Vesuvius Erupts!!!

Once upon a time, (actually, in 79 AD), in a place far, far away (like Italy), there was a huge mountain. This mountain was actually an inactive volcano in the city of Pompeii. It was like any other normal day, and no one had any idea that chaos was about to erupt... 

The ground began to rumble and shake, and the people of Pompeii thought it was just another earthquake. Little did they know, that Mt. Vesuvius was about to explode.  The smoke and ash went up into the sky, creating darkness in the middle of the day. A fountain of fire shot upward and the lightning storm began at the same time. Hot tennis balls of rock and ash began to fall from the sky, hitting homes and people. The ash just got deeper and deeper. The town was not only devastated, it was pretty much buried in the ashes. Soon, the rains began, the few people who escaped the town thought the rain would cool everything off. It did, but it also turned the ashes into concrete.

Mt. Vesuvius has been an active volcano since then. It has erupted 40 times since that fateful day. Who knows when it will decide to erupt again?

The book we chose was Volcanoes and Other Natural Disasters. We chose to use the chapter titled "Vesuvius Erupts". This book could be used in conjunction with 3rd grade Georgia Performance Standard S3E1. This standard covers the different types of rocks and minerals and  characteristics of those rocks and minerals. 

We would teach the lesson on rocks and discuss the 3 times of rocks found in the earth. These are sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks.  Igneous rocks are called "fire rocks" and are formed underground when the heat of the earth's core melts them. They are then called magma and when they erupt from a volcano, they are called lava and as they cool off, they turn back into a solid form of igneous rock.

Because many children from this area, have no way to visualize a volcano, several books, pictures and other resources should be involved in the lesson. One creative resource or experiment that can be used is shown here. We have seen this video and done the experiment ourselves and got the same results as the first part of the video.  Enjoy....

The Math Curse

The Math Curse

Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

“You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem.” Yes, I suppose you can…But what if you don’t like Math? What if you REALLY don’t like Math? That is the main problem in this book. This child (who remains nameless but could easily be named Michaelanne) thinks she has been placed under a Math Curse! Her teacher explained to she and her classmates that nearly everything can be seen as a math problem.

This book talks about telling time, which is taught in 1^st and 2^nd grades, using standards MCC1.MD.3 Tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks and MCC2.MD.7 Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.

There are LOTS of word problems used in this book.

One page has lots of measurement problems and this page would fall under standard MCC2.MD.9 Generate measurement data by measuring lengths of several objects to the nearest whole unit, or by making repeated measurements of the same object. Show the measurements by making a line plot, where the horizontal scale is marked off in whole number units.

There are several places in the book where it talks about interpreting data in graphs, which coordinates with standard MCC2.MD.10. Draw a picture graph and a bar graph (with single-unit scale) to represent a data set with up to four categories. Solve simple put-together, take-apart, and compare problems using information presented in a bar graph.

The book talks about fractions, which is standard MCC3.NF.1 Understand a fraction 1/b as the quantity formed by 1 part when a whole is partitioned into b equal parts; understand a fraction a/b as the quantity formed by a parts of size 1/b.

The book also integrates social studies, by talking about the Mississippi River as well as several different counting strategies.

The math curse is finally broken, only to be replaced with a science curse…

This book could be used with children of nearly all ages 2^nd grade and up. We would use it in our classroom as a read aloud activity, and then go over the vocabulary terms that are new. We would use our inference skills to have students predict what kind of problems the science curse would involve. We could then have the students work in pairs to come up with all of the problems they can think of and then switch papers with a new group and answer the questions on their new paper.

47 Hours and 52 Minutes of Terror

When the patriarch of a family dies very unexpectedly, the family, with all of its dysfunction and drama comes together to mourn their loss. When this family involves 3 children ages 9,9 and 7 who don't understand the family dynamics and want to escape the chaos of the Ashton family home, this story takes a very unexpected turn...

The title of this book is 47 Hours and 52 Minutes of Terror. The author is my sister, Elizabeth Fentem. We chose this book as an example of contemporary realistic fiction. Books in this genre "include stories about animals and people that could actually exist along with events that could actually happen in today's world or in the recent past". One of the important values of contemporary realistic fiction is that it "offers readers a window into the human condition through reading about how characters cope with issues and challenges in their lives". This book definitely fits both of those definitions.

The characters that the author of this book used are definitely based on actual people. For the most part, they are credible and multidimensional and readers of this book who actually know the family it was based on will find humor in the personalities of the characters seen through the eyes of  the young author. The main characters of this story, also known as the protagonists, would be Lexie, Aaron and Grace. Many other characters are mentioned in the book. They add to the story, but are not the main focus. There are also several different antagonists in this story. Their names are never mentioned; only how they antagonize the main characters.

The plot of this book does develop logically with the "events evolving plausibly from what has previously occurred". The children get themselves lost in the woods and have to overcome the elements in order to survive. This book is a great example of person against person conflict as well as person against nature conflict. The plot is definitely not predictable.

The author of this story wrote in the forward, "It is the story of how a tragedy, combined with a horrifying few days of extreme danger and exciting adventure forever changed the way the youngest members of the youngest generation would mesh for the rest of their lives. It also changed the way a large and detached family would interact for generations to come." This is the general theme of the book is focused on the choices the children made to go on a walk through a place they knew they weren't supposed to be, and the frightening adventures that followed as they tried to find their way home.

The setting of the book is Softfur, Oklahoma. This is a make believe place based on a very real place. Having been many times to the places this story is based on, I can tell you that the author did a great job with the details and descriptions she chose of the characters and the settings.

This book shifts the point of view at different times throughout the story to different characters. It is almost always a first person point of view, it just changes from character to character as the story progresses.

Pick up your copy of the book on Amazon to see if the children ever make it back home and how the dynamics and relationships in the Ashton family are changed.

We think that this book would be great to use towards the end of the 5th grade year. It could be used as an introduction to a writing contest. The intent would be to inspire the students to do their best work for a culminating assignment and show them that children CAN have their works published. It would be a good fit for standards ELACC5W3 as well as 4,5 and 6. The students could vote on the best author in the class, and the teacher could do just like this author's teacher did, and submit the best entry to a publishing company.