May 29th

We started off today reading from the book ‘Making it Home: Real Life Stories from Children Forced to Flee”. I’ve been using it off and on all this session as we continue to learn about refugee children. Today, I read aloud a few passages, and we discussed the issue at hand, and also how the children constructed their stories. I then had my students prepare their own narratives – big or small, I asked them to tell a story from their own life, and to add details and their inner thoughts to the structure as a means of expanding their writing styles. It seemed to go over pretty well all in all, we had a wide diversity of stories, from the loss of Playstations due to bad behavior, the death of a favorite aunt, birth of a cousin, and a tree that apparently forced one of my 5th graders from her home. I am waiting for her to write the conclusion of her story, but evidently it had to do with a tree root she named “Greenie’ rupturing the foundation of her home…

We took our writing outside today, so that students could take time and have one of our two digital cameras to themselves while working. This seemed to work out well – a nice change of scenery for the students to work in, and it allowed them their coveted camera time.

I’m looking forward to compiling all of their work into our ‘book’ – I am slowly scanning and taking digital photos of what they have done and am going to combine it all into a book format. We’ll produce the books on lulu.com, give a few to the school library and after school office and also sell them online as a fundraiser. Keep checking in if you are interested in purchasing one!