Digital Booktalk & Neighborhood Map

2 weeks of school down, a lot to go. My cooperating teacher is amazing and the students are great. I've already learned so much. While looking on the Web for information about the YA book Nothing But the Truth by Avi, I came across the website http://digitalbooktalk.com/. This website is awesome! It has video booktalk of several YA books for grades K-12. I found a cool booktalk for Nothing But the Truth, which I think my 7th graders will love. I'm hoping it will get them excited about reading the book. If you register on this site, you will be able to get ideas for helping students make their own book trailers in class.

In class, my cooperating teacher and I are reading a chapter from Jerry Spinelli's autobiography, Knots in My Yo-Yo String each day. In this book, the author has drawn a map of an aerial view of the neighborhood he grew up in. The stories from this neighborhood are what inspired him to write his autobiography. So, my teacher, who had my professor at Wright State for a Writing Workshop a few summers ago, decided to use one of the professor's ideas in our class. We handed out sheets of drawing paper to each student and asked them to draw an aerial view of the neighborhood they grew up in. The map had to include many different places where students have a lot of stories from. For example, neighbors homes, a school, a creek, a basketball court, a swimming pool, a bike trail, etc. After students were done drawing, we asked them to place three Sticky Notes on three places on their map which they could write a great story about. After students finished this, we had students write in their writer's notebooks about one of the places for three minutes. After the three minutes were up, students had another three minutes to write about another place/memories. The kids loved this! They were so quiet and engrossed when they were both drawing and writing. This is a great way to prompt students to write something meaningful and something from the heart.