Third Graders Study Character Development with The One and Only Ivan

By Head of Community Engagement Gordon Mathis

Beginning in Early Learning, students at Galloway acquire the literary skills of understanding character development, being attentive to word meanings, and discriminating between literary and cinematic treatments of the same story.

The anchor text for our third grade's Character Studies reading unit this year was The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, a story about a gorilla who spends 27 years of his life in a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, and lives the last 18 years at Zoo Atlanta. Over a month the students read the 300-page novel aloud, empathizing with Ivan and his friends and delving into their emotions and motivations throughout the story. 

After reading daily, the students review the vocabulary they encounter, discuss the “story mountain” of the plot, and wonder what will happen next. They look for patterns in the character studies as they dig deeper into the narrative. The students write opinion pieces developed from the text, for example, whether animals should live in captivity. 

Ivan is an artist with a preferred medium of painting with mud. Students created their own mud paintings, noticing the varying textures and colors of different types of mud. To accompany the students' creativity, EL art teacher Carmen Gonzalez even taught a lesson on Picasso. 

Before Thanksgiving Break, the students watched the current movie based on the novel, discussing the merits of both the movie and the text, recognizing that Ivan’s owner is presented more kindly in the film than his depiction in the book. Students also Zoomed with professionals at Zoo Atlanta to learn more about primates in general and to hear firsthand about Ivan’s years at the Zoo.