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—These are at the peak of popularity in schools today, but the Biblical God doesn't fit into Harry's world of wizards, witches, and other gods (10/18 CN). World had reviewed and recommended the books as wholesome, good-versus-evil fantasy as with Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, but it now (11/6/99) warns: "The fact that the books are not Christ-centered and further evidence that they are not written from a perspective compatible with Christianity have led us to retract [them]." |
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Sixth-graders at Second District Elementary School have hopped on the Harry Potter bandwagon, and a big bandwagon it is. Harry Potter, it seems, has been all over the news for months - and there's no indication that interest is waning. For example, the latest book in the best-selling series, "Goblets of Fire," sold three million copies in the United States alone the first weekend after its release last summer. When Scholastic Books sponsored an essay contest titled "How the Harry Potter books changed my life," they were flooded with 10,000 entries. Friday, by the way, the 10 winners of the contest will share breakfast with author J. K. Rowling. In early October it was announced that Rowling had donated
$730,000 to Great The author's story is the stuff from which legends are made. In 1990, so the story goes, riders on a train between Manchester and London experienced a four-hour delay. By the time she reached her destination, passenger Rowling had come up with the idea for a character. Harry Potter was his name. For five years, she worked on the first book as she plotted out the entire seven-novel series, one for each year of Harry's education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Then, the fast-forward version of the legend continues, she moved to Portugal, married a Portuguese television journalist, had a daughter, divorced, and returned to Scotland, where she lived under conditions of extreme poverty, writing "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on notepad paper while huddled with her daughter in Edinburgh cafes to keep warm. Or something like that. When it was time for sixth-grade students in Marlene Metzler's and Janice Koseff's classes to choose a book for a guided reading project, the choice, according to Koseff, was simple. The second book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" was the clear favorite. Now, every Thursday is Harry Potter day, as students diligently work their way through the book. Paying careful attention to details, the class is using computers, life-size images, drama and - hopefully - poetry to bring the characters to life. They're working on a spell book now, and future plans include tests and a study guide. The project is designed to fulfill the requirements of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment reading standard for reading, analyzing and interpreting literature. To walk up the stairs to the second floor is to walk into the land of Harry Potter, where life-size images created by the sixth-graders inhabit a world of their own at the top of the staircase. A lot of incidental learning is taking place during this project. For example, if you're going to make a book cover, you need to know what to capitalize on and where to place all the pieces of information, Koseff explained. Covering one chapter each week, every student works on a question at the end of each chapter. In creating the life-size images, problem-solving is playing a key role. For example, how to make Harry stand up? The solution the students arrived at was to fill a sneaker with cement. Harry, Dobby the house-elf, and Hedwig the owl are just some of the characters already in place, and plans call for the project to be complete by Christmas. [Source: http://www.metromead.com/news/1016c.html ] |