7/16 First Drafts and Ideas Here

Julie's Explorer #1

Joshua is a rising 4th-grade student. Joshua told me in the interview that he wants to know more about content related to sea animals and how to protect them. I wanted to support his literacy growth with a topic he would like to read. Then I came up with an idea of making a digital book about ocean plastic pollution. Below are the solutions he recorded.

Julie's Explorer #2

Yoselin is a rising 7th grader and she loves pandas. I planned the topic around pandas' life cycle, habitat, causes of endangerment, and solutions. I believe making a diorama of pandas is an exciting activity to work on, and it can represent her understanding of all the information she learned. We read books about the topic, and she wanted to inform others how pandas' home being destructed. Below are the ideas she came up with.

Priscilla's Explorer #1

When I first met my explorer he explained how much he enjoyed playing Minecraft. He began talking to me about the different "monsters" that chase players and giggled when he explained how he was caught one time. I knew I needed to use this to my advantage to practice his writing superpower. 

I'm familiar somewhat with the game because my son had been playing it for sometime during quarantine with his friends.  I wasn't aware that many teachers have been incorporating Minecraft in their lessons to engage kids. I read articles that explained teachers use Minecraft to teach science, math, literature, and history. I'm sure there are more ways to use Minecraft out there but I only read about a few. I decided to use snapshots from the game and ask my explorer to create a narrative. I was not surprised that he jumped right in! 

First, we went through each image. He shared what he liked about each picture and in some cases explained that he does not have a few of the affects in his version of the game. Then, he rearranged the images from beginning to end. After, he began to draft his narrative. Finally, he made edits and revisions. Below is when he began typing his narrative. He is a rising 4th grader.

 

Priscilla's Explorer #2

I initially planned to have my second explorer work on writing a narrative about his dog Luna. However, when I met with him for our first session after the QRI meetings I collected this writing sample from him. I knew that I didn't want to disengage him for the remainder of our meetings, so I shifted the focus of our sessions to work on reading skills. When it is time for us to write I type for him because he usually says he has technical difficulties. He is a rising 5th grader.

Tiffini's Explorers

IP loves reading graphic novels and expressed an interest in writing one of her own.  At this time, she was reading Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls and would often end our sessions by reading from the book.  This week, we read parts of graphic novels to study the main characters and setting.  IP then created the main character for her graphic novel.  Below is a picture of the main character, as well as her description of the character on the outside (appearance) and the inside (personality), as well as the problem the main character may face.

RR likes to read books with animal characters.  When taking the writing attitude survey, he stated that he wanted to write a story for children.  Similar to IP, we read fictional texts to study main characters and discussed how the setting drives the plot of a story.  RR also created the main character for his story, brainstormed the problem, and established the setting.

Patrick's Explorers

5th grade Truman is beginning to story board his superhero narrative, "Fire vs. Ice". I used the story board graphic organizer to help him brainstorm. The organizer are broken up to the elements of plotting a narrative with cues and sentence starters. I used the "Crafting a Plot: Narrative Writing"Anchor Chart to review the elements of plotting a narrative. He used the marvel website to design his own superhero, Flamethrower Management.

8th grade Jose is beginning his research on Immigration Civil Rights in Chicago for his letter to an elected official. I selected three reading to help Jose's research that modeled relevant and credible sources. As we read the texts, he chunked the paragraph to identify main ideas, then summarized each in the organizer. In addition,  Jose identified evidence to include in his letter and highlighted "golden lines" in the organizer and for each piece of evidence her explains what it means.

Mrs. Gonzalez's Explorers

Daisy is a sixth grader that loves cats! She noticed that there are many cats in her neighborhood and wants to make sure that they stay safe and healthy. So, Daisy decided to focus on her interest and use this opportunity to educate her community on how to be a great cat owner. She is creating a brochure that she will distribute to her neighbors that provides plenty of useful information for cat owners.

Here we see examples of Daisy's idea web, where she is brainstorming possible supporting details for her topic. (Top image)

   

We also see her using her background knowledge about cats to use as a resource and to generate possible ideas to write about for the brochure. Daisy jotted down her thoughts and information  on Jamboard. (Bottom image)

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 Zoe is a second grader who remembers the challenges of first grade. After discussing her previous school year and the lessons she learned, she decided to give back to this year's first grade class! Zoe decided to write a non-fiction book about whales to gift to the new group of students at her school. She is excited to share her love of whales. Zoe hopes that reading the book will not only be informative but also a chance to read with a friend and have some fun!

Top Images: Zoe creates a KWL chart to drive her reading. She captures what she knows, what she wants to know, and what she learned about whales onto her chart. Zoe also drew a whale on her first day of tutoring. 😃
Bottom Images: After reading a book on how to draw a humpback whale, Zoe gives it a go! Not only is she gathering facts and information about whales, but she is also perfecting her technique on how to draw them more realistically.

Jasmine's Explorers

Nathan:

Nathan is a rising 8th grader and he is currently researching about the history of Chicago. When we met, he said one of his favorite things to do is to go to Navy Pier, which the led to a conversation about how much we love the city we live in. He is gathering facts and information from various informational texts. 

Nicolas:

Nicolas is a rising 2nd grader, very interested in robots and animals (among many other things). We are reading Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. The Unpleasant Penguins from Pluto and Nicolas is using this document to track the plot/major events of each chapter to prepare for his animation video.