Mother Teresa by Demi

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910. Her father died when she was 9 years old. She wanted to become a missionary and in 1928, she left her family and traveled to Rathfarnham Ireland. She chose the name Sister Mary Teresa. She opened many schools and places for people with diseases. In 1953, she and her sisters moved to a new home and everyone called her "Mother Teresa" because she acted as the mother of the house. On September 5th, 1997 Mother Teresa dies but she leaves a legacy of all of the people that she helped in opening hospitals and schools for people who were less fortunate.

Teachers can use this book to teach students about Mother Teresa and all of the activities that she did to help people. Students may be interested in her life and may have to write an autobiography about Mother Teresa. This would be a great book for students to use as a reference for an autobiography.

Water Worlds: Coral Reefs by Cheryl Hook

This nonfiction book gives students the opportunity to learn about the coral reef. The book gives definitions of words such as continental shelf, tropics, and zooxanthellae. This shows that the content of this book is advanced a a upper elementary student would benefit from it. The pictures are intriguing as well as informing. It gives details on how the coral reefs are built and found. It also has a glossary in the back of the book to help the students understand the words that the author uses.

Teachers can allow students to draw pictures of the coral reef or make a video of the components of the coral reef in order to assess their understanding. The students can show pictures of the words like continental shelf and zooxanthellae.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Teachers can use ANIMOTO videos in their classroom to give their students an opportunity to create their own videos. It is very simple to make. The student needs to have pictures in order to create the video and ANIMOTO provides music that students can choose from to make the video even more special.

Freckle Juice by Judy Blume

Andrew Marcus wanted freckles. Nicky, a boy in Andrew's class had freckles and Andrew envied him. One day, Andrew asked Nicky how he got freckles. Nicky told him that he was born with them! On the way home from school, Sharon told Andrew how he could get freckles just like Nicky. She had a secret recipe that she could sell Andrew so that he can get freckles.

Sharon charges $.50 for the formula. Because this story happened in the 1970s, $.50 was a lot of money for Andrew to give Sharon. It was 5 weeks of allowance! After tossing and turning all night, Andrew finally decided to buy the freckle juice recipe. When he received the recipe he ran all the way home to make it. after he drank the disgusting juice, he became sick and had to stay from school the next day.

This book tells students how wanting what others have is not good and being an individual is more important. This book show diversity among students as well as differences in the human body. Teachers could get students to write stories about how they received a scar that they have.

The Time Machine and Other Cases By Semour Simon

Einstein Anderson is a very smart boy. He uses science to solve lots of riddles and problems that his friends have. In this chapter book, Einstein solves cases such as "Mysterious Tracks, Disappearing Ice Cream, and the Lightweight Rocket". Since Einstein is so smart his friends always try to trick him. His friend Margaret tries to fool Einstein with mysterious animal tracks in the woods but Einstein knew that she was not telling the truth. He used science to figure out that she made up an animal and the tracks too!

Teachers could use this book to teach students that science is everywhere. If Einstein did not understand science , he could not solve all of the mysteries in the book. This book also gives the reader a chance to solve the mystery before Einstein does so it engages the reader in the text.

The Wump World by Bill Peet

Wump World is a small world that is only grasslands and rivers. Wumps live there and it is perfect for them. They had no worries and no enemies. Suddenly, from outer space came a huge steel monster. The monster puffed fire and spit smoke. Metal legs came from the sides of the monster and strange busy creatures came out of it. The creatures were called the Pollutians and they were from planet Pollutus. The wumps were frightened and dived into a cave. The Pollutians knocked down trees and built 100 story sky scrapers. The wump world was now busy and loud. The air began to get polluted and the wumps had to eat moss from rocks and mushrooms to survive. Soon, no one could breathe the air or drink the water. The Pollutians packed upp and left wump world within 24 hours. Finally, the wumps came out of the cave and find that their world had been changed. There still is a section of the world that is green and the wumps munched on the grass. There is still hope for the wumps.

Teachers can use this book to talk with their students about pollution and how to keep the air clean. The class could also talk about recycling and how to save the world that we live in.