Classroom Resources > Resource Type

A June literacy fair for students and their families is the perfect way to end the school year and get students off on the right track for the summer. In addition to standard carnival fare (face painting, games of chance, etc.), offer a variety of fun literacy-based activities.

• The cost of entrance? Ask students to bring a lightly used book as an entrance pass, to be collected on a table or display. As students leave, each person can select a book to keep from the donations.
   
• Hold a literary trivia contest, with new, donated books for prizes.
   
• Invite an author to your school for a book reading/signing event.
   
• Don't forget to invite families to your event and to include informational material.

Celebrate Get Caught Reading Month with a reading-related service project. Try one of these activities with your students:

• Plan an intergenerational reading day. Invite seniors to visit your school, or arrange a trip for your students to a local senior center. Have students select books to read to adults, and invite adults to share a favorite story with students. Extend an ongoing invitation to guest readers, perhaps on a monthly basis.
  
  
• Organize a book drive to collect new or nearly new books to supplement your classroom or school library, or to donate to families or a local children's hospital.

Be sure to have a camera on hand to "catch your students reading" on film throughout the month. You can also have students organize a community "Get Caught Reading" campaign by taking photos of members of their families and community figures (firefighters, grocers, local police officers, etc.) caught reading, and creating a school display.

Have you ever wondered what things would look like in Hamelin from the rats' point of view? Read aloud The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett, winner of the 2001 Carnegie Medal. The synopsis of the book included in this resource guide shows why librarians in the United Kingdom named this book the "outstanding book for children and young people" published in 2001.

After sharing this book with students, have them compare Pratchett's version with Browning's version. After discussing how perspective changes the story, you can have students look at other fairy tale retellings such as Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.

The words Armstrong spoke (audio from NASA) as he stepped onto the moon were carefully chosen. Even so, Armstrong is reported to have made a mistake. NASA planned for Armstrong to say, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" (emphasis mine); however, he left out the word "a" when he stepped onto the moon's surface. Begin your exploration of Armstrong's famous words by discussing the all-important difference that one word can make. Take the opportunity to discuss the gendered language that Armstrong uses as well.

After exploring Armstrong's words in detail, turn to a discussion of why those words were chosen. In a speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "We choose to go to the moon! We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things-not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our abilities and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

How do Armstrong's words connect to Kennedy's, how do they connect to the mission at large, and how do they represent the space program?

The National Spelling Bee competition has been broadcast nationally on ESPN and during primetime on ABC. In his article "All I Need to Know about Teaching I Learned from TV and Movies," Kenneth Lindbloom compares the competition to shows like Jeopardy. Lindbloom explains, "One might speculate that these events garner interest because they are contests with one winner and many losers. But more difficult contests-Westinghouse science winners, for example, or creative-writing contest winners-don't get the kind of publicity memorizers of trivia get." Ask your students to consider this with the following questions:

• Why do some contests get more publicity than others? What makes the National Spelling Bee interesting to the general public?
   
• Is the National Spelling Bee a sports event? Why has it been broadcast on ESPN?
   
• What counts as knowledge on television? What knowledge is seen, and what kinds of knowledge are not seen?
   

David Wiesner, author of June 29, 1999 (Houghton Mifflin, 1992) and two-time Caldecott Award winner, composes humorous books with delightful illustrations that surprise the reader. In fact, in June 29, 1999, Wiesner's illustrations are indicative of the emotions of the various story characters: people are delighted, surprised, and, in some cases, curious. Such illustrations provide an excellent opportunity for discussion of feelings and how they are expressed wordlessly through the talent of the illustrator. Explore the pictures in Wiesner's book carefully and identify elements that make the emotions in the story obvious to someone reading the book. Your students might then create lists of words and their own illustrations to express the feelings portrayed.

In 1887, Keller learned to talk using a finger alphabet after her well-known breakthrough with Annie Sullivan at the family's well pump. The finger alphabet that Keller learned to communicate with Sullivan, her family, and eventually, many others was a basic version of the system that is now known as American Sign Language. Have your students explore the American Sign Language browser from Michigan State University and try using a few signs. Discuss how ASL differs from spoken English and how the two are similar. During the discussion, introduce the misconceptions about ASL addressed in the article Common Myths about Sign Language.

Eric Carle's illustrations feature paper collages, so after reading some of Carle's books you might create your own torn paper collages. Or if you're ready for more of a challenge, try creating Word Collages. Have students choose a scene, an emotion, an animal, or a person. Then students search out or create words, phrases, and sentences that illustrate what they've chosen. Words can be cut out of newspapers or magazines, created on a computer using a drawing program or the art tool in a word processing program, or drawn with markers or crayons. Assembled on a sheet of paper using glue or tape, the words should remind the reader of the scene, emotion, animal, or person that the student has chosen.

The invention of the typewriter led to the keyboards on the computers of today. Show your class a computer and a typewriter or two if you can find significantly different typewriters, such as a manual one and an electric one. Begin an inquiry-based study that compares typewriters to computers. Students can talk about everything from the appearance of the two tools to the way that one gets the final, finished product (a piece of paper with alphanumeric figures on it) to the different ways that they might use the two machines if they were composing a paper. As a conclusion to the project, ask students to hypothesize about how the shift from typewriters to computers changes the way that work is done.

Note: If you do not have access to typewriters and computers for the class to explore first-hand, pictures of the objects could be a reasonable substitute.

Juneteenth has grown into a heritage-centered event that focuses on family, community, education, and achievement—but its origins are still very important. How does the historical background of the day, as a celebration of freedom for the slaves of Texas, compare to other important celebrations of freedom in the United States?

Invite your students to compare Juneteenth celebrations to Fourth of July celebrations, using the Venn Diagram. What events take place on the two days? What do people do? How are the events described in the media? When students notice differences between the celebrations, ask them to hypothesize about the reasons. Conclude the discussion by asking students what conclusions they can draw about the ways that people celebrate and define freedom in the U.S.