Book Talk - The Voice of the People: American Democracy in Action

Bibliographic Information: Maestro, B. & Maestro, G. (1996). The voice of the people: American democracy in action. New York, NY: Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard Books.

Intended Audience: Grades 4-8

Approach: I think my approach would be considered mood-based.

The Talk: In the early hours of the morning, people line up at firehouses, public buildings, and schools all across America. It's Election Day. By voting, American citizens exercise their right to participate in government. But, how does all that work? The Maestro's have hit a home run again with their book The Voice of the People: American Democracy in Action. This books tells you everything you need to know about how democracy in the United States works. There are colorful pictures that show off some of the prominent people and buildings of our government. With Election Day quickly approaching, you are definitely going to want to check this book out!

Here is the link to my video. Please bear with me. I have been very sick for the past week. Don't mind my appearance or my voice.

The Story of the Statue of Liberty by Betsy & Giulio Maestro

The Story of the Statue of Liberty

By: Betsy & Giulio Maestro

Lexile Level: AD740L

Suggested Grades: 3-5

Genre: Non-Fiction

Summary: This is a comprehensive history of one of America’s beloved landmarks. Since erected in New York Harbor in 1886, the Statue of Liberty has welcomed millions of immigrants to the United States. She is a symbol of hope and freedom. However, many do not know that the story really begun 15 years earlier, when the French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi made plans for the statue to present to the American people as a gift from France.

Click here for a selling tool, a book review, on this book.

Suggested Learning Activity: Students will compare the colossal size of the Statue of Liberty to their own bodies. After reading The Story of the Statue of Liberty, students will measure their own bodies and use the Statue Statistics on the National Park Service website on the Statue of Liberty to compare their size to the statue’s size.

Standards:

AASL: 1.1.1 Follow and inquiry-based process in seeking knowledge in curricular subjects and make the real world connections for using this process in own life.

1.1.7 Make sense of information from diverse sources by identifying misconceptions, main and supporting ideas, conflicting information, and point of view of bias.

Common Core Standards: CC.8.R.I.1 Key Ideas and Details: Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

CC.7.R.I.2 Key Ideas and Details: Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their developments over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.

Objectives:

1. Students will generate a list of the different parts of the Statue of Liberty (i.e. nose, eyes, fingers, feet, head, arm, etc.)
2. Students will measure their own body parts and convert their measurements from inches to feet.
3. Students will hypothesize how big they think the various parts of the statue are. They will hypothesize how many students make up each part. For example, how many students might equal the length of the statue’s foot.
4. Students will compare the sizes of their own bodies to that of the Statue of Liberty.
5. Students will calculate if the various body parts will fit in their classroom.

Potential Learning Outcome: Students will compare the size of the Statue of Liberty to their own bodies to realize the colossal size of the statue.