The Lightning Thief End of Book Project and Teacher Resources

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan, has become a mainstay in my reading class (my book review, located on my now defunct literacy blog, can be found HERE). For five years now, my students have been enjoying this fantastic book, and a thematic unit on Greek Mythology alongside the reading of the book. You can view my post titled Some 5th Grade Greek Mythology Resources for some great websites and information about teaching Greek Myth.

When reading The Lightning Thief, I call upon the following pages for some great resources:

• An overview of Lightning Thief resources at Rick Riordan's website: A table of contents page with tons of great resources.
• A chapter by chapter teachers guide from Rick Riordan's website: It's the first link from the above table of contents. It's an awesome resources, it's huge, comprehensive, and it's HUGE.
• A complete unit by chapters with questions and vocabulary: Again, from Rick Riordan's website (it's a great site).

Now, when you're done and you're ready to do an end of book project, I have everything you'll need right here:

• First, head off again to Rick Riordan's website for some awesome project ideas on the page titled School Project Ideas.
• Finally (this is why most of you came): The Lightning Thief end of book project (.doc format).
• If you need more explanation on the book brochure portion, seek help at my post titled Book Report Project Idea: Book Brochures.

The Giver End of Book Collaboration Project Completed

A few weeks ago my class completed their end of book collaboration projects based on the Lois Lowry book The Giver. The Giver End of Book Collaboration Project is a class project I came up with to get students working together to produce different products that show their understanding of this fantastic book. You can also download the project specifications in pdf format HERE.

I took some pictures of the things that I decided to hang up on one of our bulletin boards in the classroom:


The first two images show the bulletin board in its entirety:

These next two images show some of the art work close up.

These last two images show the triorama timeline that was made.

The Giver End of Book Collaborative Class Projects

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is a book I have posted about before, in a book review I did in 2008, and just a few months ago on the pages of this blog, in a post shrewdly titled The Giver, by Lois Lowry: Some Great Ideas for Teachers. 

As of today, September 28th, my class is nearly done with the book. In fact, we will finish the story in just a few more days. When that time comes, I plan on having my class complete a series of projects. The big push in my school district right now is collaborative learning / cooperative learning (something I've always used consistently in my classroom). It is harder to find opportunities for collaboration in reading class, especially as it relates to literature, but I've come up with a little something that is appropriate for the 5th grade classroom, and I call it simply the end of book collaboration projects.

In this, there are five projects that students can participate in. There is a mega triorama display, a collection of art work based on the story, a classroom imagining of the book of rules, advertisements to visit the community we know as "sameness," and the opportunity to re-imagine the ending, or expand upon the ending of the book. 

These projects give students the opportunity to work in their strengths, be it art, writing, or simply thinking creatively. The pdf document that I have created for this project includes a self-check for students to use, and a scoring rubric.

One word of caution here, if your students haven't finished the book, do not show them this document, it includes spoilers that would ruin the ending. This also holds true for you, the teacher. If you're reading this book for the first time, stay away from the document until you're done, I'd hate to ruin the ending for anyone. 

OK, so now for what you came for. To download this document in pdf format, simply click HERE. 

Book Report Project Idea: Book Brochures

There are numerous, practically infinite, ways to do book reports. But, I would definitely argue that they are very important in the classroom. We want our students to read, and we want them to know that they're accountable to what they read. For me, the absolute back bone of my literacy instruction is the daily read aloud. We read books together all year, as a shared experience, and much of the reading instruction is themed around the book. For example, we just completed our first read aloud this year, The Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrop (a fantastic choice for 4th or 5th grade read alouds, especially early in the year, HERE is a short post I did many years ago on this book).  So a lot of instruction was themed around the knights of the round table, chivalry, and castles.

But that's somewhat beside the point. At the end of each read aloud, I ask students to produce some sort of a project. One of my favorites is the book brochure. The following images will show how this brochure was assigned (there are so many ways to individualize this that it's ridiculous to even start mentioning some of those ways), and the finished products hanging on the wall.

It's simple, start with a sheet of construction paper, and fold it in thirds to look like a brochure. When you unfold the brochure, you have an inside (the inside of the flaps) and an outside. It's a great project, and students really are starting to understand that I'm asking them to step up to a higher level of quality. This is the first go around, on only the third week of school. So next time around, I'll see a sharp improvement in the quality of their brochures.

This first image shows what I assigned this go around. It includes a short opinion, a comic strip (of their favorite scene), and the students own cover art for the book. On the inside, I asked for a summary (and found out that numerous students had no idea what this was (they were putting their opinion instead of summarizing), which was good information to know and discuss), as well as four major settings, and three major themes (which is our skill for this week). Finally, they had to complete a short character file for two major characters.

This second image is the view of the cover of an exemplary brochure.

This final image shows the inside of that same brochure. 

Teaching 5th Graders About the Holocaust Through Literature

The Holocaust is one of the most difficult subjects to teach about with students who are in elementary or middle school. In fact, it could be argued that up until 5th or 6th grade, students aren't ready to begin learning about the Holocaust at all. By 5th grade, I do feel that students are mature enough to approach the subject and give it the respect it deserves, if that expectation is set from the start.

Of course, it's not really appropriate to show a class Schindler's List (you'd be fired most likely due to the R rating), so where to begin? The best place is through literature. There are many great books out there for students to read, or for the teacher to read in read aloud. In my old literacy blog, I made a posting that is very similar to this one titled Teaching the Holocaust. I will summarize a few of my favorites here:

• The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak: This book is on my top five of all time favorite books, and was previously reviewed by me four years ago. It's listed as an 8th grade level book, but I've had some really bright 5th graders sit down and read it. It's a little long (at around 900 pages) for a read aloud, but the story is simply amazing. It's a great book to have in a classroom library. There is also a free teacher resource guide (among others) available in pdf format HERE. 

• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne: This story hits hard with most children. It's from the perspective of a child, it has a shocking and sad ending, and really seems to touch on the emotions of the whole thing with most kids. The movie is also quite good. Here is a link to the entire text of the book in pdf format (if you'd rather print it than buy it), and here is a teacher guide.

• The Devil's Artihmetic, by Jane Yolen: This book was written in 1968, and is about a contemporary girl magically transported back to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and is forced to survive. It's a great story with a great movie.

• The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank: One of the all-time best selling books, it needs no introduction. The material in this book and Anne Frank's story are right on for this age group. I have a post titled Teaching About Anne Frank: Classroom Resources that outlines many websites and resources to use in teaching about Anne Frank.

• I Am David, by Anne Holm: Another book written in the 1960's, this one about a boy who escapes from a concentration camp in Bulgaria. For years it was titled North to Freedom, but is now published under its current name. The book is a little slow for use as a teacher read aloud, but the character development is good, and the movie is right there with the story line of the book.

• Maus I & II, by Art Spiegelman: I'll admit it is a stretch to present this graphic novel to 5th graders and have them grasp the subtlety and metaphor that lies within its pages. This book is also very stark and somewhat graphic. I'm not going to argue that it's inappropriate, if I was I wouldn't mention it here, but you might want to limit it to some highly advanced students as a book study. I previously reviewed part I in a post titled Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman.