Monthly Archive for April, 2009

When You Reach Me

Published on April 30, 2009 in Blog Posts, Books and Special. 0 Comments

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

As you know, that is from the mysterious first note found by Miranda in Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, the amazing book I just finished reading to you. It was very cool to sneak peaks at your faces yesterday as I read aloud the last part — you were absolutely riveted as all the different threads were tied up.  And so today it is your turn — to write your own letters about this remarkable book — on your blogs.  My hope is that you will all write thoughtful and interesting ones that I can mention on my blog so that others interested in how children respond to the book will come to see and read them (and, hopefully, comment as well).

First of all, a fun tidbit.  The book takes place, as you know, in 1979 and the television show, $20,000 Pyramid plays a major part in the story.  Go here to see a clip of the original show and then come back….

Back? Good.  Now here are a few ideas of things to consider for your blog post —we’ll add a few more today as well.

  • The title — what do you think of it?  Would there be a better one? (One person I know suggested The Laughing Man —what do you think of that?)
  • The cover — some don’t like it. Do you?  Do you want to draw a better one and post it on your blog? Explain why it is what it is.
  • Chapter titles are mostly “Things that…” which is the way to do your answer for The $20,000 Pyramid.
  • How did you feel about it being SO mysterious?  Were you able to wait until all became clear?
  • Veil metaphor — when was it lifted for you?
  • Wrinkle in Time
  • For kids who are comfortable with many different threads and things going on all at once.

All About Alice: Your First Post

Published on April 3, 2009 in Alice in Wonderland. 0 Comments

Starting today you are going to do a series of posts called “All About Alice” in which you will document your work with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Bloggers do this often. These are sort of like columns in magazines or newspapers. Sometimes a blogger will do this weekly so yours will be on Tuesday, right?Now let’s look at one of my series at my blog called “Teaching with Blogs.” After that you will be ready to begin your own series. (Later on you might want to even put in sketches, storyboards, and such to illustrate these posts. Hey — you might even want to do a little interview of your partner as a podcast!)Your first post should have the title, “All About Alice: What I Did First.”In the post I hope you will describe what we have done with Alice so far.

Our Alice Comic Project

Published on April 1, 2009 in Alice in Wonderland and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Yesterday Ms. Feldman gave you a great overview of comics and I think you are now ready to begin your own.  Here’s what you will need to do:

  1. Make a list of ten “scenes” (events) for your comic chapter. (If you have two chapters, you can have up to twenty scenes.)
  2. Write the text to go with these scenes. You can use text from the actual book (here it is online) or rewrite it. Up to you.
  3. Do the art for your scenes. You may want to make backgrounds for each scene separately from the characters. You also may want to reuse some of these for the different scenes.
  4. Scan in all the art.
  5. Do a story board.
  6. When you have everything ready you will create a comic using Comic Life.
  7. And lastly we will combine them in a series of pages for our class blog!