Welcome!

Welcome to my literature blog! This literature blog is different in that I used technology to respond to all of the books I read. In order to increase the size of the images, you must click on them and a new window will open.

Lesson Plans that Integrate Literacy and Technolgoy

Lesson One: Books to Briefs

The lesson was slightly changed by having students record their design process discussion onto ipods that were placed in the middle of the groups. These discussions were transferred to a podcast where we would ideally have students listen to their discussions and reflect on their ideas. If time permitted, students would have video taped their designs in motion and reflected on those as well. The reflections would include the overall design process and whether or not those designs correlate with the problem presented in the story. 

The book that was read to students.

The materials students were able to use for their designs.

An example of a group's final project: A car that moved by releasing the balloons attached to it, therefore creating a propulsion system. The car could also be converted into a boat!

Lesson Two: Phonemic Awareness

Even though this is written for a first grade classroom, I have witnessed struggling readers in my fourth grade classroom who have difficulty with phonemic awareness. Students use Kidspiration to analyze the phonemes in groups of words. I think this would be an effective lesson for students to complete during a Guided Reading time. 

Lesson Three: Telling My Story: Make a Bio-Cube

This lesson allows students to analyze autobiographic information they read. Students create a "Bio-cube" about the person they read about. This Bio-cube has students find the person's name, time period in which they lived, where they lived, their personal background, personality traits, their significance to society, biggest obstacle they faced, and an important quote said by the person. 

Bio-cube link

Falling Up by: Shel Silverstein

Genre: Poetry-Fiction

I thought this would be a great way to start off my literature blog responses! I read the poetry book "Falling Up" by: Shel Silverstein. I chose a poem about a child who is reflecting about how much his computer can do, but does not seem to understand that a computer cannot write his book for him! This book of poetry is appropriate for any grade level and the hand drawn pictures by Shel Silverstein make reading the text more enjoyable. 

Romare Bearden-Collage of Memories by: Jan Greenberg

Genre: Non-fiction (biography)

This biography about "Romare Bearden" demonstrates the various phases he went through as an artist. The entire book shows several examples of his collage/photomontage art and how each work of art describes reflects his life or events in our society. I chose to create a Voicethread for this response. In this Voicethread, I am reading an excerpt from the book about how he used photographs to create photomontages in order to make a social statement about the civil rights movement. 

Romare Bearden Excerpt

Jouanah-A Hmong Cinderella Adapted by: Jewell Reinhart Coburn with Tzexa Cherta Lee

Genre: Multicultural Literature

"Jouanah" is the Hmong version of the traditional Cinderella story. I decided to create a graphic organizer using "Kidspiration" which compares the two versions of this world renowned tale. 

Diary of a Worm by: Doreen Cronin

Genre: Fiction

In this book, a young worm tells about his daily encounters and what it is like to be a worm in his diary. It is an extremely comical read because the worm is given human characteristics. For my response, I wrote three entries of what a diary of a bird might look like. 

The King's Chessboard by: David Birch

Genre: Multicultural Literature


This book is a great way to incorporate literature and mathematics into the same lesson. For my response, I had to first figure out the the wise man's formula in the book: each day the grains of rice were multiplied by two. I then created an Excel file and listed 1-64 in the first column for the number of squares in a chessboard. I then inserted the formula (SUM(B1*2)= in B2 and dragged the formula to the last number. In the program Comic Life, I created 64 individual squares and filled in every other square with black so that I could create a "chessboard". For each square I created a text box and wrote in each of the calculations. Through this activity, I learned more about the program Excel and the mathematical formula used in the book. It also made the book more meaningful for me since I could see how clever the wise man's plan was (he received ALOT of rice in the end!)