Using "Tuesday" by David Wiesner for a Year 2 English "Tell Me A Story" Lesson

"Tuesday" by David Wiesner is a fantastic wordless picture book that can be used to inspire creative storytelling in a Year 2 "Tell Me A Story" topic lesson. Here are some ideas for using this book:
Generating Story Ideas
- Have students examine the illustrations in the book and make observations about what they see happening. Prompt them with questions like "What do you think is happening in this picture?" or "What might happen next?"
- Encourage students to use their imagination to speculate about the frogs' motivations and what they might be thinking or saying. Provide sentence starters like "I think the frogs are..." or "The frogs might be saying..."
- Brainstorm a list of "What if..." questions to get students thinking about alternative scenarios, like "What if the frogs visited your house on Tuesday night?" or "What if the pigs started flying on Monday instead of Tuesday?"
Structuring the Story
- Use the book's structure as a model. The story follows a sequence of events over the course of a Tuesday evening. Have students plan their own stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
- Provide a story mountain graphic organizer to help students map out the rising action, climax, and resolution of their tale. Encourage them to include an unexpected or surprising event, like the pigs flying at the end of "Tuesday".
Descriptive Writing
- Challenge students to describe a scene from their story using vivid sensory details. What would the characters see, hear, smell, taste or feel?
- Have them zoom in on a specific moment and describe it in slow motion, like a camera focusing in on the frogs lifting off on their lily pads.
Dialogue
- Ask students to imagine what the characters in their story might say to each other. Have them write out the dialogue using quotation marks and attributions like "said" or "asked".
- Provide a template for writing a conversation between two characters, with sentence starters like "What do you think we should do?" or "I'm scared!"
By using "Tuesday" as inspiration, students will be able to tap into their creativity and imagination to craft their own engaging stories. The book's unique format and surprising events provide a great jumping-off point for Year 2 writers.