Date: December 7, 2007

Time: 1:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. EDT

Target Grade Levels: 6-7

Description:

What adventures have YOU been on? Ellen will share her experience writing The Glow Stone and other books to show how real life can be mined for inspiration and ideas. She will guide students in pinpointing significant events in their own lives that can be a springboard for creating fiction. Students will engage in a short writing activity that taps into their memories as well as their five senses to set up a compelling story.

Each participating teacher will receive a copy of The Glow Stone, compliments of Peachtree Publishers.

Resources:

Preparing Students:

Prepare your Site Introduction! During the videoconference, each site will have an opportunity to introduce themselves. Introductions must be less than 30 seconds and should include:

  • Your school's name
  • Your location
  • Introduction of the class (i.e. "This is Ms. Smith's 2nd Grade Class)
  • An interesting fact about your school or community

Prepare Questions: Have students come up with questions for Ellen Dreyer about her work, her background, how she bacame a writer, etc. As a class, choose the top 5 questions. Make sure students are prepared to ask these questions as part of the videoconference event. Each school will have a chance to ask at least 2 questions - - but by preparing 5, we can make sure that questions aren't repeated.

Brainstorm: Please have students think about one or more adventures they've had, or would like to have. Where did it take place? How did the experience affect or change them?

Research: Ask students to research, in books and online, the setting of their real or imagined adventure. They can look at maps, read travel books, and search websites that show photographs of such settings. Afterward, students can draw an illustration or map of their setting, and list its particular characteristics.

Ask students to think about a character they might like to develop, and how they might respond to this setting.
  

 
 

Follow-Up Activities (After the Videoconference!):

Class Reflection: After the videoconference, please craft a CLASS REFLECTION to the videoconference event and post it to the Creative Minds Blog under the blog entry titled: Ellen Dreyer. The reflection might include the following: What did you learn from the videoconference? What surprised you? What questions do you still have? What did you agree with and what did you disagree with? Visit the blog and comment on other classes' reflections!

Optional Follow Up Activity: An optional activity might be to ask students to develop the writing they have done during the videoconference into a full-length story.


About The Glow Stone:

From the Publisher. "That's the thing about rocks--they don't break easily. When I held them, I wanted to be like them-strong and steady, weathered but not broken." FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD PHOEBE BERNSTEIN (a.k.a. Spider) has been collecting rocks since she was a child. She keeps her prized specimens in a musty underground garage, stored in the drawers of an old desk that was a gift from her beloved young uncle, Bradford. But Bradford's sudden death triggers a chain of events that threaten to overwhelm Spider and her family. As her grieving mother descends into depression, her older sister remains remote and her father strangely silent. The pressure grows even worse when Spider unwittingly discovers a disturbing family secret. On the weekend of Bradford's tombstone unveiling, Spider tries to briefly escape-and becomes hopelessly lost while exploring a labyrinth of caves. In the utter blackness she hears a strangely familiar voice beckoning her deeper into the mysterious but oddly welcoming underground world. Soon she will learn the truth about what happened to Uncle Bradford--but will she ever find her way out of the darkness? Ellen Dreyer has written a dramatic, page-turning adventure that explores the unbreakable bonds that hold families together, even after death.


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