My teaching partner and I just finished a Narrative Writing unit.  From our district Literacy Coaches we were tasked with having students write narratives in an urban setting.  The performance task the coaches wrote had students researching Philadelphia, New York or Chicago and then writing a story set in an urban setting of their choice.

Our tech take on this idea was to have students research a city (San Francisco or New York City) as if they were planning a trip there. (You can see the websites we built on the Students tab of this blog.)  They had to interesting places to see, restaurants, transportation, hotels etc and create a budget.  Once they finished researching we had them create a blog,  one each day, for the seven days of the trip.  At the end of the "trip" we added a fantasy aspect of the trip on day 7 when the zombie apocalypse happened and they had to survive.  

You can read the blogs here.  If you do, feel free to make comments to the students.  Just like everyone, they like getting feedback on their work.

I am currently grading the blogs, and so far I have been very happy with the writing I have seen.  It is far and away better than any personal narrative assignment I have had to assign and read.  I think by giving students setting, characters (the friends who went with them), and problems (Every day we spun the wheel of problems which was just a random name generator that I had filled with issues like theft, illness and random people) students were free to write an interesting story without having to invent everything or regurgitate the same personal narrative they have written since 4th grade.

This all leads to what might be an exciting addition to this assignment.  Google has added a feature to Google Earth which allows people to map and then tell their stories.  Here is the link for that video.  I have not tried it yet, but I can see it being a great addition to this assignment.

I just found 2 great sites that will help with the common core standards for next year.  The first one, Gooru, allows users to search articles by topic and it suggests collections and articles.  It even has a place where you can look at what others have collected.  I really like that it is a multimedia collection so students can do close reading for a variety of media.  Last year I had my students do an indepth look at the Sandy Hook tragedy and gun control.  I wish I had this resource then,

The second website I found is called Youth Voices.  This is an interesting site where there are articles written for youth and by youth on a wide range of topics.  Take a look at the Mission tab where you will find a link to common core related challenges and tasks.   I also like the guides.  It has frames that will help struggling writers.  

 Just found this really interesting site that could be embedded into a website for kids. It offers a daily wondering and a searchable database. Fun for adults and kids to defined answers to questions like: what is a chick wagon, and who invented Lego. This is sponsored by Verizon's Thinkfinity and the National council for Family literacy.


http://wonderopolis.org/wonders/