Iris Becker Elementary

 

   Children's Literature

This Language Arts unit is based upon the popular children's author Louis Sachar. Louis Sachar, author of the National Award-winning novel, Holes, greatly influenced our  3rd grade students at Iris Becker Elementary School.  Sachar has written 17 children's books, including the best-selling Wayside School Series of Stories. He received his law degree at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall and now lives in Austin, Texas. This unit is designed to facilitate learning through the use of children's literature.  The unit is composed of a series of lessons and activities to assess student learning and comprehension.  With this unit, we intend to integrate technology into every lesson with the use of children's literature. 

Lesson #1

  The goal of this lesson is to introduce the students to the author, Louis Sachar.  Students will focus on meaning and communication as they listen, speak, view, and read about Mr. Sachar.  In addition, there will be some pre-introductory questions to help stimulate a variety of discussions.  Some of the discussion questions would be:  What is your favorite book written by Louis Sachar?  Why is Louis Sachar one of your favorite authors?  Who are your favorite story characters?  Students will then discuss Mr. Sachar's well-known books and brainstorm about possible activities for our Language Arts Unit. 

  Students will be introduced to a kid-safe website that is a part of the bulletin board that was created before the initial unit.  The bulletin board includes a variety of websites that the students would need throughout this unit.  Students will use the website  www.yahooligans.com as their main search engine to make a decision on a Louis Sachar book to be read in class. 

  Students will gradually construct a story map on a bulletin board.  With the creation of this bulletin board, students will discuss a variety of story components (Characters, Setting, Problem, and Solution.)  The bulletin board will serve as a guide to the story, There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar.  In addition, the bulletin board will be updated at the beginning, middle, and end of our Language Arts Unit. 

  At the beginning of the unit, our intentions were to invite Mr. Louis Sachar to meet with the students through Distance Learning through the University of Michigan-Dearborn.  Based on our intentions, the students were asked to generate possible interview questions to ask Mr. Louis Sachar.  Individually, students will be responsible for writing five creative questions to Mr. Sachar.  These questions are to be well thought out and based upon Louis Sachar and his popular works. 

  Students will be assigned a letter writing activity using Appleworks.  This activity will allow students to use a word processor and develop an invititational letter to Mr.  Sachar.  It is our hope that these letters will persuade Mr. Sachar to conduct a personal interview using the Distance Learning Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Lesson #2

  After reading, There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom to the students, they will design their own story map using Kidspiration.  In this lesson,  students will individually map the story using technology. 

  The students will use Kid Pix to draw their favorite character in the book and then attach the s

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Lesson #3

  Students will construct a story sequencing bulletin board for There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom.

  Third graders will visit the computer lab and use Kidspiration to recall story facts in sequence. 

Lesson #4

   The goal of this language arts lesson was to invite Louis Sachar to conduct a 
Distance Learning interview with the students at Iris Becker Elementary at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.  Our goal was unsuccessful after many attempts.  Therefore, we invited Dr. Raymond Dettel, Associate Professor of Reading/Children's Literature from the University of Michigan-Dearborn in place of Louis Sachar.  He read and discussed different books and author's with the students.  Viewing the PowerPoint presentation on Dr. Kettel's visit is an evidence of how much the students 

    Students will be able to compose and e-mail message along with the teacher to thank Dr. Kettel on his visit. They will get the chance to go through the e-mailing process with the incorporation of Internet and an LCD-Projector. The students will help create a Power Point presentation with the photos taking at the time of Dr. Kettel's visit using the LCD-Projector. 

Lesson #5

  The third graders will become familiar with the use of  a digital camera and Power Point program. 

  Students will be divided into three groups and perform chapter plays based on the Wayside School series of Louis Sachar.  Final performances will be held in the gym at Iris Becker Elementary School.  In addition, to help strenghten their technology skills, students will use a digital camera to take three video clips  at the time of the plays.