Options for my Literacy Unit

Option 1: Since I will be focusing on older grades, this unit will be directed towards sixth graders. In this first option, I will be doing a literacy unit on Ancient civilizations. My students will research what life was like for a twelve year old in whichever civilization they choose. My students will then write out a five minute script which depicts their findings. Then they will make a movie out of their script and post it on the school website. This will help the students with their writing skills as well as their understanding of ancient civilizations.

Option 2: This next option will be a unit on reading and writing strategies. My students will be expected to create and maintain a blog that focuses on one particular topic that they find interesting. Throughout the time spent on the unit, each student spend time each week reading informational and fiction books on their subject. They will then post at least twice a week about what they have read and how it fits into their topic. They will also be expected to explain how they used specific strategies to help them pull out the information that they used. Of course, citations will also be used.

Option 3: This option will focus on spelling. Each student will form their own strategy for how to spell better. They must give this strategy a catchy name and develop it fully. Then they will make a podcast of how to use their strategy. To make this unit more fun, the students can make their podcast into an infomercial, a tv show or anything else that they can think of (provided it is g-rated). Then they will be assigned into groups to watch and evaluate each others' strategies. Once each group has decided on the best strategy, the entire class will decided which one of those is the very best and the winner will receive a prize.

Option 4: This option will focus on the steps involved in writing essays and papers. In the planning stage, the students will use Kidspiration software to develop their ideas in a web. From this, they will pull the information needed to form the introduction, body paragraphs and ending of their essay. Once all of those ideas are constructed and organized, the students will write a first draft of an essay. This first draft will go up on the class wiki. They will then have to peer review each others' essays by typing in suggestions in a different font color. Next, the students will write out their final draft and post it in their blogs.

Option 5: This option will be a more individual class project, meaning that each student will choose their own novel to read regardless of what their other classmates are reading. Each student will read their novel and make their online journal entries about it on their blog. After finishing the book, they will need to pull out what they believe the climax of the novel to be. Using the website toondoo.com, the students will then create their own comic strip of the climax. The creation of the comic strip will have to be done in class though so that I can monitor how the students are using the site since it is not exclusively a children's site and may contain inappropriate material.