 Welcome to Huntington School's 2009 E*LIT project sponsored by Syracuse University's Center for Digital Literacy. This years featured author is Andrea Davis Pinkney who has written more than 20 books for children that focus on the lives of remarkable African American characters. As educators working at Huntington School our primary goal was to develop a literacy activity that supported a collaborative environment and provided a connection between the librarian, teacher and students. We chose a project that empowered students to gain literacy skills by utilizing technology to demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge and understanding. In order to achieve our goals, we decided to create cartoon biographies that reflect the life of Andrea Davis Pinkney and some of the strong African American characters that she has highlighted in her books. This years 2009 E*LIT team members include Ms. Hartnett a school library media specialist from Huntington School, Mrs. Middleton a school media graduate student from Syracuse University, Mr. Rudolph a 3rd grade teacher from Huntington School and Mr. Rudolph's extremely hard working 3rd grade reading group. In accomplishing our goal the students were divided into six groups and were required to collaboratively create individual comic biographies that creatively linked to Andrea Davis Pinkney and her authored books. As a large group we listened to and discussed Andrea Davis Pinkney's books, which included "Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation", "Duke Ellington", "Ella Fitzgerald", and "Let It Shine". The students learned about their characters by listening to these stories and utilizing additional resources to include biographies, articles and informational websites. Each group was required to research and take notes on their character to produce a comic book that reflects the life and individual accomplishments of their character. In addition to Rosa Parks, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Harriet Tubman who were written about in the Pinkney books, one group chose to create a biography on Author Andrea Davis Pinkney and another group chose to write about Jackie Robinson in hopes that Ms. Pinkney will write a book about him. The cartoon biographies were created using "ToonDoo", a comic strip creator, which can be accessed at http://toondoo.com. The students learned how to work together as a team, utilize new technologies and develop introductory research skills. Overall the project was a huge success and the students and teachers enjoyed working together. When working with any new technology it is not uncommon to experience technical difficulties. At times our E*LIT team experienced periodic network complications, loading delays and publishing interruptions, therefore we are hopeful that our projects are complete and not lacking any cartoon pictures, photo images or text. We hope you enjoy viewing our cartoon biographies, photograph slide show and video clips as much as we enjoyed making them!
To get to the students' projects click on the sidebar items "Huntington School's 3rd Grade Collaborative Techonolgy Projects" and "Featured Author Andrea Davis Pinkney". Follow the links, named after the biographical subject, that are found on those pages. |