plan about how to save Wilbur, I had the idea that this would be a great mini-lesson in persuasive writing. I based my idea off of this passage:

"Now, I called this meeting in order to get suggestions. I need new ideas for the web. People are already getting sick of reading the word 'Some Pig!' If anybody can think of another message, or remark, I'll be glad to weave it into the web. Any suggestions for a new slogan?"

In this passage, Charlotte has just written the passage "Some Pig!" in her web, which stunned Mr. Zuckerman and his family. They believed that this was a miraculous sign that Wilbur is a unique pig, and they chose not to kill him. Charlotte is asking for new suggests in order to keep Wilbur alive, as well as keep the Zuckerman's stunned by the "miraculous signs."

Charlotte used a persuasive approach when designing the slogan that saved Wilbur's life. If I were using this text as a read aloud in upper elementary (4th/5th), I would pull in the impact of using persuasive speech to get a viewpoint across to others.

Most students have heard slogans from clothing stores, fast food restaurants, food brands, and much more. I would share many of these ideas with the class and then encourage them to share some others that they know. I would then talk about the power of persuasion in writing, and show them a few short examples of persuasive writing and persuasive letters.

I will tell students that I want them to create a persuasive slogan for Charlotte to weave in her web, and then write a short persuasive letter to Mr. Zuckerman about why he should not kill Wilbur. I may provide a personal example of a slogan for the web and a three-sentence letter to Mr. Zuckerman about saving Wilbur. I would then encourage students to do the same, providing them with lined paper for their letter that also has a spider web at the top to write in their slogan. I think that this would be a challenging but enjoyable activity for the students to do. I know that I would also enjoy reading the slogans that they created.

Until next week,

Ashton Schimmelpfennig