Super3 to the Rescue. (2nd Grade)

I love Super3!

I love that my friends Danielle and Annette made him into a caped crusader of information literacy and the greater good. I especially love that their superb book, The Adventures of Super3:A Teacher's Guide to Information Literacy Grades K-2 (Big6 Information Literacy Skills), has amazing comics introducing each lesson and starring the red numerical wonder.

I love this so much, in fact, so emphatically that I thought I would test out the concept with my 2nd graders... and it worked!



Here's a quick run-down:

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Unit Name: Super3 to the Rescue!

Grade: 2

Length of Unit: Approximately three 35-minute classes

Context: Our 2nd graders work on identifying the main events in stories. With every problem there's an opportunity to PLAN, DO, and REVIEW to find a solution. Using the form of a comic book for our writing, students identified how book characters use the Super3 in order to solve their problems.

Summary of Unit (by day/class):

Another caped super hero to the rescue!

Day 1: I read aloud a super hero story to the students and we identified the main characters, the problem they had to solve, and the solution that led to the resolution of the story. For a book of choice, I recommend reading Atomic Ace (He's Just My Dad), which came out a couple of years ago and incorporates comics into the story.

Here's how the Super3 matches up to this story's plot:

1. Plan - After getting turned into a bug, Atomic Ace comes up with a plan to use a mirror to defeat Insect King.
2. Do - Ace finds the Insect King at the site of a robbery and reflects Insect King's ray gun back onto the villain.
3. Review - Ace tells his family and the media all about the event. The city is safe again (for now).

When you put the story to a comic template and add Super3 helping Ace at each step along the way, it ends up looking something like this:

Generic comic template used to add Super3 to our story.

We followed all of these steps together as a class. I let the students know they would be making comics of their own using other stories and having Super3 lend a hand along the way.

Day 2: I found a great book series in our reading closet that matched the reading levels of our students (actually, these books were a little below their level, but that helped assure me that every student could be successful on this project). Students got to choose one of these three books about a man and his tow truck: Toby and BJ, Toby and the Big Tree, and Toby and the Big Red Van (each by Annette Smith).

Students read the books independently, then completed a Super3 planner to help them determine where Toby and BJ used the steps of the Super3 throughout the story to help solve their problems. I met with students in "reading groups" to review their answers before allowing students to begin work on the comic book template.

Here's what they filled out:

Identifying the PLAN, DO, and REVIEW of our stories.

Day 3: By the final day, students were excited to get to work on their comics. Student were each given the same comic template and asked to illustrate the story event they identified as PLAN, DO, or REVIEW. The challenge in this case was to add Super3 to the scene, lending a hand or encouraging our characters. Not everyone got to add color to their comics, but each had a "plan" block, a "do" block, and a "review" block incorporating Super3 into the story. Some of the commentary our 2nd graders came up with was actually pretty awesome!

See for yourself:

Super3 lends his thoughts to Toby and BJ.

Super3 lends a hand to Toby and BJ

Super3 notices good in Toby and BJ.

Definitely a great unit worth repeating. If you don't have the Super3 books, check your school's collection of leveled readers. The books tend to have a simple plot which lends itself nicely to this activity.

Dah-duh-duh-DAH! 

Super3 to the rescue!