For my second project, I plan on having the students create a Garageband podcast for the selection Pioneer Girl. This is a non-fiction selection about a girl whose family moves to Nebraska in the 1800's. The students will create Hotseat questions to ask a classmate who will pretend they are Grace in the story. They will find pictures to describe one of the hardships her family faced during their early years in their new home.
After reviewing the deadlines for this project and realizing that we won't begin Pioneer Girl until the day after the project is due, we changed the focus and did the same time of activity for a read aloud that the class just finished on Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. Students were assigned to groups to complete several tasks. Some were asked to pretend they were characters in the book and an interviewer asked them questions, others were to research background information on Jim Crow Laws, the KKK, sharecropping and lynching and present their findings. They then put this together with pictures I had predownloaded for them.