One boy's quest for a greener world... one garden at a time! Join Ms. Heather for forty-five minutes of personification fun, and find out how Liam nurtures a struggling, curious garden in a dark, gray city into a lush green world! Just in time for Earth Day celebrations, this program will captivate budding environmentalists and can also springboard your class’s Earth Day interdisciplinary studies. We’ll look at how Liam’s garden takes on human characteristics, and end the interactive program writing acrostic poems during this exploration of Peter Brown's The Curious Garden.

Videoconference Agenda:

• Welcome and Introductions (5 minutes)
• How does a garden talk? (10 minutes)
  An interactive brainstorming and drama/movement activity that looks at personification and how things grow.
• Interactive Reading/Discussion: The Curious Garden (10 minutes)
• Garden Acrostic Poems that TALK (15 minutes)
  Explore personification more while writing acrostic poems that TALK ! We’ll do one together and then each class will write one to share.
• Garden Poetry Mash-Up (5 minutes)
  Each class will read their acrostic poem

Materials needed for this program:

Each participating class will need large chart paper and markers for this progr for the Garden Acrostic Poem Activity.

Objectives:

• Students will understand the concept of personification.
• Students will identify character traits that give non-human objects human traits.
• Students will write an acrostic poem.

Pre-Videoconference Activities

Our Virtual Storytime series is designed to have very little prep work involved. You may find it helpful for the post-reading activities to familiarize students with the book being read/discussed prior to the videoconference event and/or familiarize students with the author. You may also want to have brief discussion with students about the theme or literary device being focused on during the storytime. In this case, the theme being discussed is growing plants and we'll be talking about personification.

About the Facilitator

Heather Weisse Walsh is the Manager of Educational Services for MAGPI with the primary responsibility of fostering dialogue and collaborative efforts between members. Heather is responsible for developing and managing MAGPI’s educational services, including include interactive video programming and educational content, advanced video initiatives, virtual environments, remote instrumentation projects and professional development endeavors. She earned her MSEd in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and her BA in English from McDaniel College. In 2009, Heather co-authored a research study that investigated using interactive video technologies in reading comprehension instruction. While at MAGPI, Heather has worked with content partners to create more than 200 original, interactive video programs for the education community. She is the co-chair of the Internet2 Teaching and Learning Special Interest Group, as well as a member of the Internet2 K20 Advisory Council.

This lesson has been adapted from the Educator's Guide for The Curious Garden created by Little, Brown.