CRASH, the middle grades novel by Jerry Spinelli, is such a fun read for the beginning of the school year with it’s cast of unique character types that any middle school or upper elementary student will recognize.
Heading the cast are Crash himself, a football star and a bully, and Penn, a quiet, quirky peace-loving Quaker. These two kids, apparently opposites, interact in unique ways as the plot moves forward. It’s a great story for a whole-class novel.
My free resource for this novel focuses on these school-age character types with a yearbook page for kids to complete for each one. As they list the characters accomplishments, activities, and other details, plus what each one is “Most likely to . . .”, students will be identifying and describing each one’s unique character traits.
In this freebie, Crash Coogan’s Yearbook, I’ve included a page for each of these major characters: Crash, Penn, Mike, Jane, and Abby. Here you can see two of them. This should be a fun after-reading activity for kids to complete as they think ahead to their own yearbook entries one day. Click on either page to view and download the full resource.
If you are interested in checking out my full novel study for CRASH, follow this link. It includes chapter questions, a before reading activity, two characterization activities, two context clues activities, two inferencing activities, and a review card game. Questions are text dependent and written specifically for this novel.
See all of the novel studies HERE. (My latest one is for Patricia MacLachlan’s novel Journey, and more are on the way!)