Magazine Cover

I am inching towards getting my 80-plus students involved in the Voices on the Gulf project. We have a lot of begin-the-year activities going on (reading Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in order to talk about protagonist and antagonist, creating Dream Scene digital stories, etc.) and I have been searching for something to read about the Gulf Oil Spill to slowly ease our way forward into what I hope can be a year-long inquiry and community action project.

It arrived in the mail yesterday, with the first issue of Time for Kids magazine. The cover story — After the Spill –  is all about the recovery efforts and endangered turtles and more. That article, and a related video about the process of saving oil-covered pelicans, will be perfect. It reminds me that one thing I want my kids to do is clip newspaper/magazine articles about the Gulf for a News Wall in the classroom.

One writing activity that I often do near the start of the year can be re-aligned a bit with the Voices on the Gulf project, I think. I often have students create designs of Vehicles of the Future that do not run on fossil fuels. It’s a mix of expository writing (informational text on the picture) and descriptive writing, and I am going to get them started on it this week, I think. What I am wondering is how to showcase so many of the designs. I might use Animoto or create a slideshow or something. Hmmmm.

Peace (in the news),
Kevin