Loving Literacy: Lady Literacy Leads a New Team of Superheroes!

What Are Your Super Powers?

Dear Readers,

Growing up, I never considered myself creative. As a student, I was always led to believe that creative meant artistic and artistic meant drawing well. It makes me wonder, if my teachers had looked past their own beliefs about what made students creative or musical or artistic, how that may have changed my lack of engagement and interest in school.

SCOPE Magazine

One of the most engaging literary resources I have had the pleasure of using with some of my students is SCOPE Magazine by Scholastic. One of the contributing editors, Kristin Lewis, does an amazing job researching and authoring high interest pieces that hook students. When we first receive a new issue, I always provide them time for a "preview" day. Consistently I hear, I cannot wait to read this! Or that looks really interesting. Can we read the play?

The articles we have read this year have inspired several extension activities including creating a pirate ship, visual representations of learning, exploring what courage is or building labyrinths.

Superheroes

One of my favorite pieces was Into the Maze of Doom with the paired passage What's With These Guys? The focus was on Greek myths and modern superheroes, the people we look to as inspiration for making the world a better place.

After reading the play (I was able to play one of the villains, King Minos!) and article, a student recommended the movie Civil War. I watched it, and was pleasantly surprised at how engaging it was. It made me think, what would my students choose as their super powers?

I gave them the opportunity to create their own superheroes. The only guidelines were to include: an original name, a super power, 3-4 characters traits and a visual.

Some of the students jumped right in while others were hesitant at first, but as they started developing ideas in their minds, decided to give it a try. As always I was amazed at their ideas, innovation and creative ideas.

We are still in the process of completing them, however here are a few that we have displayed!