Here
are
25
ways you can use technology to differentiate your language
arts curriculum. Have fun matching and adapting them
to the interests, skills, and abilities of your students.
For
any projects requiring the study of an author, you may
choose the author of a core literature book you are reading,
or you may choose an author who has written several books at
your grade level, as well as some above and below to
facilitate better differentiation. If you would like
to have a LIVE
CHAT
with
an author, you'll want to choose one from the Author's
Calendar at Scholastic.com. Click on the Scholastic
icon above to go to Scholastic's Author Calendar for the
1999-2000 school year.
C.I.A.
TEAMs
(Comprehensive
Investigations
of an Author)
An individual student, or a group of students will use
books and online research to study an author's life and works.
After researching the biographies, students will present their C.I.A.
research to their peers using one or more of the following
presentation options. Click on the stack of books above
for a page of links to authors and illustrators who are
online. If you don't find the author you are searching
for, try
Yahoo, Yahooligans,
Ask Jeeves, Ask
Jeeves for Kids, Scholastic,
or Alta
Vista.
Be sure to put the author's name in quotations when you type
it in in order to narrow the search.
C.I.A.
SLIDE SHOWS
Have
your students present a PowerPoint biography of their
author's life. Scan photos or copy them from the web
for a powerful presentation. These third grade boys
actually found a photo of E.B. White's first draft of the
first page of Charlotte's Web and included it in
their PowerPoint. Click on their photo to see a sample
slide show. If any slide has a lot of extra space on
it, click on it with your mouse and more text and photos
will "fly" in for you. (Third graders will
use a lot of animations and sounds the first few times they
use PowerPoint!)
C.I.A. SLIDE SHOW BOOK REVIEWS
If
other students have been reading works by the same author,
have them write polished book reviews to add to the C.I.A.
Biographical slide show. You'll notice that the last
slide of the E.B. White Show includes reviews of Stuart
Little and Trumpet of the Swan. Click
on the photo of the little girl at the right for a sample
Slide Show Review. (When the slide show opens, click on
slide 8)
C.I.A. TIMELINE
Build
a giant TIMELINE of an author's life using
Timeliner
from Tom Snyder Productions. This program makes it
possible for your students to include photos of the author
in color on the timeline. You could also choose
different colors for the flags that mark events, making all
blue flags those that mark events in the author's life,
while all red flags mark the years each of the author's
books were published. Click on the sample Timeline
above to go to an EdTech News article on Timeliner.
To increase the challenge, consider having students add
flags of a different color to signify turning points in the
author's life that specifically influenced his or her
writing.
C.I.A. TIMELINE REVIEWS
While some students are busy researching and publishing the
biography of an author in a timeline format using
Timeliner,
you can have other students reading all the works of that
author. Have them type polished reviews. Print
them out with space for illustrations and have your little REVIEW
EXPERTS
glue them above the appropriate publication dates for each
of the books on the biographical timeline.
If
you already know the name of the project you'd like,
use the following pull-down menu
C.I.A.
TEAMs 
biography of an author in a timeline format using
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