Southwest Children's Literature

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My Name is Jorge On Both Sides of the River: Poems in English and Spanish

In the classroom/library:

Goal:
Use literature to inform students about the problems that an immigrant kid has in the classroom when he starts school in the United States

Objectives:
The students will read and hear My Name is Jorge on Both Sides of the River.
The students will create a drawing related with one of the poems of the book.
The students will compose a poem as if they were Jorge.
The students will keyboard a poem from the book on a PowerPoint presentation.
The students will attach a drawing to the poem on the PowerPoint.
The students will use PowerPoint tools to illustrate the poem.

Questions:
How can we help immigrant students feel comfortable on their first day of class?

Core Curriculum (Tucson Unified School District)
Writing
Writing shows the following trail: Idea development, focus, detail (idea)
Organizational structure (organization)
Precise language and phrasing (word choice)
Mechanical correctness (Conventions)
Write a personal experience narrative or creative story that includes a plot and shows the reader what happens through well developed characters, settings, dialogue and themes, and uses figurative language, descriptive words and phrases.
Technology Productivity Tools
Students use technology tolls to enhance learning, to increase productivity and creativity, and to construct technology-enhanced models, prepare publications and produce other creative works.
Modern and Classical Language
Students in foreign language and native speaker class know "what to do when" and "what to say while doing it" in the culture and use this knowledge to interact appropriately. They also understand the relationships between cultural perspectives, products and practices within the cultures.

Prior Learning
Students should know who to use Microsoft PowerPoint software.

Day One
Read the title of the book to the students.
Ask what they think that the book is about the title.
Show the book to the students and ask them again; what they think the book is about?
Read the book - poem by poem.
After each poem, ask the students for their opinions or reflections about that poem
After completing the selected poems or with the whole book, tell the students to make a list about ways to make an immigrant students more comfortable the first day of school.

Day Two
Assign one poem from the book to each student and give him or her a copy.
Divide the class in three groups with an even number of students:
1. Computer group
2. Writing group
3. Drawing group
The computer group will type the poem in the computer using Microsoft PowerPoint. After typing the poem will put a background to the poem as well as the title using WordArt.
Each student in the writing group will write a poem like if they were Jorge. The set of these poems will be call My name is Jorge II or Answer to Jorge.
The drawing group will draw a picture related to the original poem that is on the book.

The groups will rotate stations every thirty minutes.

Day Three
Scan the drawings.
Make the drawings fit in the same page with the original poem in the PowerPoint presentation.
Scan or copy on the computer the poem written by the student.
After putting together the PowerPoint presentation, run it to show the work for the whole class.
Another option is to print out the PowerPoint presentation.

Supplies
Computer
Scanner
Microsoft PowerPoint

Resources
My Name is Jorge on Both Sides of the River

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