Tomorrow, I will be presenting the exemplary elementary media program with Betsy Clem from Murray County and the Woodlawn Elementary Media Center. Here is a link to the prezi we will be using during our presentation.
October 2010 Monthly Report
Connecting Our Stories
Today I received an interesting email when I arrived at school. Chaela Herridge-Meyer, Senior Coordinator of Communications with the StoryCorps project, sent me a message requesting an interview about our Barrow Oral History Project. Many of you know that last year our 5th grade students interviewed 27 former Barrow buddies from as far back as 1925. During the project, students used online oral history examples such as StoryCorps and also used the StoryCorps National Day of Listening question generator to get ideas for the most effective interview questions. After the project was complete, I posted the link to our oral history page on the National Day of Listening wall in the hopes that other people who were passionate about gathering community stories would find their way to our project.
Chaela and I had a wonderful conversation about the power of oral history projects bringing history alive for students. We also talked about how our hope was that the students who participated in this project will go on to capture and preserve family stories to pass on to future generations. Also, by sharing this project at professional conferences like COMO, GaETC, and the Georgia Conference on Children’s Literature we hope that other classrooms, schools, and libraries will sponsor similar projects.
November is national family stories month. I invite everyone reading this blog to stop for just a moment, sit down with a family member, and interview him or her to gather some family stories you’ve never heard. I invite you record your interviews to pass along through YouTube, video, photography, writing, scrapbooking, or any other means you discover. I would love to hear about your stories. I would especially like to post some family stories from our school on our media center website. I’m even happy to help you in recording your story if you want to setup a time for me to help you.
The day after Thanksgiving is the official National Day of Listening. Their website has resources for creating effective questions and recording quality audio. I hope you will consider participating in this important day, but even if you can’t sit down for a family interview on November 26th, sit down sometime and listen.
“By listening closely to one another, we can help illuminate the true character of this nation reminding us all just how precious each day can be and how great it is to be alive.” -Dave Isay, Founder & President, StoryCorps
Gathering Community Stories 2010 COMO Presentation
I will be presenting the Barrow Oral History Project at the Georgia Council of Media Organizations Conference in Athens, GA on Friday October 15 in Athena Room I. Here are the resources that I will be sharing in my presentation.
September Monthly Report
September GLMA Post
Cartooning with Chuck
Ms. Hicks and Ms. Saxon’s 2nd grade spectrum class have been learning about graphic novels. Their exploration started off in the media center where we looked at how graphic novels are created by watching a video from Capstone Publishers. This video got students started in thinking about storyboarding, penciling, inking, and other terminology used when creating a graphic novel. Next, we moved to our graphic novel collection in the media center and looked at multiple graphic novels under the document camera to see how reading a graphic novel might be different than reading a novel. After exploring this together, students all chose a graphic novel to read at tables and started making noticings about what they discovered in the pictures and text.
Ms. Hicks and Ms. Saxon continued this process in their classroom by having students read multiple graphic novels and compare they writing, art, and other techniques used. Students are also working on book reviews of all of their readings.
All of this exploration is building a foundation for students before they launch into creating their own graphic novels. One more source of support was bringing in a cartoonist to demonstrate his art for the students. Dr. Chuck Cunningham is the assistant principal at Colham Ferry Elementary School in Oconee County, but he is also a cartoonist. He regularly publishes cartoons in the Oconee Enterprise and has created cartoons for other newspapers and magazines for many years. He also shares his talents with many of the classes at his own elementary school, but we were fortunate enough to have him visit Clarke County to share with our students.
Dr. Cunningham created a cartoon with students in the moment and wove in instruction about creating panels, penciling/inking, kinds of text, drawing tips, and more. The students were bubbling with excitement and left the media center fired-up about starting their own graphic novels. Dr. Cunningham left all of the artwork that he created today so that students can reference the tips that he offered.
I love to connect students and teachers with expert guest speakers because it is hard for teachers to be experts in all that they teach. If you are an individual who would love to support our students with a talent or area of expertise that you have, let me know and I would love to connect you with our students and teachers at Barrow.
Barrow Oral History Project: A Student Perspective
Barrow Oral History Project: A Student Perspective.
A student from last year’s oral history project shares his thoughts on the project.
Native Americans Collaborative Centers
Native Americans Center Rotation.
Watch what happened during our Native Americans collaborative centers with 4th grade on Thursday & Friday. (More to come soon on the GLMA blog).
Constitution Day Lessons
Watch what happened during our Constitution Day collaborative centers with 5th grade on Friday. (More to come soon on the GLMA blog).
Expect the Miraculous 