How Teachers Can Incorporate New Literacies Into Elementary Classrooms

A fun project that student's could do that utilizes the new literacies skills is a research project about a zoo in the United States. An option for this is allowing students who are in an accelerated guided reading group to read the book Morgan's Zoo by James Howe. A brief summary of Morgan's Zoo includes: 

•  The Chelsea Park Zoo is a small zoo, and a slightly run down one at that. But to twins Andrew and Allison, it's their favorite place in the world. To the animals who live there, it's their home. And to the kindly, gentle zookeeper, Morgan, it's his life. So when the city announces the zoo will be shut down and the animals shipped to zoos all over the country, the twins-- and the animals-- spring into action to save Morgan's Zoo. But closing the zoo isn't the only danger afoot. The animals soon discover they have a chance to do more than save their home-- they have a chance to become heroes. 

"Morgan's Zoo by James Howe | Scholastic.com." Scholastic Teachers. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.<http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/morgans-                 zoo#cart/cleanup>.

After students finish reading this book they will be able to pick a largely known zoo in the United States. Once they have a zoo, they will begin doing research on the zoo finding out interesting facts about the animals that live there, where the zoo is located, the size of zoo, and ect. Once students have found their information that would like about their Zoo, they will use a graphic organizer for their notes. From this point students will be able to use various resources to share their information. This can be from making a poster, books, PowerPoint, using templates online called "PebbleGo." Finally, once students are completed with their project, they will share their project with the class. 

Students doing this project will be utilizing the new literacy skills. For this project they will be doing Internet Inquiry. First, they pick a zoo they want to research, then they go on the Internet searching for this zoo finding out important information they would want to share to the class. As students are searching for information about their zoo, they are analyzing the information they are learning about by writing it into a graphic organizer.  With the notes they took about a zoo, they then compose a presentation about their information. Then they share their presentation they have created about a zoo to the class. From this project students are utilizing the new literacy skills.