4th graders created their our own Wordle (a visual cloud of words) from the book Waiting for the Magic by Patricia MacLachlan. Students were introduced to Google Docs and kept a list of important events, characters, and/or actions that occurred as I read the story out loud. Afterwards they copy and pasted their Google Doc Wordle list to Wordle. Using the Font, Layout, and Color options in Wordle each student created their own original Wordle based on the story.
4th graders created their our own Wordle (a visual cloud of words) from the book Waiting for the Magic by Patricia MacLachlan. Students were introduced to Google Docs and kept a list of important events, characters, and/or actions that occurred as I read the story out loud. Afterwards they copy and pasted their Google Doc Wordle list to Wordle. Using the Font, Layout, and Color options in Wordle each student created their own original Wordle based on the story.
Renown author and illustrator Maurice Sendak died today at the age of 83. Sendak is most widely known for his 1964 Caldecott Award Winner, Where the Wild Things Are. See this New York Times article to learn more about his life.
The enormity of the Titanic tragedy lives on 100 years later. The Building Titanic app gives a visual and textual overview of the building of the Titanic and it’s sister ship the Olympic. For additional information about the app, the history of the Titanic, and the National Geographic documentaries with oceanographer Robert Ballard, and Director James Cameron go to:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/titanic/building-titanic-interactive-timeline/
Here’s a Tagxedo word sculpture of the Titanic:
From USA Today, an exclusive interview excerpt of Veronica Roth’s Insurgent (released on May 1, 2012) – the 2nd in the Divergent series.
With my 4th grade classes, this week, I’m beginning Waiting for the Magic by Patricia MacLachlan. As a pre-reading exercise I’ll be sharing the Wordle below with the query: What do you think will be happening in this story?
In upcoming weeks, boys will be responding to writing prompts, and creating their own Wordles related to this heart felt story.
This Wordle was created using the biography about Tim from HarperCollins About the Author portion of their website.
I’ll be sharing this Wordle and some compiled videos about Tim with my 4th grade classes this week. Tim will be speaking about his life, writing, and reading in the New Performance Meeting Hall this Friday at 2:30.
“Tired of being negatively portrayed by mainstream media, a group of Native American students created a video describing how their community was about more than alcoholism, broken homes and crime.
The students from South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux Reservation are in Washington, D.C., Monday to lobby Congress for increased funding for schools on Native American reservations.
Filmed in black and white, the student-produced video More Than That takes the viewer through the hallways, classrooms and gymnasium of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation’s county high school.
Using their bodies as sign posts, the students explain they’re more than stock images of poverty, alcoholism and violence.
The point the students are trying to make, says English teacher Heather Hanson, is that they’re not victims.
The non-profit National Association of Federally Impacted Schools has invited the Lakota students to Washington, D.C., to attend the group’s winter conference on Monday.
While in town, they’ll also be lobbying South Dakota’s congressional representatives to explain that, as Lakota, they are More Than That.”
The Abraham Lincoln book tower stands 34 feet tall and 8 feet around in the lobby of the new Ford's Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington, D.C.
From NPR’s Morning Edition this President’s Day Holiday.
This President’s Day, a group of historians in Washington, D.C., decided they wanted to do something different to recognize the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. But how do you memorialize someone who is already one of the most memorialized people in history?
Their solution: to physically illustrate Lincoln’s importance by creating a tower of books written about him. The tower measures about eight feet around and 34 feet — that’s three and a half stories tall.
“It makes a real statement to anyone that this is an important guy and there was a whole lot written about him, and there continues to be a whole lot written about him,” says Paul Tetreault, director of Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
The towering tribute to the 16th president rises up through the middle of a spiral staircase in the lobby of the new Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership, located just across the street.
Some 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln — more books, says Tetreault, than have been written about any other person in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ.
Nearly 7,000 of these books are contained in the tower. They even look authentic up close (click here to get a closer look) but the tower’s books are actually replicas made of pieces of bent aluminum, with the covers of the real books printed on them.
“There are books here for people of all ages,” says Tetreault. “There’s young people’s books, there’s an Abraham Lincoln stickers book, there’s an Abraham Lincoln coloring book. And then of course there’s all of the bestsellers: David Herbert Donald’s great book about Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals — all of these major scholars who’ve written about Abraham Lincoln, they’re all contained in this stack.”
Click here to view the tower from the top down.
To Listen to the Story go to:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/20/147062501/forget-lincoln-logs-a-tower-of-books-to-honor-abe
Boys at Fenn don’t often show much interest in picture books, having left them behind years ago to spend hours in chapter after chapter of action, fantasy, or thriller stories. A good picture book can be incredibly inspirational to Fenn boys as a visual & informational introduction to historic people and events. Black History Month gives us the opportunity to showcase the rich diversity of our picture book collection including books on black athletes, inventors, artists, civil rights figures, and more. Kidsreads.com provides an annual list of informational picture books for Black History Month and we have a good number on display in the library for the month of February. Take another look at those picture books and enjoy learning something new!
