Ghost of the Lagoon

We read the short story Ghost of the Lagoon in my classroom and the two related informational texts. One was a brochure about the island of Bora Bora and the other was an article titled Under Attack. It discussed the facts that humans are actually attacking sharks. Very interesting. We annotated the text using the text mapping idea and my students still love doing this!

Ghost of the Lagoon
A village on the island of Bora Bora has been terrorized by a great white shark that lives in the village's lagoon. Mako lost his father to the great white and has vowed to kill it. One night Mako is crossing the lagoon and the shark starts circling his canoe. Mako's dog ends up in the water and the shark starts toward the swimming dog. Mako spears the great white, not once, but twice with his deadly aim in the eye.

If you need an engaging story to read, definitely check out Ghost of the Lagoon! My students keep asking if we can read it again.

Mapping & Annotating Text

Today we finished our first experience of text mapping. It was SO MUCH FUN!!! Every single class asked if we could do it again.  We worked on identifying text features first and then went on to annotating the text. All of these pictures were "in the process of" and are not completed work. I need to take a few shots of finished products. I will post more on this later, I have a faculty meeting right now! I was so excited that I needed to share :)

Text Mapping

http://teachingmyfriends.blogspot.com/2011/09/textmapping.html