Are you teaching Justin Denzel’s Boy of the Painted Cave? Searching for novel activities and instructional ideas? You’ve come to the right place!
When I was a sixth-grade teacher, this book was at the core of our instruction first marking period. Students were already digging deep in their social studies classes, learning about early man and ancient civilizations, thus providing the necessary schema for such a novel study. I created several Boy of the Painted Cave resources for my own classes’ wide range of language learners. I share them here with you in hopes that you can work smarter and not harder! No need to reinvent the wheel if it’s already out there.
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Boy of the Painted Cave – An Overview
For those unfamiliar with the story, we meet Tao, a young boy living as an outcast due to a lame leg. Unlike the great hunters of his clan, Tao is a gentle, compassionate soul. He does not want to kill the wild bears or woolly mammoths of the hunt. Instead, he wants to paint them, an activity that is strictly forbidden unless you are a Chosen One. The clan leader, Volt, violently despises Tao for his taboo behaviors. When the other clan members discover Tao’s secret talent, they cast him alone into the wilderness. There, he befriends a wild wolf dog named Ram and the current Chosen One called Graybeard, who teaches him the true secret of the hunt.
Thematic Lessons
The novel Boy of the Painted Cave is a short read with long-reaching themes. The book’s main character Tao has a lame foot, leading him to be seen as different from his clan members. He passionately pursues his talents and dreams of becoming a Chosen One, despite the difficulties. Drive and determination dictate Tao’s future, not the clan’s rules and regulations. This story always hits the spot with my students. As a special education teacher, my students find comfort in Tao. They see him as one of them, a wonderful mirror reflective of their own life experiences and struggles. For my typically growing students, this story serves as a window, offering them a peek into the life of someone labeled as other.
Activating Prior Knowledge
Activating prior knowledge is important in understanding. It allows and aids students in making connections to new information. By using what students already know, I can gauge students’ level of understanding and scaffold the information they still need to learn.
Before jumping into the novel, we do A LOT of background building with different readings and videos. In our 6th-grade social studies curriculum, students learn about the evolution of man and ancient civilizations. Shoutout to History from the Middle for the amazing unit! Learning about early man as hunter-gatherers provides students with background information for a better understanding of Tao’s way of life.
A KWL chart is a helpful graphic organizer for brainstorming. Students can jot ideas on a sticky note and contribute their thoughts to the class anchor chart after a Think-Pair-Share/Write opportunity with peers. Some other commonly used strategies to activate prior knowledge include concept maps, anticipatory guides, and topic research.
Expanding Vocabulary
Vocabulary goes beyond decoding correctly. It is understanding the meaning of the word. Expanding a student’s knowledge bank of vocabulary words is vital to comprehension. The more expansive a student’s vocabulary is, the easier it is to make sense of and understand text. While Boy of the Painted Cave is a fairly easy read for upper elementary kids and middle schoolers, there are some unfamiliar words of interest that impact the storyline. Words like shaman and taboo are at the core of this novel’s plot and teachers should make time to ensure students grasp these concepts.
I’ll admit: expanding student vocabulary is probably my weakest instructional pillar of reading. Most of my literacy block is dedicated to fluency (i.e. reading the novel text) and comprehension (i.e. written reading responses). That said, I do take a systematic approach to vocabulary practice when we do it! Most of the vocabulary students are learning comes directly from the novel’s text. This provides students the opportunity to read for meaning as they search the text for context clues. (When all else fails, they can always look up the definition in a dictionary or good old Google.)
Depending on our daily time constraints, I can provide students with pre-filled foldable notes to put in their interactive notebooks or have students define new vocabulary through self-inquiry. Foldable activities for vocabulary can be found in my TeachersPayTeachers store. As a class, you can also complete Frayer models for key novel vocabulary in groups and display them around the room.
Chapter 1 questions can be downloaded for free from my TpT storefront.
Comprehension Activities
Comprehension resources are activities or games that help students demonstrate what they know about a text. Typically, we’re discussing the key literary elements of setting, plot, and character. I do this most often with comprehension trifolds. My comprehension trifolds for each chapter have students answering five questions, brochure style. Why? Because a paper folded into thirds is far less intimidating than a bulleted list of questions! Seriously, even my most reluctant writers will find a way to show what they know in this format. Students can fold the trifold back to show only one question at a time, allowing them to focus without feeling overwhelmed.
TEACHER TIP: For a read aloud of each chapter, search Jodi Houser on YouTube. I like to link these on our online learning platform for struggling readers and language learners.
Extension Activities
No novel study is complete without some fun extension activities! These are some of my favorites:
- Give students some scratch paper and a toothpick to create their own cave drawings.
- Write a continuation of or an alternate ending to the novel Boy of the Painted Cave.
- Justin Denzel wrote a sequel to the novel called Return to the Painted Cave. Read it! My students loved Tao’s character and couldn’t get enough of his adventures!
- Watch the movie Alpha. Research and present on the domestication of animals.
ACTIONABLE STEPS: Gather resources for your own novel study unit! What other Boy of the Painted Cave activities would you recommend for upper elementary students? Share below!
