Today the 4th graders finished painting and decorating their archetypal character masks. My apologies that some of them (specifically the villain archetypes) are truly terrifying. If you need to make the mask mysteriously disappear in the next couple days, you have my full support. haha

The students did a great job being flexible when things didn't turn out as they originally planned, and a few students took leadership roles to make sure that the classroom was clean and reset after all of the messy artwork. This makes doing big, messy projects way more likely to keep happening, so way to go, 4th graders!

After clean-up, we refreshed the main stages on the hero's journey and introduced narrative conventions: plot, character, point of view, setting, theme, conflict, and style. The class then wrote a collaborative story about Bob the Potato's hero's journey to finish the day. Next week, we will practice more storycraft before starting work on our huge hero's journey crankie project!