Reederama: Picture Book Biographies

Monday, May 21, 2018

The fourth grade picture book biography project in four stages

PART THE FIRST

We started the fourth grade biography project by reading Girl Running: Bobbi Gibb and the Boston Marathon. As a whole group, they then: identified Bobbi's achievements/contributions; determined personality traits and found evidence in the text; created a six word memoir; and, thought about images that would support this information.

PART THE SECOND

I partially created a Google Slide Show with this information and had the students finish it with me. During this process I modeled how to create a complete slide show including being good digital citizens when finding images.

PART THE THIRD

The students chose a biography and worked on their projects.
a. choose a biography
b. read the biography
c. fill out the information gathering form
d. create slide show
e. present the slide show to your classmates
f. make edits
g. present the slide show to third graders

We had many discussions about not letting the message get lost in the medium. I can see that I need to do a better job of helping some students understand the importance of having the images reinforce the information on the slides. It also looks like I was not clear about thinking about images and art to include. Things for next year!

PART THE FOURTH

The students reflected on their project and the process.

There was some confusion about finding evidence in the text.

I asked the students to share anything else they wanted to say to me. I tossed those responses in a word cloud generator and created two different images. I love what I see:

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Picture Book Biographies About Women, By Women, For Everyone

It's Women's History Month! My students and I are commemorating and celebrating the vital role of women in American history.

This year we're doing things a bit differently, we're focusing on picture book biographies about women that are both written and illustrated by women (and that are, of course, for all readers. It was hard to not include some fabulous biographies about women that were written or illustrated by men, but they didn't meet my criteria.

I tried to choose books that showed the range of contributions. I was thinking of someone old, someone new, someone who led, someone who drew. This calendar is by no means comprehensive and I am sure there are some significant books that I have missed. Please add your suggestions in the comments and I will compile them into a more comprehensive list.