Chalk: Inventing a Story's Ending

post contributed by Jocelyne Adkins, Program Director

A warm April day turned cold and chilly, however that did not stop us from bringing Beye's black top to life, with illustrations for a new ending to the imaginative picture book "Chalk" by Bill Thomson. This is a wordless picture book, and when the book's characters' chalk illustrations come to life, they find themselves confronting a huge, ferocious dinosaur on the playground. How do they escape? We asked the students to work in groups to solve this dilemma and to illustrate their own version of the story. It was exciting to witness how each group developed an original idea to subdue this frightening dinosaur. Following the groups' presentation of the story's ending, we went back to the classroom to see how Thompson solved the problem in his story (I won't give the ending away here... but it is clever!) Please see below for each group's solution:

Group 1: Andrew, Laila, Anika and Cassie (below) illustrating the middle of the story 

Group 1, illustrating the ending of the story 

Anika, Group 1, drawing the children

Group 1, The Story: The Dinosaur is distracted by a drawing that comes to life of "dead meat"

Group 1, The  Story cont: The hungry dinosaur eats a tasty meal and the children escape!

Group 2: Leila, Norah, Mikel & Emily (below)

Group 2: Emily

Group 2, The Story: The children are frightened by the dinosaur, but they have an idea...

Group 2, The Story cont: One of the children draws a female dinosaur...

Group 2, The Story cont: The scary dinosaur is distracted by the female dinosaur that has come to life before his eyes

Group 2, The Story cont: The scary dinosaur falls in love with the female dinosaur and the children escape!

Jalen, Group 3

Isaac and Emory, Group 3

Group 3, The Story: A ferocious dinosaur scares the children... 

Group 3, The Story cont: A net, illustrated by the children, comes to life & captures the dinosaur

Group 3, The Story cont: A child runs to return the chalk to the fake dinosaur on the playground

Group 3, The Story cont: the chalk hangs from the fake dinosaur's mouth for other children to find

Group 4: Ben, Jackson, Joseph & Xavier

Group 4, The Story: An angry dinosaur threatens the children

Group 4, The Story cont: the frightened children escape into a portal that they drew with the chalk

Group 4, The Story cont: The children exit the portal safe and sound!

Kudos to all the children for their teamwork and creativity in completing this project!