Please send the photos to me directly. I don't know that would post them directly on the site. The mother in me tells me that wouldn't be a good idea to put kids' photos on ANY public listserv...
Hi Debbie, How wonderful that Non-fiction Conventions is working for you!!! My kids always love it. The picture attachments didn't come through. If you don't mind, reattach them. I'd be delighted to see them. With my classes of younger kids, I've gone one of two ways: Nonfiction pages, or expert groups. PT 1. Both of these start with a common activity which ties into the questioning reading strategy. We talk about how many of our questions in life aren't answered, but that should never stop us from asking them. We would begin by individually brainstorming questions they have about life...(Why is the sky blue? How does an author get a book published?) Depending on the age, I'd discuss fat or thin questions or open-ended questions. We'd come back together and develop a class list of questions. This can take 5 or 6 chart papers. It's huge! PT 2. I teach them to take notes as Nancy Atwell showed in Coming to Learn. We use Zoobooks, because I always had enough of those in my collection to go around. I have the kids leave their notebooks open and their pencils at their desks and come to the group area. The kids are given about 2 minutes to read a page in the Zoobooks. Then without talking (we even practice THAT before hand) they get up, go back to their seats, and write or draw everything they remember from that page. We do this over a 45 minute period or so. The next day, without ever looking at the book, they write a paragraph from the information they gathered the day before. We do this for about a week. I've done it with history textbooks too. Then we do it just with them closing the book and writing, finally they start to do it by flipping the book over. Pretty soon, they can gather notes about a topic without plagiarising. For most, it works well, you will still have a couple who will still copy word-for-word. Nonfiction pages: They can then choose a question they'd like to answer. We work on how to write a thesis statement (or topic statement) as an answer to a question. Let the kids gather information to answer their question. Give them a 9 x 12 white construction paper and tell them to make a nonfiction page. They can draw pictures, print and cut pictures from the Internet. Take short blurbs, captions, and articles, t through the writing process and print and attach them to the pages. Use Zoobooks or anything by Eyewitness, or Time for Kids as examples. Fold each page in half, glue them together back to back. I used rubber cement, so they didn't get wet. Devise a title page for the front and "about the authors" page for the back. Make a cover and you have a wonderful artifact about what your kids have learned. Expert groups: I let them choose groups of 3-4 kids. Together they can choose a question they can answer. We do the same thesis statement. They do the research together, decide how they will present it: panel discussion, news report, skit, poem, PowerPoint, etc. They need to make a visual of some kind. They choose how to go about this. I've had kids use costumes or dress up. I usually video tape these presentations and they are great on the projector or television in my room just playing over and over during open house. Do what seems to fit your kids the best. If your class is pretty outgoing try the presentations, if not do the book. I've seen both be a great success. I realize as I am writing this, I have moved away from some of this as I have moved up to middle school. I miss it. I need to step back and see if I can't use all these wonderful things again...It appears I will be teaching history and language arts to 7th graders together next year. Thank you for that. Keep me posted. Hope this helps. Kim -- Kimberlee Hannan Department Chair Sequoia Middle School Fresno, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
