What Makes a Great Hero?

In 4th grade ELA, students are engaged in Problem Based Learning.  Each student is tasked with creating their own superhero and writing a "pitch" to Marvel Comics to explain why he or she will be the next great hero.  In order to prepare for this, students are reading a series of non-fiction articles about the characteristics of a great hero.  After reading our first article, students answered text-dependent questions such as, "According to the article, identify one characteristic of a great hero.  Explain how this characteristic contributes to making the hero great."  Students then used our reading response goals to color-code their answers.  In purple, students underlined, where they used "part of the question in their answer."

In orange, they underlined where they provided specific evidence from the text to support their answer.

Once students demonstrate mastery of the first two reading response goals, we will add a new goal (and colors) to our board.  Some of our future goals include:

• I use "because" or a variation of it.
• I use a variety of sentence types and lengths.
• I use interesting words and advanced vocabulary.
• I extend my answer with my thoughts and ideas.
• I use proper conventions.

Next week, we will continue exploring our essential question, "What makes a great hero?" through non-fiction articles, advertisements, and a short documentary.  From there, students will be ready to create their hero and write their pitch.  Stay tuned to learn more about the writing criteria involved and the rubric students will use to craft and reflect upon their work.