I had one of those moments this week when I came across a fantastic resource for a lesson and student project– right after it had ended. Does that happen to you sometimes? In this case, the assignment was a social studies and library collaborative unit with my graduate students, and the resource was the video, “Connecting with Social Studies through Nonfiction” on the Reading Rockets website.
If Reading Rockets is new to you, the group is described on the organization’s website as “a national multimedia literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help.”
Despite the timing, I shared the video with my students anyway, because I really liked the small group discussions between the librarians and the students, pictured below in the screen capture. In the lesson, the librarians and teachers are working to help students study images from the book Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman. I encouraged my school library candidates to notice the kinds of questions and prompts that the librarians asked the children, as well as the reflection among the teachers following the instruction.
Following the first lesson, the children told family stories as a way of finding personal connections. Together, the learning experiences offered a nice example of higher-level thinking, inquiry, and cultivating motivation and curiosity to learn and share knowledge. The video is part of the Libraries feature on the website, for which ALA is listed as a featured partner.
Another Reading Rockets source worth a look especially in the month of April, is the Reading Rockets poetry page. It’s rich and sure to draw you right in.
Have you used Reading Rockets with your teachers and students? What are some favorite resources?
National Poetry Month resources: http://www.readingrockets.org/calendar/poetry (poetry walks, Janet Wong’s poetry suitcase, videos, poetry for ELL students, poetry for home and families, and more)
Reading Rockets Mission: http://www.readingrockets.org/about#mission
Video link, Connecting to Social Studies through Nonfiction: http://bcove.me/fr8z14pd