How We Are Smart by W. Nikola.

Lisa
Direct them to the webpage from Lee and Low (www.leeandlow.com) 1) Do a picture walk through the book, ask students to focus on the pictures and see if they can tell why the person in the picture is smart from what they see in the picture, take all ideas, be prepared to ask the students to justify their choices. 2) Make a list of ways that everyone in the class is smart, identifying various types of intelligence, compare this list with the list given at the end of the book; fit the categories the class has identified into the list given by Howard Gardner. 3) Follow this up with a writing exercise where the students identify ways that they are smart, what is their special strength? 4) Or, ask the students to interview a family member on a particular area of intelligence and write a report or do a PowerPoint that will be presented to the rest of the class. 5) Make connections between the poems in this book and picture book biographies of those who are highlighted here. Example: Marian Anderson read this poem, talk about her as a person and then read When Marian Sang by Pam Munoz Ryan, illustrated by Brian Selznick (CC.1.R.I.7; CC.2.R.I.7: CC.3.R.I.7) 6) Give small groups a specific poem, and work in a discussion group to list what this person is famous for; pull out evidence from the poem for what they believe this person did. Then give each group the short biography that is under the poem, and ask them to expand their biography as well as check what they had to start with. Finally give them a picture book biography about this person and once again, check their facts as well as expand them. (CC.3.SL.1.d; CC.3.W.8)