March is Reading Month. Trinity‘s second grade class has been doing more than just reading a book. They are looking at a series of books written and illustrated by Tomie DePaola. Through these books, the students learned to explore the story more deeply by examining characters, understanding the text more deeply, and learning a little Italian in the process.

The class focused on books from DePaola’s series “Strega Nona.” This series follows the antics that ensue as Strega Nona uses her potions, cures and magic to help those in her southern Italy town of Calabria.

Some of the books read by the second graders include “The Art Lesson,” “Strega Nona,” “Big Anthony,” “Strega Nona Meets Her Match,” “Strega Nona‘s Magic Lessons,” “Now One Foot Now the Other,” ”The Legend  of the Indian Paintbrush,” “Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato,“ “Patrick,” and “The Little Grunt and the Big Egg: A Prehistoric Fairy Tale.”

To help the students dig deeper into the stories, second grade teacher Jamie McMahon, helped students study character traits, compare and contrast characters as well as identify problems and solutions in the book. The class also looked up Italian words that were found in the series.

The class completed several project throughout the series, including designing Strega Nona’s house as they learned about her character throughout the book.

During the month of March, the students also wrote book recommendations. Check out a gallery of their suggestions.