Where I’m From

8-10 yrs old

11-13 yrs old

14-18 yrs old

Digital Literacy

Reading and Writing

Using “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon as a “mentor text”, this lesson supports players in studying poems while writing and building their own.

Submitted By: NWP Network

July 16, 2020

Where I’m From by George Ella Lyon via Scholastic.

Use this document to take notes on each mentor text as you play the game and develop some ideas. Please make a copy of this document.

Students tour a virtual setting that shows some of the items in a Where I’m From Poem.
Students study examples, or mentor texts, to explore how the lines in the poem are represented in the world.
Students identify possibilities for their own “Where I’m From Poem,” building lists of things that represent where they are from.
Students develop ideas for building in Minecraft to creatively represent where they’re from.

How might a Minecraft world spark discussion and reflection of how objects can represent events, time, memories, images?
How might Minecraft allow students to see their world through the lens of poetry/figurative language? “From” implies more than geography, but should include culture and historical events.

Teacher Preparation and Notes:

Establish a working definition of “setting” with the class before playing.
Discuss the importance of settings in the stories the students are familiar with, either in literature or film.
Explain that students will follow a path and respond to some questions they encounter in the game by writing in a book and predicting what they’ll find when they start. (Pause students to discuss their ideas at each of the three stops or encourage them to participate.)

Student Activities

Students explore a Minecraft world and study two spaces designed around student poems.
Students write to reflect on items in the world and what those items tell a reader/explorer about the author.
Students create a short list of items that represent themselves, their family, their memories, and their culture.
Students choose a place to build in the game to represent items from their lists.

Writers identify connections between the examples of youth poems and the two spaces that represent them.
Writers reflect on the way the poems and the digital spaces represent things literally and figuratively.
Writers develop lists to support their own creative building and poetry writing, which include literal and figurative representations.