LRC 480: Children's Literature in the Classroom Section 6 Spring 2002 Facilitator: Judi Moreillon

The goal of this project is to celebrate the diversity of our literacy experience. Sharing our personal experiences with literacy will help us build our classroom community. Reflecting on our own and each other's literacy histories will help us understand the wide-range of experiences and world views our students will bring into our classrooms.

You will create a literacy timeline. Your timeline should span from birth to the age of the students you plan to teach. (As I have spent the majority of my career teaching in elementary schools, my timeline goes from birth to age eleven.) Bring your timeline to share in small groups on January 16th. These are some questions that will help you create your literacy timeline:

• What memories do you have about stories, books, and/or reading as a child and/or as an adolescent? (These memories can be from home, school, libraries, scouting, religious institutions, or other literacy places.)
• Who are the people who made a difference in your early literacy experiences?
• Besides books, what other media played a part in your early literacy (oral storytelling, TV, movies...)?
• Are there specific story/book/movie titles or genres (such as poetry, science fiction, fantasy) that stand out in your recollections?
  

A draft of you one-page Heritage Poem is due on January 23rd. We will share our poems in small groups and partner edit them in class on the 23rd. Your final poem is due on January 30th. We will publish these in a class book. I'll ask for one or two volunteers to create a cover for our book. (This is one of our class jobs.) You're invited to illustrate your contribution with a photograph(s) and/or drawings but remember, copies will be made in black and white.

You will each get a copy of our Hertiage Poem Class Book. Along with some other southwest cultural artifacts, we will send a copy of our book to our global classroom partners at Northwestern Michigan College.

Click here to see my sample timeline and Heritage Poem. Click here to view the 6 Traits Rubric for this assignment.

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