For our Page Turners project this month we are going old school!!! I have a roll of film that I purchased way back in college (I won't say what year that was), and when the librarian at my first school discarded this ancient projector I nabbed it right up. How many of you remember watching filmstrips in elementary school growing up? Bring back a few memories??? :)
Book choice = a good quality chapter book (already selected or read since our last meeting)
Project = create a filmstrip to show in-depth understanding of your story's plot line, main character, or a significant scene / chapter
In class we had a long discussion about how to choose the best option for the book you're reading. For example, Because of Winn-Dixie centered around the character of Opal and how alone she felt due to a recent move, spending years with just her father, feeling abandoned by and missing her mom, and how gaining a dog leads her to create meaningful relationships with people in her new community and opens the door to a more honest relationship with her father. For this book we agreed we should focus on character development...struggles the character faced, events and challenges that affected them, and their personal growth and change throughout the story. Were we to use Inkheart (our current read aloud), focusing on a single character would never work. For this book we agreed immediately that we would need to focus on choosing key / significant events to show the plot line and the development of the story. A third and final option would be to focus on just a single, highly important chapter. Several students are reading LONG, intense books that match best with showing plot vs characters, but do to their length and complexity would be a monstrous undertaking. In these cases, students can choose just one event or chapter that holds significance to the story. It might be a chapter that shows a turning point in the story, a chapter that explains a character's struggle or problem, or the event that they felt was most important. For students choosing the chapter option, their filmstrip should probably begin with a slide or two to introduce their character and give enough background on the problem or storyline that the chapter makes sense to the rest of us.
The picture below has 3 photos showing graphic organizers that the students will choose from today to help them choose and plan their presentation. The top left picture shows copies of blank filmstrip so that they can preplan their film (so we know how much length each student will need). Students will need to use fine point Sharpies (or another permanent marker) to create their film. I do have a small bin that they can use, but if you have fine point Sharpies at home that your kiddos could bring as we work on creating these that would be great!!! (no need to go purchase, despite what they might try to convince you of) :)
We will present these next Friday, March 20th!
