Hello All,
This listserv has provided me with so many wonderful ideas and I would like to
share a lesson you may find interesting.
Grade 3rd & up
Book: Soup for President by Robert Newton Peck
I started reading this book back in November to my 3rd graders. I introduced the
book by telling my students that in 1932 the world was very different.
Students were instructed to listen as I read. When there was a word they didn't
understand, they wrote it on the overhead transparency when I was done reading. I
didn't tell them how to spell the words correctly, they wrote them as they heard
them.
During the course of reading the book, I explained issues such as 1 room
schoolhouses, corporal punishment, advertising on barns, presidential campaigns etc.
When I finished the book, I copied the tranparencies and gave each child a copy.
I taught how to take notes from the book by modeling a simple list format and we
took notes on the setting, time, plot, main & minor characters, title & author.
Students learned to underline titles. As I modeled how to take notes on the
overhead, students copied what I wrote on their own paper.
From that I worked with the words they didn't know and wrote the correct spelling
on a transparency and explained how to use the dictionary and taught skills such
as, beginning, middle & end of alphabet, guide words, different dictionaries etc,
definitions, parts of speech, root words, plural spellings. Some of the words i.e.
knickerbockers weren't in their student dictionaries, so I explained that we had
what I call "The Grandaddy Dictionary" to consult and most of the words were found
in there.
For words such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Manitoba, I taught encyclpedia skills.
When we were done with that, I had some old dictionaries and raffled 1 off to each
class.
I have just finished reading to them a piece about what life was like in the US &
world, compared prices of homes, gas, famous movie stars, explained
employment/unemployment, the economy and of course the 1932 Presidential Election.
Lots of things in the book to compare to 2008 Election, i.e. a girl runs for class
president & Hilary as well as many others to compare/contrast.
Our next step will be to review their notes and take an Accelerated Reader quizz.
They will then interview an older person to find out what kind of games they played
when they were a child and share that information in groups.
After that they will break into groups & use strips with our Presidents and the
years they served and put them into sequential order. We will culminate by doing a
Reader's Theatre. I am going to video the Theatre and show it to them. I am
going to take all of their notes and bind it into booklets for them and let them
create their own covers, title pages, dedication pages & copyright pages. They
won't even know they are learning when they are having fun creating their end
product.
My 3rd graders have gained a much more in depth insight as to our up coming
election as well as some history they may have never learned had we not used the
book.
Janice Kowalski-Kelly, LMS
Cleveland Hill
Elementary
"I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous
group. They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the
desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution,
man. I wouldn't mess with them." Michael Moore
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