Authors of the Month--Literary Book Club

At Julius Marks Elementary, Mrs. Alexander's students have been studying different reading genres each month. The students are required to read a book according to the genre of that month, give an oral presentation and share the project they completed with their classmates. As a new twist, Mrs. Alexander and her class decided they would like to be involved in Fayette County's Literary Book Club. The Literary Book Club is an online book reporting site on the Fayette County website. Here students are asked a series of questions relating to their books. They type in their reviews of the books, the teacher and students read and provide commentary for revision purposes about their reviews and then post them on the website. In the future, students will be sharing not only their book reviews, but will also share their projects online. Many students have read, reviewed, edited, and posted a book they have read online. To access the students' book reviews, click on the following website: http://teach.fcps.net/lbc/ . You will see the heading "Welcome To The Literary Book Club". Click on "Read Reviews" on the left.  Click on the first drop down window labeled "Search by School".  Scroll down until you find Julius Marks Elementary. Click on the "submit" button and you will see the online book reports. Enjoy!!!!

Magic Carpet Ride

It doesn’t look like an ordinary classroom. It doesn’t feel like an ordinary classroom. What’s going on here anyway? Using the laptops on the wireless lab, Mrs. Margie Stone’s seventh grade social studies students at Morton Middle School created PowerPoint presentations to demonstrate their research, but the presentations took on a aura of magic. Classes walked in and onto the Magic Carpet, complete with a genie as their guide. Via PowerPoint the students flew through ancient points of interest in Islam and the Middle East ….and a wonderful journey was had by all.

Third grade students in Mrs. Howell's class at Squires Elementary have been learning about poems called "found poems".  According to Wikipedia (an online free encyclopedia), found poetry is "the rearrangement of words or phrases taken randomly from other sources (example: clipped newspaper headlines, bits of advertising copy, handwritten cards pulled from a hat) in a manner that gives the rearranged words a completely new meaning".  Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as "a poem consisting of words found in a nonpoetic context (such as a product label, conversation on a bus, physics textbook) and usually broken into lines that convey a verse rhythm".

So where did the students in Mrs. Howell's class get their inspiration?  From the ever popular Polar Express book recently made into a blockbuster movie.  The text from Polar Express was put on slides in PowerPoint.  Next, the PowerPoint was printed three slides to a page.  Each group got a different set of slides (i.e. pages from the book).  The student groups then created phrases for each slide to retell the story.  Then, as a whole class writing activity, the students gave their new phrases, in order, to the teacher. The teacher used Word on her computer which was hooked up to an LCD projector so all students could see and compiled their "found poem". 

Read the class Found Poem in Through a Student's Eye.