Bringing kids into the LMC--with a Slam Board

Remember back in the day when we had Slam books--those composition books that had one question per page, and you wrote your favorite singer, or cutest boy, etc. on each page? Well, Ethel adapted this idea to our media center board, and it is a hit! We have an blackboard our reading area. We've made it a slam board--each day we are posting a different question, and the students run in to put up an answer (using sidewalk chalk)! So far our questions have been: what is your favorite candy? what superhuman power would you want? who is your favorite teacher? what makes you LOL? what's your middle name?

Lucy and Ethel firmly believe that if we get students to love coming to the media center, we'll eventually get a book or magazine in their hands!

Native American Heritage Month

Lucy says..while helping a teacher design a research project for her 11th grade U.S. History class, I ran across these terrific sites I thought I'd share.

Smithsonian American Art Museum's Campfire Stories with George Catlin

This could serve as a springboard for the assignment--have them select an image in this collection--a chief, an image in Ancestral lands, Catlin's quest, the Western landscape, to find more information about--composing not only a 2 or 3 page narrative or reaction paper with more information (from various sources that are cited in the works cited page) about the image, but within the narrative, describing everything they see in the image that gives clues about Native American life at that time (they must choose and image of Native Americans, or Native American life, not images of Catlin and his party). Within the paper, they could also investigate this question--can you find how encroaching movement from East to West affected the life of the person, or the image? Can you find a picture of this area, or a person from this tribe today?

Here are the lesson plans from the Smithsonian site:
http://catlinclassroom.si.edu/lessonplans/contents.html

Also, I love, love, love this activity:

It has them search through primary source documents, and other websites:

Library of Congress

http://www.edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=268

http://edsitement.neh.gov/monthly_feature.asp?id=133

There are many more out there--just thought I'd share these! Feel free to discuss other great sites you've shared with your teachers!