The Magic of Teaching

Bring a Book Alive: Harry Potter Edition!!!!!

Yippee!!! My masterpiece is FINALLY finished!  I have been working on this for 2 years now, and I am very proud of it!  I began by creating simple activities and trying them out on my second graders.  We had read through all 4 harry potter books during our bathroom breaks throughout the year.  They became entranced in the series, and I soon heard them playing harry potter out at recess.  it warmed my heart that I could bring something into their life that made them love reading.  I decided then and there that I could do even more with this series to heighten their interest in reading.  That's when I began creating what I liked to call, "Bringing a book Alive."  In this post I will show you everything I made and explain how it brings Harry Potter alive for readers.  I can promise teachers everywhere that bringing a book a live gets students so involved and excited about reading.  It's a wonderful thing to implement into reading, and you can do it in each grade level. 

So, we begin with the famous Hogwarts letter that every Harry Potter fan big and small is still waiting to arrive at their doorstep telling them that they are a wizard (including me :) This is a printable in the tpt pack where you just need to add each students name.  I put them on each students desk for when they walked in in the morning and the reaction I got was unreal!  Screaming, jumping up and down, running around the room were just a few of them. 

Next, in the packet you will see a title page that says, "Creating Your Own Patronus."  A potronus charm in Harry Potter comes from a spell known as "Expecto Patronum."  Each witch/wizards patronus is unique.  I also included a reference page about patronus charms, as well as two activity pages!



 

 

Next in our Harry Potter packet is the section titled "Awesome Animagi."  Now for anyone who has never picked up a Harry Potter book, you probably have no idea what this means.  It is actually a very neat concept that all kids will love!  In the wizarding world, some wizards can turn into animals.  They are known as Animagi.  With this activity the students can create the Animagi that they think they would turn into.

  

The next section in this pack is titled Honeydukes Sweet Shop.  In Harry Potter there is a complete wizard town known as Hogsmede.  In this town there is a huge candy store known as Honeydukes.  This candy store is not anything like a regular candy store from our world.  In this store, the candy can come to life, change colors, turn into something else right before your eyes, or even hop away...  For this activity the students will be creating a new candy for Honeydukes to sell!  They will need to come up with the candy name, the ingredients, an illustration of the candy and the package, and explain what magical thing it does. 

     

The next section is titled, "The Marauders Map."  In the third book of Harry Potter, Harry comes across a map.  With a few special words, and a flick of his wand, this map showed him the entire school and ground of Hogwarts, included who was walking around and where.  it's a magical map, and one that comes in handy many times.  For this assignment, the students will be creating their own Marauders Map from their memory of what they have read.

 

These are examples of some maps that my students made!
 

The next section in this packet is titled, "Magnificent Magical Creatures." In the wizarding world there are creatures that do amazing things, and look like nothing you have ever seen before. For this activity the students will need to come up with a crazy different magical creature.  They will need to make a name for their creature, and explain what the magical creature does.

 

The next section is titled, "Zonko's Joke Shop, and Weasley Wizard Wheezes."  In the wizarding world at the town of Hogsmede there is a store known as Zonko;s joke shop.  This store is filled with millions of creative joke items for kids to use.  These also are not like joke items we have in our world.  They also come to life and do things you could never imagine.  For this activity, the students will be creating a brand new joke item to be placed in Zonko's.  They will need to come up with the item name, the product container, product illustration, and the product description.  They will also need to come up with an add to help sell their product to wizards all over.

 

The next section is titled, "Wizard Trading Cards."  These go along the same concept of baseball cards, however they all have to do with wizards.  I made templates of the cards with some characters from the series.  You can use these in a few different ways, and I include a page explaining this.

 

The next section is titled, "Create your own Magical Spell."  In this section the students will be creating their own spell for the wizarding world.  They will have to come up with a name for their spell, explain what the spell is used for, and further explain how to use  the spell.

  

The next section is titled, "Shops of Diagon Alley."  Diagon Alley is a small wizard shopping town where everyone goes to buy there materials for school.  Wizard shops line the streets, and each is very different and unique.  The students will be creating a brand new wizard shop to be placed in this small strip.  They will be in charge of coming up with what their store will sell, what the name of their store will be, drawing a diagram of the inside and outside of their store, making a store list of items included their cost, and creating a shop sign/poster to draw the wizards to it. 

  

  

  

  

Next up in our packet is a section titled, Create a New Hogwarts House."  In Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry there are 4 houses that the students are sorted into.  The students will be creating a brand new house to add to Hogwarts.  They will need to create a name for the house, an animal to represent the house, a slogan for their house, house colors, which professor is head of their house, explain where the house is located in Hogwarts and how you get in, and finally they will need to create a coat of arms for their house.

  

 

The next section is titled, "Create a New Hogwarts Class Subject."  There are many professors at Hogwarts who teach quite a few different classes for the young witches and wizards.  Students will be in charge of created a brand new class for the students to learn something new about the wizarding world.  I included some examples of classes that already exist to give you and your students an idea of  what kinds of things are taught at Hogwarts.  The students will need to create a topic of study for the class, a name for the class, and choose the professor that will teach the class.

 

The next section in the packet is titled, "If I were a Witch or Wizard at Hogwarts."  This is a larger writing task.  The students will be writing about which Hogwarts house they would want to be placed in and why, then they will have to explain which house they think the sorting hat would actually place them in.  They will need to understand all the houses and what they stand for in order to do this writing assignment, so research will be required.  I provide an example of a "4-square" graphic organizer for them as well as the final draft paper.  There is also a set of directions.

 

 

The next section is titled, "Create a New Book Cover."  This activity is just having the students use their creativity to create a new book cover for one of the 7 Harry Potter Books.  I provide a page for them to draw their illustration on, but this is pretty self explanatory so I am not included a picture.

 

The next is titled, "Boggart."  In the wizarding world, there are some scary creatures that can cause a lot of terror to anyone.  One of those mysterious creatures is known as a Boggart.  These creatures hide out in dark confined spaces.  If you come across one, they turn into your deepest darkest fear.  You have to know the proper spell to use, and you must think of something very funny in order to make it change shape and make you laugh.  If you do those things it will disappear.  So, for this assignment, the students will be drawing an illustration of what they think a Boggart would turn into for them, then they will draw an illustration of what they would change the boggart into to make them laugh, finally they will have to explain all of those things and why they chose them.

The next section of this packet is titled, "Daily Prophet Reporter."  In the wizarding world, they too have a popular newspaper, and it is known as the Daily Prophet.  This paper is of course a little different from ours.  The pictures can move and talk and so can the writing!  The students will be acting like Reeta Skeeter (a famous reporter) and they will need to choose a few topics to write up a newspaper article on!

The next section is titled, "Create a New Wizard Form of Transportation."  The wizarding world has many different ways to get around, but as more wizard come into this world things are beginning to get backed up.  It is up to the students to come up with a new way to get around in the wizarding world.  They will need to give a detailed description of how the transportation works, include of list of materials need as well as how to use them, a detailed diagram of how it works, and any rules or regulations for using the transportation.

The next section is titled, "Tri-Wizard Tournament 4th Task."  In the 4th book of Harry Potter, Hogwarts hosts the Tri-Wizard Tournament where three schools come together and pick a champion from each school to compete against one another in 3 very dangerous, magical tasks.  The task of the student is to create a 4th and final task for the tournament.  They will need to decide where they want the task to take place, decide what magical creatures they want to have in the task and what they will be doing, decide what abilities the task will be challenging, decide what the champion can and cannot use, choose a clue that will help the champion figure out what the task will be, explain the task in detail, and draw an illustration of the task. 

 

 

The next section is titled, "Create a New Wizard sport/game."  Quidditch is a game played on brooms in the wizarding world, and wizards go crazy over it. However, there are not many other games/sports for them to choose from.  It is the job of the student to create a brand new game.  They will need to decide what kind of sport they will be creating, choose a name for their game, draw an illustration of the field, list and sketches of all items needed to play, and all rules and regulations of how to play.  After they do all of those creative things, there is a small project that I created where they will actually create the game they made in a form of a diorama or powerpoint ect..

 

The next section is titled, Write a Letter to your Favorite Harry Potter Character."  This is also very self explanatory.  The students will choose one character from the series that they would like to write a friendly letter to.  They will need to tell about themselves, and also ask the character questions about themselves. 

 

The next section is titled, "How to Create Wands for Your Students."  This is where I give a tutorial with pictures and explanations on how I made wands for my students while we brought the book alive.  It is a good amount of work, but my students went crazy over them, I'm talking tears and everything!! So here goes!

The next section is titled, "Making Honeydukes Treats."  This is where I show you how to make a tiny treat bag straight from the famous wizard candy shop itself!  Hope you like it!

 

The next section is titled, "Sorting Card Templates."  These are sorting cards that should be given to the students in the beginning of this unit.  In the books, each witch and wizard that goes to Hogwarts is sorted into a house there very first night.  You will be sorting your students into houses as well.  You can use the sorted groups to have them work together on some of these activities.

 

The final section is titled, "Student Awards for Great Work."  These awards are made specifically for this unit.  Each award is given for one of the activities.  I am only showing a few examples on here.

I hope you enjoy all of this!! It is very near and dear to my heart!  Not only do I love Harry Potter, but I love bringing reading alive to children.  Each of my groups of students LOVED every second of this unit, and they gained a new love for reading along with it!  Its up in my TPT store The Magic of Teaching!  If you do purchase it and use it please take pictures and post them and send them to me via klr735@gmail.com!!!