Student Empowerment

We've been on a Skype frenzy this year. Between using the Skype an Author website to meet with John Himmelman and Jean Marzollo to booking a meeting with Avi as part of our 4th grade author study unit, our kids are making deep, meaningful connections to the books they are reading.

Lately, there has been a surge of empowerment among our older students. First, a group of 4th graders approached me about meeting with their author, Bruce Coville, from the author study unit. We sat down and crafted a persuasive email to him. And then a group of 5th grade boys wrote a persuasive letter to Kazu Kibuishi of Amulet fame, convincing him to skype with their class since the book love of Amulet has gone viral. They even included their "spread like wildfire" chart to show just how much they have made the book popular at ISB. I received an email from his agent that said they loved the persuasive writing and that Kazu would love to meet with us. Just imagine the excitement at seeing that response.



My hope is that we have lots more Skype calls in our future. And lots more of that authentic persuasive writing.