Lessons+Ideas

//**Animal Research and Pourqoui Tales:**// Students can learn about animals, their environment and adaptations by creating a narrative (pourquoi tale) to share what they have learned about their animals while also working on research and writing skills! Pourquoui tales convey to readers an explanation of how animals have come about or changed into the animal in the story. These tales provide great learning opportunities to incorporate personification. Book Connection: //The 3 Little Dassies// (Brett)


 * //Using Illustrations to Infer://** Use illustrations to infer the meaning portrayed. Can you use the illustrations to determine who "won" each game and competition? Have students this prepare their own sequel to this story using different toys, games, and competitions. Make sure illustrations allow readers to infer their meaning. Book Connection: //Shark vs. Train (Barton)//


 * //Writing With Rebus & Rhyme://** Introduce students to rebus stories looking for connections between words and images. Challenge students to replace nouns with images or have students write the rebus from the point of view of a main character in any story. Other rebus connections could be to compose rebus poems, jokes, or puzzles. Book Connection: //The Fantastic 5 & 10 cent Store: a Rebus Adventure// (J. Patrick Lewis)

//**Kerpoof: Make a Story/Movie:**// Introduce Kerpoff to students ( [] ) as a way to connect technology to their writing and research. Students assume the role of "reporter" in pursuit of the "who, what, when, where, how" of fairy tales. See detailed lesson plan created specifically for use of this technology tool for Gr. 3-5. Book Connection: //What REALLY Happened to Humpty?// (Jeanie Franz Ransom)

//**Kid-Friendly Social Networking:**// Use Edumodo for education to create a facebook-like web page. Students should complete research to learn about a historical figure. Once research is complete, create a page for a historical figure. Consider what they would have on their wall (profile, status posts), would they friend, who would be their friend, how would their friends respond to posts. The could also be used with book characters. View format of Edmodo - [] Book Connection: //Lincoln Tells a Joke// (Krull)


 * //Digital Storytelling://** Use FLIP video cameras to record stories created. Students can also upload digital pictures or original artwork into video programs such as Animoto, PhotoStory, etc. Other Web 2.0 tools such as Kerpoof or Storybird can be used to help students create stories.

//**Microblogging (Tweeting)**//: Allow students to create tweets as if they had a Twitter account. Tweets can have a maximum of 140 characters. Students can create tweets to summarize a book, respond to a character, be a historical figure and prepare a tweet from any day in their life. Building social networking skills helps students grow into the technology they will use in their futures. You can use sentence strips to create a Twitter wall. Be sure to teach full sentence to text talk and text talk to full sentence to help students understand the appropriate use for each.