Children's Literature Unit

Our language arts unit was based upon the popular children's author Louis Sachar. Louis Sachar, author of the National Award-winning novel, Holes, greatly influenced our third 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. Our unit was designed to facilitate learning through the use of children's literature.  The unit was composed of a series of lessons and activities to assess student learning and comprehension. Within this unit, we  integrated different technology tools to enhance students' learning and comprehension of children's literature.

Lesson #1

• The goal of this language arts lesson was to introduce students to Louis Sachar.  This lesson took approximately one day to complete.   Students focused on meaning and communication as they listened, spoke, viewed, and read about Mr. Sachar.  In addition, there were some  pre-introductory questions to help stimulate a variety of discussions. For example:  Why is Louis Sachar one of your favorite author's?  What is your favorite book by Louis Sachar?  Who are your favorite story characters?  Students then discussed Mr. Sachar's well-known books and brainstormed about possible activities for our unit.

• The goal of this language arts lesson was to introduce students to a kid-safe website bulletin board.  The lesson took one day to complete and  incorporated the Internet.  Students visited the website www.yahooligans.com as their main search engine and decided on a Louis Sachar book to be read in class. 

• The goal of this language arts lesson was for students to gradually construct a story map bulletin board.  The lesson took approximately one month to complete.  With the creation of the bulletin board, students discussed a variety of story components (Characters, Setting, Problem, and Solution.)  The bulletin board served as a guide to the story, There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. 

• The goal of this language arts lesson was to invite Mr. Louis Sachar to meet with the students through the Distance Learning Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.  The lesson took  approximately one week to complete and incorporated Appleworks.  Based on our intentions, the students were asked to generate possible interview questions to ask Mr. Louis Sachar.  Individually, students were responsible for writing five creative questions to Mr. Sachar.  These questions were to be well thought out and based upon Louis Sachar and his popular works.

• The goal of this language arts lesson was a letter writing activity.  The lesson took approximately one week to complete and incorporated AppleWorks.  This activity allowed students to use a word processor and develop an invititational letter to Mr. Sachar.  It was our hope that these letters would persuade Mr. Sachar to conduct a personal interview using the Distance Learning Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

• After reading, There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom to the students, the goal was for students to create their own story map. This lesson took approximately one week to complete and incorporated Kidspiration. In this lesson, students individually mapped the story using technology. 
• The goal of this lesson was designed to improve the knowledge of our third grade students.  As a follow up activity, students were asked to design a character map using Kidspiration.  Characters were chosen specifically from the book, There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar.  Third graders were asked to choose their favorite character from the book and map out character traits.

• The goal of this language arts lesson was for students to construct a story sequence bulletin board for There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar.  This lesson took approximately one week to complete.  Students selected a main character from the book and sequenced events of the story.
• The goal of this language arts lesson was for students to take their sequencing ideas from the bulletin board and construct a sentence from the book, There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. Students were also asked to illustrate a picture of their character.  This lesson took approximately one week to complete and incorporated Kidspiration and Kid Pix.

• 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 Kettel, 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 our class. 

• Our goal of this language arts lesson enabled students to e-mail Dr. Kettel to thank him for his visit to our classroom. The lesson took one day to complete and incorprated an LCD-Projector and the Internet.  The students helped compose a thank you message and assisted in  the process of sending this message to Dr. Kettel. 

• The goal of this language arts lesson enabled students to perform chapter plays based on the Wayside School series by Louis Sachar.  The lesson took three weeks to complete and incorporated a digital camera, Power Point, and an LCD-Projector. Students were divided into groups of three and asked to select a chapter from one of the Wayside School books by Louis Sachar.  During the final performances, students used a digital camera to take pictures of their fellow classmates. In addition, to help strenghten their technology skills, students used the digital pictures taken at the time of the play to create an interesting and original Power Point presentation using an LCD-Projector.