#2572. Holes Ideas

Literature, level: Middle
Posted Wed May 8 09:18:05 PDT 2002 by Karen Covington (karenc@panola.com).
Batesville Junior High School/ 8th grade, Batesville, MS

This is a simple idea that I came up with out of desperation that turned out to really help my students. My students kept confusing the campers in the book Holes. I finally drew some circles on the board and we worked as a class to come up with a simple illustration for each character. For instance, for Zig Zag's circle we added crazy, wavy hair to the top. For X-ray's circle we added large glasses. We kept the drawings very simple and made sure that each circle had one recognizable characteristic of that character. We then took down the important information for each camper beside each circle.Whenever we learned something new about a character, we added it next to its illustration.

One fun activity that we completed during our Holes unit turned out to be a big success. I had the students create their own new camper. The students drew an illustration of their new camper, complete with all of their vital statistics including the crime they committed to have them sent to Camp Green Lake. After their illustrations were completed the students wrote a short scene introducing their character in the novel.