Your Readers Can Vote for the Next I Survived Book!!

As a Librarian and mom, I LOVE the I Survived series by Lauren Tarshis. Cool, 4th grade(ish) level books that are based on pivotal events in history, these books are a hit with boys, girls, high readers, low readers, 2nd - 5th graders. What's not to love?

While I was checking my I Survived inventory I came across this cool opportunity for readers:

https://www.scholastic.com/isurvived/ also gives Readers a chance to take a Survival Quiz and check their skills against other Readers.

Since I know my kids don't know right away whether they would vote for Valley Forge, The Great Chicago Fire or The Hindenburg Disaster, we took a few minutes and hit YouTube for brief summaries of each disaster.

This video is from the original footage of the Hindenburg Disaster and led to lively discussions around technology, broadcasting, and what WOULD surviving this take?

In just 2 minutes this "Day in Weather" clip gives a great summary of the Great Chicago Fire and includes  photos, illustrations and statistics.

A short, comprehensive video clip about Winter at Valley Forge was more difficult to find on YouTube. This video touches on the weather and conditions but not WHY men were there dying. This topic took a little more introduction.

Voting as a class was a FUN way to introduce this series to my younger readers and a no brainer with my established readers. There is also a Survival Quiz on this page that had all of my 4/5 kids hooked!