Symbolism, a mainstay of literature discussion, seems too abstract and ephemeral to teach to younger students. However, with a well-constructed lesson and a plethora of examples, students will quickly get the hang of symbolic representation. We’ll finish this unit up with some great pixel-art and computer work.

Rings

I begin by taking off my wedding band and discussing it with my students. I ask them what it stands for.

Quickly we get some outstanding examples:

• love
• marriage
• my wife
• forever (due to its circular shape)
• the ring finger connects to the vein of love

What if I lost my ring? Does that mean my marriage is gone? Is my love for Mrs. Byrd gone? Of course not! The ring is not actually love.

But many students know that a lost wedding ring could put me in some hot water. So a symbol has strong emotional connections to the idea it symbolizes.

Does a ring always symbolize love?

My favorite counter-example is the Ring of Power from Lord of the Rings. The Ring symbolizes quite the opposite: uncontrollable power. Anyone who obtains the ring becomes consumed by its unquenchable thirst for more power.

Liberty

Next, I display an image of the Statue of Liberty. What does it stand for?

• liberty (duh)
• freedom
• America
• friendship (especially with France)
• hope

Then I ask if anyone has ever seen a movie or image with the statue destroyed or damaged. My 6th graders had tons of examples. We talked about how filmmakers use a damaged Statue of Liberty to show the destruction of liberty and freedom.

I use the classic image from Planet of the Apes to show how the Statue of Liberty symbolizes Earth and its destruction.

Students might also enjoy discussing the symbolism in flags or other national symbols.

The Desert

Symbols do not have to be specific items. A desert is a common symbol, often representing difficulty. When we see a character in the desert, they are possibly going through a hardship or trial.

Bringing It Back To Characters

Throughout the year, we read stories that include symbolism. Hatchet‘s Brian owns a hatchet which symbolizes his hope to survive. Some students said it symbolized man versus nature. Nice!

Some quick symbolism from Pixar movies your students might be familiar with:

• Nemo’s “lucky fin” symbolizes the baraccudda attack that destroyed his family.
• On the bottom of Woody’s boot, Andy’s scrawled name symbolizes their bond and love.
• Mr. Incredible’s room of newspaper clippings represents his longing for another time.

Computer Icons

Our last topic of discussion is the symbols that represent computer programs. We discuss Firefox’s image of the globe surrounding by a fox. Safari is a compass. Keynote is a podium. Garageband is a guitar.

Creation

I explain that we are going to generate similar icons to represent a character. We identify a character’s main traits and their motivation. We think about the dialog, thoughts, and actions that show these traits and motivations.

Then students consider items that share these traits.

At first, students might try to simply draw the character or an object they hold. This is not enough. We want a very abstract symbol.

Consider a simple story such as The Three Little Pigs. The straw pig demonstrates laziness. What other objects show laziness? A straw house is too literal. We want something abstract. A recliner? A bed? A can of soda and some fast food? Now we’re talking!

After students have identified suitable items, I let them start creating their pixel art. We use a small grid. This keeps non-artists in a nice rigid framework, and challenges artists to be creative within the framework. Plus, all kids (and many adults) love pixely artwork because of its connections to video games.

Here is the worksheet (as a PDF) I used to structure this process.

Pixel Art

Naturally, our computers are too locked down to install any cool pixel art programs, so I repurposed Microsoft Excel. Students made square-sized cells and learned to change their background colors, in effect painting with a spreadsheet.

This could be done in the spreadsheet of your choice, including Excel, Numbers, and online with Google Docs.

In fact, here’s an incredible example of collaborative spreadsheet art using Google Docs:

Have fun and let me know how it goes!

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Related: Announcing: Paragraphy I wrote a little utility to randomly order sentences from...

Photo by Jonny Keelty

Area, perimeter, and circumference cause more confusion among students than necessary.

The problem is that we dive in with formulae before students have their bearings. Let your students get their hands dirty with geometry. They’ve got to play with the shapes and see why these magical formulae work.

Beginning adders and subtractors work with manipulatives before they delve into abstract arithmetic. Older students are still novices at geometry. Give them a chance to touch the math and have some fun.

Area’s Relationship to Perimeter

Let’s set up this lesson by creating some conflict around a common misconception.

Students, my square has a perimeter of four meters. I’m going to double it. Will my area double also?

No! Doubling perimeter does not double area. But I bet your students think it does.

Introduce this as an inductive exploration. Set up a pattern by starting with a perimeter of four square feet.

Stop here, because several interesting patterns have arisen. Ask for observations. Here are a couple:

• At 4 m per side, perimeter and area intersect.
• The area increases much faster than the length of the perimeter (you could graph this and discuss linear versus exponential growth).
• Sides increase by one, perimeters increase by four, and area increases by three, five, seven, then nine! I wonder if it continues…

Show how dramatic the increase is with larger numbers:

Squares Versus Rectangles

Continue to expand their perceptions of the relationship between area and perimeter. Ask, “Will a perimeter of 20 m always lead to an area of 25 sq m?”

Uncertain nods

Let’s build some rectangles instead of squares and surround them with 20 m of fence. Ask for all the combinations that give 20 m:

Look at the remarkable difference in areas! A square is nearly three times more efficient than a skinny rectangle.

What if you included decimals? How low could the area go? A 0.1 m by 9.9 m rectangle has a shockingly small area.

But is this always true?

Try it with some other perimeters. Lead students to the generalization: a square uses perimeter more efficiently than any other rectangle.

And The Circle Rolls In

So, the square may be the most efficient rectangle, but is it the most efficient of all shapes?

Roll a circle in and have a competition.

Will a circle with circumference 20 m beat the square’s area of 25 sq m?

If your students have gotten their feet wet in algebra, they can find the radius of a circle by starting with the circumference.

Find the radius of the circle:

1. c = πd (formula of circumference of a circle)
2. 20 = πd (circumference given)
3. 20 / π = d (divide both sides by π
4. ~ 6.37 = d (approximate radius)

Halve that diameter to get a radius of ~ 3.185 m.

Using the radius, find the area of the circle:

1. A = πr² (formula of area of a circle)
2. A = π * 10.144 (square the radius we found)
3. A = ~ 31.85 (approximate area of the circle)

So the square was king of the quadrilaterals with 25 sq m, however the circle handily beats that with an area of nearly 32 sq m.

But… Why?

Now, if you’ve got a bunch of gifted minds in your classroom, someone is going to ask the age-old question: why?

Why is the circle so efficient?

The short answer: given the same perimeter, a regular figure with more sides will cover more area.

But don’t just tell them! Show it using this calculator. Slowly (and dramatically!) build a table like so:

I bet they’ll be disappointed when you stop at the decagon. Feel free to go further, or give it as some optional homework.

So a hexagon will beat a square, an octagon will beat a hexagon, and so on.

Guess which shape has the most sides? That’s right, the circle with infinity sides will always win.

Finally

While you’re discussing polygons, please play this video for your students: Nonagon.

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Related: Exploring Circumference With Famous Circles Remembering the formulae for area and circumference of a circle...

Photo by Woodley Wonder Works

This article is written by Katie Haydon, founder of Ignite Creative Learning Studio. Learn more about Ignite at IgniteCreativeLearning.com or the Ignite Facebook page.

Do you use centers in your primary classroom? If yes, you love them and can’t imagine life without them. If no, you can’t imagine how you could possibly trust your 30 to 35 students to work independently, nor can you figure out where you’d get the time to set them up.

Centers are an excellent tool for differentiation that will free you up to work with small groups of students, whether gifted, high-achievers, or those needing extra help. Simultaneously, centers can support your language arts, science, social studies, and math mandates, proportional to your needs and goals. Done right, your students will be close to angelic, quietly engaged in meaningful and often irresistible work as you work with ability-grouped students on language arts, math, or other subjects. But there are some important tips and tricks that you need to know to make the experience effective for you and your students.

Centers, in my opinion, go beyond mundane and standard worksheet tasks. Sometimes they involve worksheet-type work, but it is work that is intriguing, creative, AND practical all at once. Admittedly, this would take years to develop on your own, but fortunately there are resources out there that have done the heavy lifting for you. Is It Friday Already? by Greta Rasmussen is my favorite learning center resource, and it is the only one you need if you teach second, third, or fourth grades. Of course, you may wish to supplement or tweak the centers provided, but the book has everything you need to get started: an explanation of process, a chart to show how you move your students through the rotation, and enough centers for your entire class for 30 weeks.

Though centers can be used at any time in the year, some teachers like to wait at least a week or two, and sometimes six weeks into the school year to implement them so that they can gain a greater understanding of their students and be confident that they are ready to follow protocol. But if you haven’t started yet, you can certainly begin mid-year with effective benefits to your students.

One issue with large numbers of students in small rooms may be space. If space is a concern for you, purchase a couple of sets of colored plastic trays at Lakeshore, set up the centers on these, and then place them at strategically positioned student desks at center time.

The Rasmussen book is most appropriate for second grade and higher, but if you teach kindergarten or first grade, you might like to explore Mary Peterson’s website, teacher freebie newsletter, and resources. She presented at the California Association for the Gifted conference in Palm Springs last year and shared wonderful, practical ideas for using centers in early primary classrooms. The nature of the centers are different, and she advocates centers that can accommodate multiple children, versus Rasmussen who has created a structure for individual centers (which can be tweaked for larger class sizes). Peterson has a number of pre-made center products, but she also provides a lot of free information if you want to create them yourself.

The bottom line is that centers, with a relatively small upfront investment of time and the purchase of a couple of key resources, will free you up to differentiate in small groups and give students a measure of independence in their learning while exercising creative thinking skills and bolstering standards-based knowledge. Set it up right, and you won’t believe how excited your students will be to follow directions for the privilege of this rich, time-tested approach!

Katie Haydon, founder of Ignite Creative Learning Studio, is a teacher, nationally-known writer and speaker, and a mentor to students of all ages. A life-long learner herself, she loves to find the most creative, innovative, hands-on ways to present math, writing, history, and science to kids. She has taught second grade, Spanish, creative writing, and journalism at Monica Ros, Topa Topa, and Valley Oak Charter schools in Ojai,CA, and creative writing at the Center for Gifted in Chicago. Katie is a published author on teaching, parenting, and early foreign language instruction, and her work was recently featured in Igniting Creativity in Gifted Learners, K-6, edited by Joan Franklin Smutny. A graduate of Northwestern University, Katie majored in Spanish and Latin American language, literature, and culture, and minored in economics. She serves on the Torrance Legacy Creative Writing Awards committee for the National Association for Gifted Children.

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Here are six interesting links to inspire and ignite! Originally posted on Twitter. Follow me there: I’m @ByrdseedGifted.

• Amazing stop-motion jelly bean music video. Even better: includes a behind the scenes video.
• “Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.” Is group-work counterproductive to our most creative people?
• The importance of frustration: Don’t Prevent Students’ Mistakes, Prepare for Them. From @GiftedEdIrving and @educationweek.
• What can you do with this? An image of iPods’ incredible change over time
• Great winter ideas, including: “Recreate Van Gogh’s Starry, Starry Night as Snowy, Snowy Night”
• Yes! 150 Words that are nouns and verbs. Multiple point of view practice!
• Striking photos of China’s fake Disneyland. Used these to inspire writing during a grammar lesson.

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Related: Another Seven Resources from Twitter Seven resources from around the web. From beautiful volcanos, winter...

Photo by lydia shining brightly

We’ve just experienced the solar new year, and now many cultures will celebrate the lunar new year.

Looking at calendars throughout history is an interesting way to explore multiple perspectives. Nothing is as ingrained in our lives as seven day weeks, twelve months, and 365 days per year. Challenge your students’ perceptions by investigating various solar, lunar, and lunisolar calendars.

Solar vs Lunar

Begin by exploring the advantages of a solar calendar and a lunar calendar.

A solar year occurs once every 365 days, 5 hours 49 minutes 19 second (or about 365.242 days). The Gregorian calendar, the internationally accepted calendar, follows a solar year and your students should be familiar with the Earth’s annual trip around the sun.

Meanwhile, a lunar calendar follows lunar cycles, which average 29.530589 days (thank you Wikipedia). Twelve of these cycles result in a lunar year that’s about 354.37 days long.

The Islamic calendar is a pure lunar calendar of twelve months.

Lunisolar

However, very few cultures have used a true lunar calendar, instead opting for a combo lunisolar calendar.

For example, the Egyptians followed a calendar of twelve lunar months, each with thirty days. Since this only equals 360 days, they added five more days at the end to line up with the solar year.

Adding extra days to connect lunar and solar calendars is common across many cultures. These days are known as intercalary days.

The Aztecs had a calendar which lasted for eighteen, twenty day periods, plus five extra days known as “nameless days” or nemontemi.

Non-Standard Years

Not everyone used a 365 day year. Various Mesoamerican cultures used a 260-day “ritual” calendar that had no relation to the sun, moon, or seasons.

Weeks and Days

We take our seven day week for granted, but there have been a variety of week lengths throughout history.

The Egyptians used a ten day week. There were exactly three weeks in their thirty day months. The French calendar also used ten day weeks during the French Revolution.

China also had periods where they used ten day weeks.

The Romans used an eight day week, with days named A though H.

The Soviet Union went with five day weeks, labeled with colors or Roman numerals. This only lasted a couple years before they moved onto six day weeks, and then, eventually, the seven day week.

Create

So what on earth can we do with all of this information?

This might fit into a calendar-creation activity. I have my students design their own civilizations, to connect with our study of ancient civilizations.

I would ask them these questions about their civilization’s calendar system:

1. How many months will you have?
2. How many days will be in each month?
3. Will this equal 365 exactly, or will you use intercalery days?
4. What will your months be named?
5. What will your days be called?
6. Explain the the significance of the names of your months and days.

Going Further

The various calendar systems are fascinating and could turn into an independent study for interested students.

Social Studies

• Study the origins of the Gregorian calendar.
• Explore the transition from the Julian to Gregorian calendar.
• Examine the popularity of certain calendars in geographical regions.
• Investigate the influence of various religions on calendars.
• Digging into the month’s names opens up interesting avenues, and connects with Ancient Roman history (Simple Wikipedia is a student-friendly resource for this).
• Learn other language’s names for the days and months.

Math

• Investigate the combinations of months and days that equal 365. For example, ten 36 day months gets us to 360.
• Add in weeks to the previous idea and try to make everything a nice, round number. How many options are there?
• Determine how many 354 day lunar years it takes to line back up with 365 day solar years. How many 260 day years?

Science

• Develop calendars for different planets in the solar system (Jupiter’s solar year consists of 10,475.8 Jovian days).
• Explore the seasons’ impact on calendars (Rome considered winter a monthless period!)

Please let me know if you come up with a great idea using calendars.

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Related: Thanksgiving’s Thursday Origins Teaching students about the first Thanksgiving feast is standard fare...

Introducing a new tool to help you click up creative questions: Respondo!

It combines the power of the brainstorming tool SCAMPER with literary elements and an interesting product menu.

Here’s a sample of the power of Respondo!

Substitute The Giver’s setting for A Wrinkle In Time’s setting. Dramatize how this would affect A Wrinkle In Time’s plot. Create a skit.

Check it out here.

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Related: Introducing Depth and Complexity The dimensions of depth and complexity are a great first...

On February 22nd 2012, at 8:00pm, I’ll be presenting a webinar through UCI‘s Extension program titled “Technology Tools for GATE Teachers.”

It’s free and open to anyone.

Register for my webinar here, but check out the whole series through UCI Extension’s GATE homepage. Even if you can’t make it live, there will be a recording available to registrants.

Thanks to Lisa Kadowaki for inviting me to be a part of the webinar series!

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A math project almost always begins with something I happened to see on the internet.

In this case, the idea began with a love for IKEA‘s little furniture catalogs. It has evolved over time to fit different needs.

The Basics

Students are responsible for furnishing a hotel consisting of suites and standard rooms.

I give some requirements for each room (sofa, bed, coffee table, etc) and an hand over an IKEA catalog, along with some printed prices from Best Buy, Target, or other stores as needed.

Students then go on a shopping spree to furnish their hotel.

The Math

This began as a decimal operation project. Later I needed to work on percents, and realized that there tons of applications for percents as well in the hotel-furnishing world.

Students have $100,000 in cash, and can borrow unlimited funds at a 15% interest rate. We also work California sales tax in.

Students also calculate the percent of their funds that went to various categories (tables, beds, etc). This turns into a graph.

Students decided on rates for their rooms and suites (I’d recommend showing them some sample prices online). Using these, we calculated “break-even” points for the hotel using occupancy rates of 100%, 75%, and 66%.

The Product

You can take this idea in several directions:

• Kinesthetic kids can build physical models of rooms.
• Artists can create architectural renderings.
• Mathematical students can design accurate floor-plans.
• The tech-savvy can use Google’s Sketchup, building rooms in 3D.
• Entreuprenurial students can write a business plan and create materials to advertise their rooms.

Think about your students’ various talents and connect the final product with their passions.

Naturally, conclude with a walk around. I like to finish with various awards voted on by students (most artistic, most luxurious, best minimalist, etc)

How To Use

This project is a tool to help differentiate in math, and works two ways:

1. If you’re introducing new material, some students may already demonstrate mastery on a pre-test. They can work on a project like this while you instruct the class.

2. On the other hand, you might have some students who need your help while everyone else is ready to move on. Let the class work on this, while you pull students as necessary.

Hidden Bonus

The hidden bonus is the practical knowledge that you will expose students to.

They are confused by bed frames and mattress sizes, they don’t know whether to use the sale or retail price of an item, they find tax on each item rather than adding them up and then multiplying.

Perhaps take five minutes to show students local hotels of note or introduce the most famous hotels.

For students who are experts at acing tests, it’s wonderful to fill in these interesting gaps of knowledge.

The materials for the hotel project can be accessed below.

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This week, we’re tackling the comprehension skill “story structure” featured in the Houghton Mifflin reading program.

It’s absolute nuts and bolts (identify setting, character, and plot) and is part of the reading program beginning in Kindergarten.

A quick pre-assessment verifies that my sixth graders have a thorough understanding of this material.

Going Deeper?

I already use a writing unit featuring plot structure and character archetypes, so I needed another way to go deeper with story structure.

I decided to connect this skill to remixing. We’re going to use the elements of story structure to modify an existing story, creating a something new.

Instruction

We review the essential pieces of a story by using the week’s selection (in this case Gary Soto’s The Challenge).

This humorous story features a middle school boy foolishly attempting to impress a girl through racquetball.

The essential elements are:

• characters (main and supporting)
• events (in both the main plot and subplots)
• setting
• conflict
• theme

Practice

Students then list these same essential pieces using a story of their choosing. My kids go for everything from movies, to novels, to video game stories.

Once they’ve got the idea, I bring in the creativity framework SCAMPER (which I’ve mentioned here before).

SCAMPER

SCAMPER stands for:

• Substitute
• Combine
• Adapt
• Magnify / Maximize / Minimize
• Put to Other Uses
• Eliminate
• Rearrange

Each represents a way to slightly change an idea to create something new.

Thinkertoys is a great primer and Thinkpak is a deck of cards that gives hands-on brainstorming ideas using SCAMPER.

Demonstrating The Idea

I ask for a volunteer to give an essential piece of their story.

A student shares: “A forest!”

Now I ask: If we substituted a forest for the middle school setting of The Challenge, how would this change the story?

After much silence, a brave soul says: “Instead of playing racquetball on a court, they’d play it against a tree!”

Now we’re rolling.

The next volunteer names an event from their story: “monkeys attack the town.”

I ask how we could combine this event with the events in our story.

Someone answers: “The monkeys could invade their middle school!”

Now the ideas begin rolling: “Yes! And José can try to impress the girl by fighting off monkeys, rather than playing racquetball.”

Here’s a tool I’m working on to incorporate SCAMPER into literature response questions.

Encouraging Creativity

Even if you’ve carefully built a classroom that encourages and respects creative thinking, you’re going to have some awkward silence.

After all, your students have probably slogged through years of school where silliness is frowned upon and only right answers are praised.

As you begin brainstorming, set up scaffolding so students can comfortably get their feet wet. Rules are necessary, otherwise the truly unusual and interesting ideas will be laughed at and dismissed. But unusual and interesting ideas are the whole purpose of brainstorming.

1. No Judgement

Here are some rules used at Disney when brainstorming:

1. There is no such thing as a bad idea. We never know how one idea (however far-fetched) might lead into another one that is exactly right.
2. We don’t talk yet about why not. There will be plenty of time for realities later, so we don’t want them to get in the way of the good ideas now.
3. Nothing should stifle the flow of ideas. No buts or can’ts or other “stopping” words. We want to hear words such as “and”, “or”, and “what if?”
4. There is no such thing as a bad idea. (We take that one very seriously.)

From The Imagineering Field Guide To Disneyland, via Spking.com

Students should feel safe in sharing their ideas. If you ask for creativity, and then balk at strange ideas, you’ve betrayed the whole process.

2. Appropriateness

Naturally, it’s a classroom of youngsters and not a room of professionals, so you might need to add some limits regarding appropriateness. Let them know this up-front.

3. Silence Is Ok

There will be moments of complete silence when it seems like all the ideas are gone.

Let it go for a minute or so.

Suddenly someone will shift the class’ perspective with a new idea, and it will be like a dam bursting.

This pattern will repeat itself over and over. Allow it to happen.

Recording Ideas

So now students are shouting out new twists on the story:

• monkeys attack the school
• the setting is under water
• the government has outlawed racquetball

Your job is to quickly capture these ideas.

Personally, I am a faster typer than writer, so I project my laptop and use a wireless keyboard. This lets me sit with my students and face the board with them as I type.

Product

What will students do with these new seeds of ideas?

The most obvious choice is to write the new story (hopefully using an interesting writing process).

Looking to get more creative?

Let students record an audiobook version of the story using Garageband or Audacity.

Have students’ stories printed as real books using a service such as Lulu.

Want to go beyond writing, ask students to:

• Create a movie poster based on the new idea
• Create a movie trailer
• Record an audio trailer for the movie

Wow

Look back to where we started: identify the setting and fill in a worksheet.

Now our stuents are creating new ideas and publishing them in interesting ways.

Not bad for a week’s work!

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Houghton Mifflin reading program features a selection from Last Summer With Maizon in the theme “Growing Up” in sixth grade. In the selection, a young girl named Margaret must deal with feelings of abandonment as her best friend, Maizon, leaves for a boarding school.

Original Goal

The reading program has “making inferences” as the weekly comprehension skill. Instruction concludes with a worksheet page.

Let’s do something better and ask students to infer from multiple points of view and incorporate visual art.

First Read: Margaret’s Point of View

Ask your students to read the selection and concentrate on Margaret’s point of view toward Maizon’s new life. Ask them to think of what Margaret might be imagining her best friend doing. They should note the details from the story that helped them come up with their ideas. I ask for page numbers to make our discussions go smoother.

Scaffolding The Task

The task is a little complicated, since students must infer what Margaret is thinking. Plus, there are no right answers, just likely and unlikely.

Do an example, where you imagine what one of your students was up to over the weekend: “I imagine that Jim went to the park and played basketball, since I always hear him talking about his favorite teams.”

A non-example always helps, also: “I wouldn’t imagine that Jim went to a cooking class, since, as far as I know, Jim doesn’t cook.”

Examples: My students imagined Maizon finding a new, better jump rope partner. They thought of her making a new friend to dress as twins with. They also pictured Margaret’s letters sitting unanswered while Maizon chatted with friends online.

Maizon’s Point of View

Students will go through a similar process the next day, this time considering what might really be happening to Maizon at her new school. Since Maizon’s real activities are not in the selection, students must infer based on the little information they have plus their own personal experiences.

Students then imagine how Maizon may be struggling with more homework, since her school is more challenging. They thought of her struggling to find friends as a new student as a private school. They imagined Maizon standing with a jump rope and no friend to double-dutch with.

Students came up with great ideas for Maizon’s real life problems. Plus, since most students in my class switched schools to join the gifted program, this gives them a chance to reflect on their own experiences.

The Product

After two days of inferring, students create a “split screen” image, with one half visually representing Margaret’s idea of Maizon’s perfect new life, and one half showing life might really be like at the new school.

This can be as simple as a sketch on blank printer paper.

But if you’d like to, use this opportunity to discuss visual arts. Ask students to consider color and texture to representative different feelings in each side of the drawing. Show examples of classic art that use color to portray a mood. Feel free to experiment with collages or other mixed media products.

The Assessment

Now things get sticky. Do we grade the product? If so, What do we grade it on: the artistic representation of two points of view, the details featured in the art, the original notes the student took?

Part One: Presentation

With a product like this, which goes beyond our grade level standards, I like to have students present their work. I listen to their explanation and grade based on the communication of their ideas. I find that students’ explanation of their thinking is adds so much to their actual product. This grade then becomes part of the “listening/speaking skills” grades on our report cards.

If the product itself is below expectations, then I simply require a redo.

Part Two: Paper and Pencil

To assess students’ inferencing, I have a short answer response on our end-of-selection test. In this case, I would ask:

Was Margaret’s attitude towards Maizon justified?

Students then write a well-structured paragraph with at least three pieces of textual evidence. They may use their notes from the first and second readings (once students get used to this pattern, it improves their initial note taking as well). I grade the paragraph and include it as part of their literature analysis grade.

The Wrap Up

So with this idea, we include a challenging reading assignment, multiple points of view, a possible social/emotional discussion, visual arts, an oral presentation, and a written paragraph.

I get a couple of useful grades for report cards and a bunch of cool art to show off on the walls.

And it’s only taken me five years to get the kinks ironed out!

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Related: Making Inferences: Think Like An Anthropologist Like all HM comprehension skills, "Making Inferences" appears yearly beginning...