Classroom Resources > Resource Type

After sharing one or more of the winning, honored, or recommended titles as a classroom read-aloud, invite students write and illustrate their own story in which someone learned how to be more compassionate or to feel empathy for those who are different from themselves.

Allow students to decide to tell a story from their own lives or to create characters and imagined situations that would inspire others to be more compassionate.  Share tools such as the Story Map and Cube Creator to help students plan and generate ideas.  Arrange for a time for students to share their stories with classmates or with younger students.

Ask students to reflect on something they recently learned how to do.  After a few minutes to write or talk with a partner, have students share what they learned as you record their topics for everyone to see.  Then lead a discussion around the role digital tools played in the different learning students shared.

• How many of the examples were about learning to use a new digital tool?

• How many examples featured students using a digital technology to facilitate or support their learning?

• Which examples can students imagine doing differently with the support of a digital tool?

Then have students reflect on the varied ways digital learning plays a part in their everyday lives.

Share with students de la Peña’s essay Sometimes The 'Tough Teen' Is Quietly Writing Stories.  Have students read and discuss the essay in groups, focusing on questions such as

• What attitudes toward literacy (reading and writing) does de la Peña convey?
• What stories does he tell to get these points across?
• How does he craft or structure the stories to make them both interesting and effective in communicating the points?

Then invite students to write a literacy narrative of their own, selecting a few key stories to shape into an essay that conveys a point they wish to make about reading and/or writing in their own lives.

Sondheim’s 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George features the character Georges Seurat and brings to life the figures in Seurat’s 1884 painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

After explaining the relationship between the painting and Sondheim’s work, have students examine the painting and imagine who the figures in the painting might be and what they are doing in the image.  Then have them research work by artists such as Romare Bearden or Pierre-August Renoir and create backstories and dialogues for the figures in a painting of their choice.

Celebrate World Read Aloud Day by grabbing a favorite text and reading out loud. Have students bring in their favorite book, magazine, script, newspaper, etc. Ask each student to choose an excerpt to read to the class. Additionally, hold a classroom discussion about the power of literacy. Spread the power of reading by doing one of the following activities in the classroom:

• EDUCATE – Have several read alouds in the classroom throughout the day and talk together about the importance of global literacy, marking this as a special day of reading!
• ADVOCATE - Spread the word about World Read Aloud Day and the Global Literacy Movement within the school by hosting a school-wide read aloud event. Make posters in the classroom advertising and informing the school and community about the event. Construct bookmarks with information about the day and tips for reading aloud to their peers.
• INNOVATE - Share World Read Aloud Day by creating Public Service Announcements and share their projects using video chat, blogs, Glogster, and websites.

Have students visit the Stories from the Veterans History Project site. Once there, ask students to choose one of the featured interviews to listen to, peruse the previous releases, or look at a list of collections to find more interviews that may be of interest to them. Students select an interview that interests them and take notes while listening to remember important facts and details about the veteran’s life. After listening to the interview, students complete one of the projects below to honor the veteran they researched:

• Create a timeline of the veteran’s life or time in the military.
   
• Using the story of the veteran’s life, create a picture book for younger children that tells the story of the veteran’s life or of the war in which he/she fought.
   
• Record the important facts and information from the veteran’s life using the Hero’s Journey interactive.
   
• Record a podcast that tells the veteran’s story.

Using Nikki Giovanni's poem "My First Memory (of Librarians)" as a model, encourage students to connect memory, their senses, and the language of poetry.

Write on the board or display on an overhead projector the prompt "My First Memory (of ... )" and ask students to think of a person, place, thing, or experience for which they can recall specific early memories. Ask them to brainstorm any sensory images: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile images.

Then share "My First Memory (of Librarians)," encouraging students to take inspiration from Giovanni's structure and use of language as she reveals her feelings and attitudes toward her subject.

Bronzeville Boys and Girls is a collection of poems that celebrates the joy and imagination of a community of children. Obtain a copy of the book and share several poems and illustrations with your students. Point out that some of the poems focus on a single child ("Narcissa," "DeKoven"); some on pairs of children ("Timmy and Tawanda"); and still others on children in specific situations ("Rudolph is Tired of the City," "Mirthine at the Party").

After students have read and discussed several poems from the collection, ask them to create a poetry anthology for their own family, neighborhood, or classroom. Students can use the Stapleless Book to create a collection themselves, or they can each contribute one poem to a class collection. Be sure to have students include illustrations to accompany the poems they compose.

Encourage your students to uncover all of the different kinds of writing they do on a daily basis by asking them to keep a list of everything they write, from text messages to school assignments, e-mails to diary entries, in a single day.

After students make a list of everything they wrote in a day, help them see the variety in their writing, both individually and as a class. Post colorful chart paper with age-appropriate questions about purpose, audience, genre or type, and technology around the room. Ask students to brainstorm different categories for each poster based on the writing they did. Write these categories on the posters and then have students contribute examples from their personal lists. Facilitate a gallery walk of the posters once students have contributed to all of them.

Encourage students to view and reflect on all kinds of writing - no matter the purpose, audience, type, or technology.

In his memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama describes an incident in which he, as a young boy, "came across the picture in Life magazine of the black man who had tried to peel off his skin" (51). Seeing the devastating effect negative messages about being African-American had on this man, Obama "began to notice that [Bill] Cosby never got the girl on I Spy, that the black man on Mission Impossible spent all his time underground. [He] noticed that there was nobody like [him] in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog ... and that Santa was a white man" (52).

Share this passage expressing Obama's experiences with media messages and his understanding of his identity. Then encourage students to engage in an examination of the ways they are portrayed in the media. Point them toward print, online, and television portrayals of people who share their age bracket, race, gender, and any other relevant aspects of their identity.

Adapt activities from the lesson plans below to supplement their research and organize their findings.