Why We Love Patricia Polacco

It is important for students to not only recognize how a character learns and grows, but to also understand how the story's unfolding events affected those changes. This Foldable® has students consider the underlying reasons of why a main character changed, supporting their ideas and inferences with evidence from the text.

We love to use Patricia Polacco's autobiographical books to teach this concept because she is able to express the feelings she experienced so vividly. It is obvious from reading her stories that she has been influenced by so many events and people in her life.

We used the book Mrs. Mack for our whole class model.

How a Character Changes Top-Tab Foldable®

Begin by having the students make a Top Pocket Foldable® with 11 X 17 card stock. Cut the left and right inside Shutterfolds® into 4-tabs. Label the tabs on each side with the following: What She Does, What She Says or Thinks, How She Looks, and How Others Respond to Her. On the outside cover of the left shutterfold, write At the Beginning and on the outside cover of the right Shutterfold®, write At the End. Write the name of the main character, in this case, Patricia on the front cover, too. We also glued illustrations from the beginning and end of the story, but you could have students draw their own illustrations.

In the middle of the inside of the Foldable®, glue a 2-tab made out of a half sheet of 8 1/2 X 11 paper. Label the upper tab "How the Main Character Changed" and "Why She Changed". 

Have students fold a sheet of paper into fourths, hot dog style, and then into fourth's , hamburger style, creating a 4x4 table.  Label the left column of the table with the following: Event, How Patricia Reacted, How Others Responded, and Why I Chose This Event. Have students fold the table so that it fits into the pocket of the Top Pocket Foldable®.


Introduce the whole class guided activity by discussing these questions, Think about yourself a year ago. Have you changed? How? How has your behavior changed? How have you as a person changed? Is there anything that you used to be nervous about and are not anymore? What made you change?

On an index card, ask students to respond to this question: "What makes people change?" Save as a pre-assessment. Tell students that they will be learning about why people change through characters in stories. This will help them better understand themselves, better understand others, and better understand the stories they read.

Read the first few pages of the story (to the second paragraph on page 14) and fill in the left side of Foldable® with evidence from the text. Using that information, discuss what it tells you about Patricia so far. What character traits does she have? What does she care about? What is her attitude? What is she feeling? How do you know?

Read the rest of the story. Go back and fill in the right side of the Foldable®, again using evidence from the story. Using that information, discuss Patricia at the end of the story. What character traits is she showing? What does she care about? What is her attitude? What are her feelings?

After filling in all of the information, open up the left and the right side tabs so that students can easily compare the character at the beginning of the story with the end of the story. Discuss, what has changed?

Ask, when did she change? Did she change all at once or did it happen over time? Which events do you think changed her? List those events on the board. Go back to the text and analyze the events. Discuss, which three events do you think made the most impact on Patricia's change? Why are those the most important? 

Have each student determine his/her three key events, and then fill in all the cells on his/her table, (event, how she reacted to the event, how others responded to the events and why this event was chosen). After completing their tables, have students discuss Patricia's changes using all of the evidence they collected. How did she change and why? Students then write about Patricia's changes under the tabs the 2-tab Foldable®.


To differentiate and provide guided and independent practice, choose from the following Patricia Polacco autobiographical books. Students can work with partners, small groups or individually, making and filling in a How Characters Change Top Pocket Foldable® and events table for the character in each book they read. 

Mrs. Mack

The Junkyard Wonders

Thunder Cake

Rotten Richie and the UltimateDare

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother Story

Thank you, Mr. Falker

The finished Top Pocket Foldables® make a wonderful display as students share and discuss the comparisons and connections between the characters in the books they've read. An author study would be a natural extension, as students learn about Patricia Polacco's life, customs, beliefs, and values through her stories.


As a post assessment have students respond to the following questions:
How do people change?
Why do they change?
What does this tell you about people in general?
How does understanding characters and how they change teach you? How does it help you as a reader and a writer?

Check out any of Dinah Zike's Big Books of Foldables® at Dinah-Might Adventures for the directions for the Top Pocket Foldable^®and other Foldable^® ideas.

The Forces That Move Us

Student teams in the process of creating their castles

I wanted to give my students an exciting science project to work on that would require them to apply all the team building skills they had developed during the year. My last unit in Science was Forces and Motion, so I decided that since my students are into fantasy, each team would need to create a castle, out of everyday "junk”, that uses forces, motion and six simple machines in its design.

I introduced the concept of forces and motion with the first chapter in the book, A Crash Course in Forces and Motion with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Emily Sohn. The graphics and fast paced text kept my 4th graders engaged as we read about a superhero who uses the amusement park to explain the science behind forces and motion. I also purchased the Audible Audio Edition of the book for $2.95, which was used in a center, along with the book, as a way of reinforcing their learning.

Before listening to the first chapter, I asked my students, "Think about your favorite amusement park ride. What are some words to describe how you move when you are on that ride?" As they shared their responses, I asked, "What is the ride doing? What is happening to your body? How does it make you feel?"

The students were equipped with pencils, paper and clipboards. Their job was to write down science words as they were introduced in the story. I asked them to raise their hand when they heard a word and I would stop reading while we all jotted the words down on our paper.

We discussed our word list and narrowed it down to words that supported the concept of force and motion. Then, we counted up the number of words we had left and created a 3/4 Book Foldable^® out of yellow copy paper for each word. Students wrote the word on the outside of the tab and we talked about what we remembered from the book. Students stored their 3/4 Books in Ziploc baggies.

Science instruction for the next few weeks focused on students gaining a deeper understanding of the concepts introduced through the Max Axiom book. Students learned about force, push, pull, gravity, friction, inertia, and acceleration as they hunted for examples around the school, performed simple physics experiments and used print and multimedia as resources. As students learned the concepts they filled in the remaining spaces on the 3/4 Book Foldables^® with the following: Under the tab, a definition. Below the definition, real-life examples. To the left of the tab, a labeled picture.

After the students learned about the forces and motion concepts, we moved on to simple machines. Students had already been introduced to a few of the simple machines when they constructed force and motion science kits purchased from the Eli Whitney Museum website. They continued to learn about the six simple machines, the ramp, the inclined plane, the lever, the pulley, the screw, and the wheel and axle through a Bill Nye video, EdHeads, BrainPop and their favorite online game, Twitch. Using green copy paper, they made a 3/4 Book Foldable^® for each simple machine, writing the name of the machine on the outside, a sentence underneath, examples, and a picture. All of the 3/4 Book Foldables^®, the yellow forces and motion words and the green simple machine words, were glued side-by-side and bound together with a strip of scrap booking paper.

Finally it was time to do the culminating team project, the castles. Students referred to their 3/4 side-by-side Books as they created a castle that used all six simple machines.

Check out Dinah-Might Adventures for directions for the 3/4 Book Foldable^®and other Foldable^® ideas.

A Few of Our Favorite Foldables®

Most of the time when it comes to what’s good for students, we only hear from adults. In this post, we decided that instead of hearing yet again from adults, we wanted to share some students’ thoughts on the subject of their favorite Foldables^®. The students in the video were all volunteers who gave up their free time on the very last day of school when most students were already in “summer” mode. 

As you will see in the video, what the students say about why they like to use Foldables^® only reinforces what we already know and believe about this powerful teaching strategy.



What are a few of your favorite Foldables®? Please share!

Hero’s Quest Shutterfold Foldable® Project

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, tells the beautiful tale of Minli, a "quick thinking" and "quick acting" girl, who has set out to change her family's fortune. On her brave journey to the Never Ending Mountain, Minli meets characters, each has a story to tell, imparting important lessons along the way.



This is an absolutely wonderful book containing a very complex quest with Chinese folktales and symbolism woven throughout the story, providing a cultural and historical context that deepens and enriches the reader's understanding of the characters and events. Also, you discover as you read that all of the characters in the story are connected in some way. Students used a Shutterfold Foldable® Project  to help keep track of the places, characters, and folktales that Minli encountered, the Chinese symbols found in the story, and the items that Minli chose to take on her journey.  Using the Foldable® was important because it provided students with a central location that they used to access information which helped them make sense of what was happening and better comprehend and enjoy this marvelous story.



The Shutterfold Foldable ^® Project
Students first made a Shutterfold out of a 11 x 17 piece of cardstock. On the outside, they glued a copy of the cover of the book. This Shutterfold^® became the place that held the 3 other Foldables^® used in the project.

Foldables Inside the Shutterfold Foldable ^®
 
Envelope Foldable ^®: Minli's Blanket
When Minli left for her journey, she carefully packed a collection of objects into a blanket, tying the ends to use it as a carryall. In order for students to make predictions about how "quick thinking" Minli would use the items to get out of predicaments she encountered along her journey, they needed to have the names of those items close at hand. So, using a half sheet of  8 ½  x 11 colored paper, students made an Envelope Foldable^® to represent Minli's blanket full of the items she brought on her journey. Inside the Envelope Foldable^® they drew and labeled the items. This was glued to the left side of the cardstock Shutterfold Foldable^®.

Shutterfold Foldable^®: A Map of Minili's Journey          

I introduced the idea of creating a map of Minli's journey by asking my students if they’d ever encountered maps in any of the books they had read. We discussed these questions "What kind of books have maps in them? Why? Do you think maps help you better understand the book? How?" Then I asked “Do you think creating a map of Minli’s story might help us better understand this book?” The students all agreed that a map would be helpful. I projected a few maps from books onto my SMARTboard for the students to use as models and I asked them what they noticed about the maps. I compiled a chart of their responses which included map features such as a compass rose, symbols that represent a mountain, rivers, and forests, labels, arrows, and important places and things from the stories such as a rock, a cave, buildings, bridges, and cities.

Here are some examples of maps from books:
The Shadow Realm from The Other Side of Magic series
Camp Half-Blood from the Lightning Thief series
Mouse Island from Geronimo Stilton Series

Students made a Shutterfold^® map out of a piece of 11 x 17 white paper. They glued the back of the middle section of this Shutterfold^® to the inside middle section of the cardstock Shutterfold^®.

Click on image to enlarge

8-Tab Foldable^®: Chinese Symbols
Students used an 8-Tab Foldable, made out of a piece of 8 ½ x 11 of colored paper for the Chinese Symbols found in the story. This was glued to the right side of the cardstock Shutterfold^®. On the outside of the tabs, they wrote the Chinese symbols and their meaning. The symbols are explained in the Where the Mountain Meets the Moon activity book , which is available for download on Grace Lin's website. Under the tabs, students kept track of the places where they discovered hidden symbols in the story.

Using the Foldables^®
As we read the story, students carefully drew their maps, adding important details. They recorded the places where the symbols appeared in the story on their 8-Tab Foldable®, drawing conclusions and making inferences. They referred to the items in the blanket to make predictions. The Foldables® gave students easy access to important details as we worked together to make meaning of the sometimes complex weaving of folktales within the story. They used the Foldable® to help support their thinking as they discussed the story in class or on our discussion wiki, WikiTalks. 

This particular Shutterfold Foldable® can be easily adapted for use with any hero’s quest tale.

You can find directions for all of these Foldables® as well as many more ideas in Dinah Zike’s, The Big Book of Projects.

Learning About State History with a Class Timeline

“What will you need to bring with you to the media center?” I peer down at the glowing faces of my 4^th graders.

“Our pencils, scissors, glue, and the social studies book!” My students reply excitedly as we prepare to begin one of the favorite activities of the day, working on our On This Spot: A Timeline of Connecticut History project.

One of the focuses in our 4^th grade Social studies curriculum is learning about the Connecticut people and events that contributed to the freedoms, rights, and quality of life, which benefit us today. Students are part of an online project entitled Connecticut: The Contribution State, where they each research a Connecticut contributor from history and they will publish their findings on the project wiki, sharing their learning through a variety of multimedia such as audio, images, hyperlinked text, digital stories, and video.


Setting the Stage

In order for students to really appreciate what people in history have accomplished, they need to also understand the times during which those people lived. Timelines are great visual tools for understanding the relationships between events and people in history.

I began this project by telling students that we would be learning about Connecticut History and asked them how we might go about doing that. The class brainstormed all kinds of ideas, including field trips, videos, books, the social studies textbook and guest speakers. I captured their ideas on chart paper. The students also brainstormed how they might be able to share their learning with others. Creative ideas such as creating books, videos, teaching other classes, webpages, podcasts, and timelines filled our chart.

Then, I introduced my students to the book On This Spot: An Expedition Through Time. This book shows the changes that have occurred on the spot of New York city, traveling back to the era of New Amsterdam and then the Native Americans to the age of the dinosaurs; then to cataclysmic geological upheavals, including volcanoes, mountains, oceans; and finally, only rock. The book answers the question, "What was here before us?", and helps make complex information immediate for children.  After reading and thoroughly enjoying the book, I asked, “What did you think? What did this book help you understand? Does this give you any ideas for how we might teach others about Connecticut history?”

Bubbling with enthusiasm, the students talked about how the book helped them really think about how one place has changed over time. They said that it made them imagine their own town and about the changes in people and the land. Of course, a many students said “We could make our own On This Spot book about Connecticut!”

"What a great idea. Could it be both a timeline like Jaclyn suggested and a book? What do you think?"  Of course you know their answer, and the rest is history…

The Accordion Foldable^® Timeline

Directions for making the Accordion Foldable^® 
are available in many of Dinah Zike’s books

The Accordion Foldable ® Timeline uses sheets of 11 X 18 tan tag board which many schools already have in their supply closet.

The solid black line running horizontally through the center of the timeline is black electrical tape.

Dates were printed using Microsoft Word and glued to each section.

The purpose of the line being in the center of the timeline is to split the timeline using the top half to display significant events and the bottom half is reserved for our state’s important people.

Getting the Most Out of our Social Studies Textbook

What memories do you have of your history or social studies textbooks? Do you remember what you read about? Did you ever get through the textbook? We are fortunate to have a wonderful textbook, The Connecticut Adventure. It’s wonderful because it is a great resource; full of information, images, maps, and primary source documents. However, the textbook’s reading level and concepts are too high for most of my students to read and understand on their own. And reading through the entire textbook as it was intended would take up too much time.

Regie Routman in her book, Reading Essentials: The Specifics You Need to Teach Reading Well , suggests that we use our textbooks for shared reading experiences, with the teacher reading, thinking aloud, inviting students to read parts and guiding whole class discussions that help students comprehend the concepts.

After reading a chapter in the textbook through shared reading, I assigned partners an event from the book to reread and summarize in their own words.  Each partner was given a slip of paper with the title and date of the event, and the page number in the textbook where they could find information about the event. Their job was to first reread the pages assigned, type up their summary in Microsoft Word, add a picture or two, and then glue the summary and pictures onto the class timeline in the appropriate location. Here is the Student Directions handout and an example of the assignment slips that were handed out to partners. Some students chose to find more information from books or the Internet before they wrote their summaries.

I supplemented a few of the chapters in the textbook, the one on the Revolutionary War for example, with additional resources. We first watched a couple of videos on Discovery Education about the Revolutionary War to help students gain an understanding of the bigger picture. Then, we read the chapter in the textbook, with a focus on Connecticut’s role during the war.

I chose not to read a couple of the chapters whole class at all. Instead we learned about that time in history through picture books or videos and students then used their textbooks to find specific information about their assigned Connecticut event.

Each time we finished one time period of the timeline, we would begin the next work session by first reading the student work on the timeline.
Not only did all of the students gain knowledge about each others' specific events, it was also a celebration of student work as students read their pieces and the rest of the class clapped and gave each other positive feedback.


Beautiful Oops!

When creating the timeline, it seemed that marking dates at increments of 25 years would be fine, so it read 1700, 1725, 1750, 1775, 1800, etc. After starting the timeline, it became apparent that this was not going to give students enough room to glue all of their work. Students became very territorial over the timeline, and some conflicts emerged as students were all trying to glue their summaries in the same place on the timeline. This is when my mistake became a beautiful oops! Students were encouraged to think outside of the box. How could we fit the event in? Could we make a tab or a Shutterfold that would extend the space, ensuring that everyone’s work could fit it? Conflict quickly turned into collaboration as students worked together figuring out innovative solutions to the lack of space.

The day after this happened I read about the book Beautiful Oops! on the Responsive Classroom blog in the post entitled Fruitful Mistakes. Of course, I purchased the book and read it to my class making the connection to our timeline. We now refer to the book often when mistakes are turned into opportunities.

Students loved this project. They were excited every time they saw Work on Timeline listed on the daily schedule. Today you can find their timeline displayed in our school library. 

Ba-Da-Bing! A simple, quick writing strategy that produces POWERFUL results!

The goal of good writing is to engage the reader so much that they can visualize the experience they're reading about. This requires the writer to use craft that helps the reader almost feel like they've "slipped into the skin" of the writer or character. We find that students leave out lots of details in their writing that would help the reader construct these images. Often, they simply tell that something was scary or fun leaving the reader to fill in the sensory details of that moment.

Gretchen Barnabei, in her book Reviving The Essay: How To Teach Structure Without Formula, tells about the revision strategy called Ba-Da-Bing! The strategy consists of three parts: where the speaker was physically, what they saw, and what they thought. We've taken the strategy and created a Ba-Da-Bing! Three Tab Foldable®.

Ba-Da-Bing! Three Tab Foldable^®

You try it!

1. Write down a simple sentence about something you did this morning. Do it quickly and keep it simple. Don't worry about elaboration and details at this point.
2. Print out the Ba Da Bing Foldable ®. Fold it like a hotdog. Fold the hotdog into thirds. Open it up and, with your hand under the top layer of the paper, cut along the two fold lines to make a Three Tab Foldable^®.  You can find directions for three-tab Foldables® in any of Dinah Zike's books.
3. Now, rewrite your sentence using Ba-Da-Bing! Under the top tab (the shoe), write where your feet went. Under the middle tab (the eyes), write what you saw. Under the bottom tab (the cloud), write what you thought. Now write one or more sentences that includes each of the three parts. Here's an example:  As I walked (shoe) through the wet grass towards the small pond in my front yard I saw (eyes) frog eyes peering out from the lily pads.  "Please don't get scared!" I thought as I crept closer to the edge of the water.
4. What happened?  Please share your before and after sentences in the comments. 

You can either print out and use the templates or make your Ba-Da-Bing! out of a three tab Foldable^® with lined or plain paper.

Ba-Da-Bing! Portrait
Ba-Da-Bing! Landscape


Ways to Use Ba-Da-Bing! Foldable^® in the Classroom

What did you do this morning?
One idea is to do the same activity that you just did with your students. Ask them to think of something they did that morning and jot down a simple sentence about it. Then, have them fill out the Ba-Da-Bing! Foldable^®. Show them how they can combine their ideas into one or more sentences.  Have them share their before and after sentences. Debrief the activity with questions such as "Was that difficult? What was different between the two sentences? How does this strategy help the reader? How does it help the writer? How might you use this in your writing?"

Elaborating Drafts 
Ask students to go back to a piece that they are working on and find an important moment. Have them use the Ba-Da-Bing! Foldable^® to help them identify the three parts of that moment. Then, using the information written in the Foldable^®, students insert one or more sentences into their story. 

Larger than Normal Ba-Da-Bing! Foldable^®
Create a large classroom Ba-Da-Bing! Foldable^® using poster board. As you do shared writing with your students, use it to create Ba-Da-Bings in the stories. This is especially good for helping students develop alternative ways to write about where their feet went or what they saw or thought. It can help build vocabulary for expressing sensory details.


Personal Narratives
Ba-Da-Bing! is a perfect revision strategy for personal narratives. We especially like the writing activity found in Corbett Harrison's Teach Writing Write blog, which uses the mentor text Marshfield Dreams:  When I Was a Kid by Ralph Fletcher. After students imitate Fletcher's style in their short narratives about important gifts they had received, have them go back and use Ba-Da-Bing! to create imagery of really important moments.


As a Reflection Tool
Use Ba-Da-Bing! to help students reflect on a learning experience. Use it after team-building experience, a field trip, a hands-on science experiment or lab, or anything else that makes sense.


Additional Resources

Gretchen Bernabei website: Gretchen shares useful down-loadable documents and examples of student writing.
http://www.trailofbreadcrumbs.net/

Corbett Harrison's Blog:
Corbett, a writing teacher/trainer shares writing lessons on his blog.
http://teachwritingright.blogspot.com/

Using a Timeline to Collect the Seeds for "I Come From" Poetry

ICE CREAM FOR THE FIRST TIME

By Sangita Burke, Grade 5

I come from a place where you never had a single scoop of ice cream

Until the day your American parents carried you away from that orphanage 

In the mountains of Nepal to a new life,

And that chocolate ice cream made you feel so sick 

Because it was foreign to your taste buds, 

That you ask your new mother to throw it out,

And from that day you have never liked the taste of chocolate ice cream.

The following lessons/activities were used as part of a unit in
Donna Dufresne's 5th grade classroom in Pomfret, Connecticut.

We read The Hundred Penny Box, by Sharon Bell Mathis, emphasizing that biography and autobiography can be told in many ways, including timelines, photographs, quilts, songs, and, in this case, pennies. In the story, Aunt Dew keeps a hundred pennies in a box, each representing a year of her life. She has a memory attached to each penny.

We loved the idea that pennies could become a theme for a timeline. As a class literature response project, we created our own  Pocket Accordian Foldable® timelines. Make this Foldable® by creating an Accordian Foldable® out of Pocket Foldables®. Directions for the Pocket  Foldable® and the Accordian Foldable® can be found in most of Dinah Zike's books. We made ours out of colored 81/2" X 11" paper.

The timelines began with the collecting of pennies. The children had to find pennies with dates that corresponded with the years of their lives. For instance, if the child was 10 years old in 2010, they needed to collect pennies with the dates 2000-2010. The pennies were glued to the outside of each pocket of the Pocket Accordian Foldable® timeline. The years of the student's lives were also written on each pocket and a line was drawn to depict the timeline. Family photographs and other artifacts were placed in the pockets aligned with the year during which they occurred.

Then, we talked about different kinds of memories and read the book, Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge, by Mem Fox, which defines memories as being “something warm, something from long ago, something that makes you cry, something that makes you laugh, and something as precious as gold.” Students recorded personal memories based on those definitions onto "five different kinds of memories" forms.

This gave us the framework for recording the five personal memories onto their timelines. After learning how to write short anecdotes that reflected different kinds of memories, we then turned the memories into “Where I Come From” poems.

How to Write "Where I Come From" Poems

THE GIVING

By Shea Goudreau, Grade 5

I come from a place where the exchange of gifts happens 

More frequently than the changing of weather, 

And a gift from the heart is regarded as something more precious than gold, 

Because the air is filled with warmth and love, 

And when you give of your time, that is when you really give a beautiful thing.

The "Where I Come From" format is ideal for spoken word. It lends itself well to “Slam Poetry” because it can be turned into a very powerful performance, drawing upon light and dark experiences. Because it is meant to be spoken and performed, it relies upon an unconventional cadence and tempo, using commas to indicate pauses and breaths. This style of poetry reads like long, run-on sentences. If rhyme were used, it would sound like “rap music”.

In our class poems, we strung thoughts and images together using the conjunction “and” in the place of a new sentence or new line. During the final revisions, we worked on using author’s craft (figurative language – simile, metaphor) to paint vivid pictures. We discovered that some poems were all picture and no organized thought, while others were too much like a shopping list with no figurative language. Each poem was worked and re-worked by the whole class in revising sessions. We worked right from the computer, using the LCD projector.

The final poems were published into a Bound Book Foldable®. Each child glued a copy of everyone's poems into their Bound Book Foldable®, entitling it We Come From.

WHERE TEARS FALL LIKE SEEDS

ByWill Boudreau, Grade 4

Cocoa
I come from a place where hot cocoa isn’t the only warm thing,
And a cold shiver will walk up your back when you rush in from the cold,
And you know when you wrap up in your mom’s arms you will eventually fall asleep,
And that warmth is like you are on a layer of the sun,
And you just know that you are O.K. 

 
The Hospital is Helpful
I come from a place where the hospital is helpful,
And it feels like the pain is worth it,
And everything will be all right,
Because the doctors are bees and you are the flower,
And you wish that you felt like this every time you go.

 
Seeing the Past
I come from a place where you really want to meet someone who is gone,
And it feels like you are the only one who cares about those old photographs,
And you know it is hopeless to shed tears that fall like seed memories onto your page,
And you just wish that he were next to you telling his stories one seed at a time.

 
Birthdays
I come from a place where birthdays make you laugh,
And it feels like it will never end,
While your hands act like shredders tearing the paper apart,
And you open your last present knowing you are DONE.

Teachers
I come from a place where your teachers are like your best friends,
And it feels like you could be with them forever,
Where equations and formulas are like playing with your friends,
And you know those teachers will help you with anything,
And you wish school would never end.