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Looking for ways to engage your students in online literacy learning? Find more interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals-from organizing their thoughts to learning about language.
Check out our collection of strategy guides to find effective literacy teaching and learning strategies to use in your classroom.
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Student Interactive
Bio Cube
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| Grades | 3 – 12 |
| Interactive Type | Organizing & Summarizing |
| Tech Requirement | |
| URL | http://www.readwritethink.org /files/resources/interactives /cube_creator/ |
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ABOUT THIS INTERACTIVE |
Lessons That Use This Interactive
Related Classroom & Professional Development Resources
The Bio Cube interactive has been changed to a new format: the Cube Creator.
Summarizing information is an important postreading and prewriting activity that helps students synthesize what they have learned. The interactive Cube Creator offers four options:
Bio Cube: This option allows students to develop an outline of a person whose biography or autobiography they have just read; it can also be used before students write their own autobiography. Specific prompts ask students to describe a person's significance, background, and personality.
Mystery Cube: Use this option to help your students sort out the clues in their favorite mysteries or develop outlines for their own stories. Among its multiple applications, the Mystery Cube helps students identify mystery elements, practice using vocabulary from this popular genre, and sort and summarize information. Specific prompts ask students to describe the setting, clues, crime or mystery, victim, detective, and solution.
Story Cube: In this cube option, students can summarize the key elements in a story, including character, setting, conflict, resolution, and theme. Students can even identify their favorite part of the story. This can be used as an alternative to the Story Map interactive.
Create-Your-Own Cube: Working on a science unit? Doing some research on volcanoes? The Create-Your-Own Cube is your answer. This version allows teachers and students to generate their own questions or topics. Teachers can type in the questions, lock them from editing using the padlock icon, and save the file using the Save tab at the top of the screen. The saved file can then be shared with students to enter in their responses. Students can also customize cubes on topics of their choosing.
Students can save their draft cubes to revise later. See the 5-minute video tutorial Saving Work With the Student Interactives for more information on have to save, e-mail, and open a file in any of the ReadWriteThink Student Interactives. The finished cube can also be saved, printed, and folded into a fun cube shape that can be used for future reference.
For ideas of how to use this tool outside the classroom, see Bio Cube and Mystery Cube in the Parent & Afterschool Resources section.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom
People make the past come alive as students research and then share stories about famous Americans who promoted democratic ideals.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Getting to Know You: Developing Short Biographies to Build Community
How well do your students know their peers? Students transform into investigative reporters as they interview a classmate, compile the biographical data into graphic form, and introduce the student to the class.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Zines for Kids: Multigenre Texts About Media Icons
Special edition! Students use ReadWriteThink tools to create magazines about prominent figures using a variety of writing genres and styles.
Grades 3 – 7 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Strategic Reading and Writing: Summarizing Antislavery Biographies
Antislavery heroes are the focus of this lesson. Students research a historical figure who played a key role in the abolition of slavery, and then create a three-dimensional biographical mobile.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Writers’ Workshop: The Biographical Sketch
Students use the faces and places they learn about in their research to write a biography about a contemporary or historical figure.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Demonstrating Understanding of Richard Wright's Rite of Passage
Students use the elements of persuasion for a specific audience to demonstrate their understanding of Richard Wright’s accessible and engaging coming-of-age novel, Rite of Passage.
Grades 2 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
In this lesson, students practice a way to communicate without words by using a glyph. They create a name card using information about themselves. Students also interpret glyphs made by others.
Grades 6 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
What Did George Post Today? Learning About People of the American Revolution Through Facebook
After researching famous people of the American Revolution, students create Facebook-like PowerPoint presentations to share their knowledge with classmates.
Grades 2 – 3 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Jazz Up Writing Workshop: Writing Biographies of African American Jazz Musicians
During writing workshop, students research, write, revise, and share their own comprehensive biographies of African American jazz musicians.
Grades 6 – 12 | Student Interactive | Writing & Publishing Prose
The Mystery Cube helps students identify and summarize story elements in this popular genre. It can be used as a postreading or prewriting activity.
Grades 6 – 12 | Strategy Guide
Speak to Me: Teaching with Voki
Through Voki, a Web 2.0 tool, students create customizable avatars for class presentations for various purposes, such as presenting biographical information, expressing an opinion, or reading a poem.
Grades 3 – 8 | Professional Library | Book
Guided Comprehension in Grades 3-8
This book has everything you need to use the Guided Comprehension Model effectively with students in in upper elementary and middle school.
Grades 6 – 12 | Podcast Episode
Life stories are books that trace defining moments and turning points in people’s lives. By exploring how individuals overcome obstacles and discover their passions – or fall prey to mistakes and inner demons – life stories illustrate how human beings navigate the complexities of living. Tune in to hear about a variety of life stories – some that celebrate lives of success, others that mourn lives tragically lost or wasted.
