Friday, June 7, 2013

Summer Reading Ideas for Boys 2013

Summer Reading Ideas for Boys

Boys Summer Reading Ideas | 2013 Summer Reading Activities for Boys Grade 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 


The Terra Nova Expedition: Boys Summer Reading Assignment #1

Read the short wiki articles below about The Terra Nova Expedition and then watch the UK Documentary about the race to the polls. Write a short summary of what you learned or found interesting and post it to the Reading Sage Blog. 

Extra Credit: Follow the article links and read one or more of the articles below and do an in-depth research paper or try the Bushcraft/Woodlore skills with parent supervision and share you Bushcraft/Woodlore skills with Reading Sage. More Extra Credit: Read about the The Terra Nova Expedition or other expeditions and share your findings, opinions, and skills you learned with our readers.  

 
Reading Assignment Extensions |  Digital Bushcraft Presentations: 
Create a Digital Bushcraft Project and share the link and project on the Reading Sage Blog. 

My Top 10 Digital Presentation Tools!
  1. Spreaker Create an online podcast or radio show and share with your friends
  2. Vocaroo Online Voice Recorder Vocaroo is a quick and easy way to record and share voice messages, podcast over the internet with no sign up
  3. Glogster Express yourself with the ultimate Glog(TM) - graphic blog. Mix Web, Images, Text, Music and Video.
  4. Little Bird Tales: Capture the Voice of Childhood. We offer a fun,unique way to create,record and share stories online.
  5. Empressor Tell your story anyway you like. Add photos, music, video, and audio, and share it publicly or privately in an instant. Empressr is the best and original browser based rich media presentation and storytelling tool.
  6. Prezi Prezi is a cloud based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas
  7. Voki Voki is a FREE service that lets you: Create customized avatars. Add voice to your Voki avatars. Post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile.
  8. VUVOX VUVOX allows you to create interactive slideshows and presentations from photos, video and music from Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and YouTube..
  9. Slideshare Offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios
  10. Zoho Zoho offers a suite of online web applications geared towards increasing your productivity and offering easy collaboration.

The Terra Nova Expedition, officially the British Antarctic Expedition, was led by Robert Falcon Scott with the objective of being the first to reach the geographical South Pole. Scott and four companions attained the pole on 17 January 1912, where they found that a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen had preceded them by 33 days. Scott's entire party died on the return journey from the pole; some of their bodies, journals, and photographs were discovered by a search party eight months later.

Scott was an experienced polar commander, having previously led the Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic in 1901–04. The Terra Nova Expedition, named after its supply ship, was a private venture, financed by public contributions augmented by a government grant. It had further backing from the Admiralty, which released experienced seamen to the expedition, and from the Royal Geographical Society. As well as its polar attempt, the expedition carried out a comprehensive scientific programme, and explored Victoria Land and the Western Mountains. An attempted landing and exploration of King Edward VII Land was unsuccessful. A journey to Cape Crozier in June and July 1911 was the first extended sledging journey in the depths of the Antarctic winter.

For many years after his death, Scott's status as tragic hero was unchallenged, and few questions were asked about the causes of the disaster which overcame his polar party. In the final quarter of the 20th century the expedition came under closer scrutiny, and more critical views were expressed about its organisation and management. The degree of Scott's personal culpability remains a matter of controversy among commentators. Wiki

The term woodcraft (or woodlore) denotes skills and experience in matters relating to living and thriving in the woods—such as hunting, fishing, and camping—whether on a short- or long-term basis. Traditionally, woodcraft pertains to subsistence lifestyles, with implications of hunting-gathering. Whether traditional or modern, woodcraft may be roughly equated to the phrase "living off the land". Wiki  



My Opinion about Boys and Reading!
Many boys find school assigned reading and reading curriculum to be a vast wasteland of boring, useless lesson that hold no appeal. Boys in my opinion need to read about rugged men going on perilous adventures living off the land with just a Hatchet "Gary Paulsen", thwarting evil doers and or dispatching wild beasts with sharp teeth. As a former boy I wanted to read about rugged men or boys surviving against all odds, stories of redemption and honor. The sad truth is the stories I gravitated to as a boy are not in school libraries today or for that matter on boy’s radars today. Many boys gravitate to books like Captain Underpants and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid to many teachers and librarians chagrin. Try to find any worthwhile frontier literature in public school libraries, you will find very few books maybe if your lucky the Boy Scout Manual and some field guides on camping. 



Many boys have lost that love and or desire to read field guides, expedition journals, frontiersman biographies, and woodlore guilds that inspired so many boys to join the scouts or become woodsman themselves. Sean Taylor

More  Adventure Articles and Reading ideas for Boys to Read! 

Classic Camping - The Frontier Connection
BRITISH (TERRA NOVA) ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION
The Ascent of Mount Everest
Camping. Merit Badge Workbook
Winter Camping Equipment List
Woodcraft and Camping by Nessmuk

1 comment:

Thank you!