Bookmaking With Kids

The last stage of the long-running macaw project in Debra’s 1st grade classroom was the Really Important Part: reading and writing.

The students consulted lots of books, listened to Debra read aloud and watched a movie. Then they contributed to a giant list of newly acquired facts (below, left) and wrote drafts (like the one below, right), making sure to answer all the questions Debra had posed.

And finally they rewrote their corrected essays in folded booklets stapled into their Scenic Concertinas. Here’s one in its entirety:

The macaw’s habitat is the rain forest and the dry forest. Macaws eat clay, fruit and nuts. Macaws fly up to 35 miles per hour. They are endangered because people are smuggling them. This means they take them and sell them for money. Also they lose their home when the forest is cut down. Some humans are helping them by paying smugglers not to steal. Also, people take trips to see nature. This is eco-tourism. The macaws can use their toes to grip tree limbs and hang upside down. Some snakes and big cats can eat macaws.

For an up-close view, click each photo. And keep an eye out for some impressive vocabulary, including the bird’s Latin name, Ara Macao; ornithologist, deforestation, and even eco-tourism!

Read earlier, related posts here, here and here. And please click the link to see more pictures. (more…)

Right in time for Endangered Species Day yesterday at Lawton Alternative School, Debra’s 1st graders finished up a two-month project on macaws and put their colorful, fact-filled Scenic Concertina books on dis-
play. The kids even looked like macaws (!) for the day’s festivities … costumed in painted grocery bags they adapted as vests. Here are a few covers, completed books and vests. More details in the next few posts.

You can read about the earlier stages of this project here and here.

And please click the link for some great pix from Endangered Species Day. (more…)

I wish could receive a kid’s poem every day … the way I get a daily poem from The Writer’s Almanac in my email inbox. Young writers—even little kids just learning to write—often have a knack for a turn of phrase that’s unexpected, arresting, heartening.

Click the pictures at left and below to read some 1st grade poems “published” in the envelope-accordion books described in previous posts.

You’ve gotta love this description of outer space:

Stars are shooting
planets are grumbling
dust is everywhere

Or this take on spring flowers:

The flowers open like fireworks
They open fast
It goes like a firework
And it falls back down when spring is over.

You can read more about these books in previous posts, here and here. Please visit again to read some of the students’ poems.

Here’s a great way to encourage emerging writers: Affix library circulation slips to their handmade books and invite other students, family and friends to check them out.

I spotted this approach—part of a whole “library” showcasing 1st grade books—while I was teaching envelope accordion books last month. Kudos to teachers Pri, Jennifer and Elizabeth for going to extra lengths to make your kids feel like published authors!

I happened to be on hand last Thursday when my 6-year-old niece was doing her homework, a mapping worksheet titled Where Are You?. And although she was eager to finish and go play with her grand-
mother’s cat, she suc-
cumbed to the imagina-
tive pleasures that maps so often inspire and de-
toured into a mapmaking adventure of her own.

Just as she was finishing, I asked where she would go if she were to make up her own map. Replying “Oh that’s easy,” she turned over the worksheet and began drawing a grid of her own. Like the worksheet grid, hers included a pet shop, a zoo, a park and her home, but personalized. “My chimney looks like this,” she explained. Her grid also provided scope for wishful thinking: a water-slide park (in the upper righthand corner) and an ice-cream parlor (lower righthand corner).

Most important, the map quest she concocted for herself reflected the heartfelt campaign she is waging with my brother and sister-in-law: Get a cat. So Step #1 takes the shortest route to the pet store:

Start at home. Go 3 blocks N. Buy 2 cats.

In Step #2, she treats her new pets to an outing:

Go 3 blocks E. Go 1 block S and 2 blocks W.

This puts the trio at the zoo, for Step #3:

Look at the tigers.

It was her intention, I think, to conclude with one more set of directions and so treat the cats to ice cream cones. But her grandmother’s cat, a real cat, made an appearance at that point, and off my niece went.

The moral of the story: Give kids a personal stake and they’ll take a mile.

NOTE: I was interested to see a 6-year-old using abbreviations, N for north, etc. Do kids have an instinct for shorthand? Do they naturally transfer the use of abbreviations from one context (such as writing the date as 4-29-2010) to another?

Click the link to see the original homework assignment. (more…)