Naming Tone Visually in Number the Stars & Sharing Work through VoiceThread & Flipsnack

In the grade 5 e-book I am completing, one of the invitational tasks students might opt to compose after reading Number the Stars is as follows: 

Using page 75 (Chapter 9). (Reilly, 2015)

1. Invite student to skim Number the Stars for passages that display obvious tones. Have students identify the tone, and then  identify words (explicit details) on the page that could be used to create the tone. 
2. Have students select one page from the text to work with.  This page should be photocopied. 
3. Students should circle the words that suggest tone and then use art (markers, paint, charcoal, gesso) to edit out all the other words on the page, creating a new composition that matches the tone of the text selected. 
4. Students can then write an explanation of their work (if needed) and further examine the topic of tone.
5. An example of a finished work is published here. I took the text from Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, Chapter 9, page 75.
6. After students (who had an interest in this project) complete their work, they might organize their images (perhaps chronologically by page number or perhaps by tone) and publish their images using Voicethread and/or Flipsnack.  This would allow for a larger audience to view the work and offer commentary.

Work Cited

Lowry, Lois. (1989). Number the Stars. New York: HMH Books.

Engaging Students in a Visual Reading of Chapter 14 in Number the Stars

Papercuts from Schenker's Little Red Riding Hood

In a fifth grade e-book I am completing there is a unit focusing on analyzing historical fiction. One of the texts is Lois Lowry's Number the Stars (1989).  I want students to see chapter 14 of the text--to feel Annemarie's desperation and uncertainty. You may recall that this is the chapter where Lowry tells the parallel story of Red Riding Hood as the main character, Annemarie, negotiates the woods while attempting to avoid Nazi soldiers. There's great tension here--at the climax of the novel. Annemarie will never be the same innocent she was before this trip through the woods.

I want to slow down students' reading at this point. I want them to dwell in the text as they grapple to see-feel the metaphor.  So after various readings of the chapter, I will engage them with Sybille Schenker's visually stunning version of the Brother Grimm's Little Red Riding Hood.  (Thank you Tom V. for showing me this book!)

Schenker's laser die-cuts create partial views of the world and in doing so heightens suspense. We are never really grounded anywhere. Secrets are hidden and revealed through the lacy work of die-cuts as we turn the pages. In some ways, this parallels what Lowry did with words.  By having the main character, Annemarie remember variations of the Red Riding Hood story as she makes her way through the still darkened woods, the reader experiences the unsettled environment where nothing is familiar even though the woods and the path through them should be familiar to Annemarie. 

I want the readers--the students--to be unsettled.

from Schenker's Little Red Riding Hood

After the read aloud, students will have the opportunity to engage in art conversations (nonverbal discussion using drawing) through flockdraw (allows you to draw in real time with others). I then plan to invite students to work through Molly Bang's ideas about aesthetics that she outlines in Picture This: How Pictures Work.  Students will learn 10 of Bang's principles and then apply them to creating an image that is made in response to the phrase, Wolf Waiting. I want them to feel the presence of the four Nazi soldiers with their dogs that we meet at the close of the chapter and to feel this within the context of the Red Riding Hood story. 

Wolf waiting. 

Bang asked this provocative question: “How does the structure of a picture affect our emotional response?" It is this that I want students to experience as they compose. To that end, students will be issued four pieces of construction paper (black, white, red, and purple), white glue, and scissors. They then apply some of Bang's principles as they create a visual response to the phrase, Wolf Waiting.

My paper response using Bang's Visual Grammar to the phrase, Wolf Waiting.  (Reilly, 2015)

After this visual work is completed, I'm wondering what transformations students might make of the work. For example, what might happen if some students took all or some of the images and then used these with an online tool such as Animoto to juxtapose and share the work against some music?  The randomness via Animoto might make for some interesting surprises.  Or perhaps other students might like to create a text set using flickr.  I also wonder what might happen if the paper images we made were juxtaposed alongside WWII or Holocaust images.  What stories might such juxtaposition tell?  What would happen if we borrowed Schenker's methods and created die-cuts using historical images and our work? What metaphors might such work reveal?

Endless possibilities. 

A goal here is to mimic the climax of the novel: the point at which the main character's fall from innocence cannot be undone. How might this work we engage in alter us? What transformations might we bear?




Works Cited:

Bang, Molly. (2000).Picture This: How Pictures Work. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. 
The Brothers Grimm. (2014). Little Red Riding Hood. Illustrated by Sybille Schenker.  Translated by Anthea Bell. London, UK: Michael Neugebauer Publishing, Ltd. 

Stop & Jot with Padlet: Turning on Digital Tools to Make Meaning Emerge Across People, Places

In a grade 5 e-book I am writing, I've integrated a few key digital response tools throughout the 6 units of study. One of those tools is Padlet. Padlet is a virtual wall that you and others can write on. What I like about this tool is its capacity to visually juxtapose ideas. I deeply believe in the practice of building community knowledge and Padlet is a tool that facilitates such composition.

One of the units of study in the e-book focuses on launching book clubs in grade 5.  To demonstrate a series of possible response tools that students might opt to use when they run their own book clubs, I model several tools using Paul Fleischman's novel, Seedfolks.  I show students how to use Stop & Jot while reading (based on Kyleen Beers & Robert Probst's notion of textual signposts). This tool could be limited to paper and pencil and there are of course times when such solitary thinking may well be important.  In the e-book I show how to make that tool digital by using Padlet. This allows for the process of attentive reading to happen across students and classrooms and time.  The tool then isn't just about what you as a reader have determined, but opens the door to seeing what others have named too and posting (if desired) responses to peers' work.  Through Padlet, something dialogic may well emerge.

And it is this sense of emergence that I am most after here.  That's the bigger content.

Below is a screenshot of a wall I made that contains a few responses that I wrote. All that is waiting now are other readers and their ideas. That's where the power of response becomes more attuned. Padlet allows us to name and highlight the spaces where textual intersections occur among and between people.

From M.A. Reilly's Padlet: Stop and Jot

Mapping Relationships with Popplet

Seedfolks Map (Reilly, 2015)

I am working on a unit of study that uses the text, Seedfolks and I have been thinking about ways to visualize text structure.  The tool, Popplet, works well for this purpose as it allows you to map associations and this brief novel is all about associations.

Here's the map I created:



The map really helps to quickly show the structure of the text--which in turn amplifies a possible theme of inter-connectedness.

If I was teaching this text, I would love to see what students created as they mapped relationships.  It would be interesting to then connect the maps.