Honoring Veterans – Part I

November 9, 2010 | Posted in: Class Updates

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To recognize Veterans’ Day and honor all the brave men and women who are or were members of the armed forces, our class is studying Frank Buckles, the oldest U.S. veteran and only remaining veteran from World War I.  This tied in perfectly to our work in reading about developing summaries.  We’re focusing on how to choose VIPs (Very Important Points) in a story or article.  Today, we read two articles about Mr. Buckles: one from Wikipedia, and one from Mr. Buckles’s own website.  As we read, we worked together to identify the VIPs within both articles.

Beyond helping us to learn about Mr. Buckles and his experiences, our work today led to great conversations about research skills and selecting valid sources (especially when Wikipedia is involved), possessive nouns (when we saw Mr. Buckles’s and Mr. Buckles’ written in the same paragraph), enlistment age, service medals, and lots and lots of vocabulary (Armistice, enlistment, nourishment, and more.)  The kids seemed really excited and interested, partially due to the fact that nearly everyone had a relative who served in the armed forces in some capacity.

Our class has earned a special privilege: we are going to present in Thursday’s Veterans’ Day town meeting (9:15 am, I believe, and parents are welcome.)  Tomorrow, we’re going to take the VIPs we identified in the two articles and prepare a presentation about Frank Buckles.  I’ll keep you informed and will try to post a video of the kids’ presentation.  Sure to be a great time! 🙂

[Surprised that I write the possessive form of Frank Buckles as Buckles’s?  You wouldn’t be the only one!  I always write the possessive form of my name as Moss’s, and while there are teachers who disagree with me (such as Mrs. Matos, who writes Matos’), grammar guides indicate that it’s a stylistic choice and that the writer can choose either method for the possessive form of a proper noun that ends with -s.  So either is acceptable in our class! — though I prefer the ‘s ending!]