Calendar Creations

HOW I T WORKS
Calendar Creations is a highly enjoyable interdisciplinary program that helps students achieve performance standards in Language Arts and Math. The finished product is a literary calendar designed and produced by the students.  In the Language Arts component of the program, the students read books from the N.Y.S. Standards list and then select their twelve favorites.

Working in pairs, the students create art pages for the twelve selected books. The pages reflect the main character or idea of each book. In the Math component of the program, the students master the various elements of a calendar. They learn the names of the months of the year and the days of the week. Computer lessons teach students how to lay out and then print the individual pages of the calendar. Through hands-on calendar activities, the students learn about ordinal and cardinal numbers and concepts such as greater/fewer, before/after, and last/next. A Social Studies component of the program uses the calendar to examine important holidays and other significant dates throughout the year. Social Studies lessons can be created around various holidays and for the first day of spring, summer, winter, and fall. Finally, the Internet can be utilized to allow students to examine examples of calendars from other countries and the different holidays that the people in those diverse cultures observe. 

THE STUDENTS
There are 26 first-grade LEP students from five different countries participating in the program. Language and intelligence levels vary. Calendar Creations’ hands-on design allows all students to make a positive contribution to the creative process. This program can easily be adapted for any class on the K-2 level.

THE STAFF
Jodi Abrams has taught computer classes and ESL for fourteen years. In 1996 she became the Title VII Resource Specialist at P.S. 217 and was also in charge of curriculum writing. She presented and organized staff workshops that focused on technology and was involved with staff development for the ESL program and theories of second-language acquisition. She has also worked with the Common Sense/Penny Harvest Program and the school’s Service Learning group for three years.

Chris Brady has taught ESL for 13 years and has been teaching first-grade ESL for the last five years. She works with children who come from countries such as Mexico, Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China, to name a few. Last year, Chris was a participant in the Title VII program. She was a previous recipient of an IMPACT II Disseminator grant. 

WHAT  YOU NEED
The program utilizes books on the New York State Language Arts Standards. The months of the year are introduced through Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup With Rice. Eric Carle’s Today is Monday introduces the days of the week. Access to a computer and to the computer program Print Shop Deluxe is necessary.  Internet access is helpful, as is a laminating machine and a binding machine.  

OVERALL VALUE
Calendar Creations is an exciting, visual hands-on program that  results in a product created by and for students. The program incorporates literacy, art, math, and technology. It promotes language acquisition and helps the students become comfortable using the computer, in addition to helping students achieve performance standards in Language Arts and Math.  It also empowers students by allowing them to select their favorite books for use in creating their own calendar.