I must say that Loch was my favorite book written by Paul Zindel. I have chosen to share this one with my students because I believe it goes along with a couple positive themes. This book reminds us of what it is like to be young and innocent. They look at the world with huge eyes of wonder and excitement- like that of Zaidee and Loch when they find Wee Beastie and swim with him in the pool. It also shows us that as we grow up, sometimes we take life too seriously and sometimes our focus shifts way out of perspective; as seen with both Dr. Sam and Cavenger. Finally, I also see this book as showing a child’s natural love of an animal, and their ability to see beyond skin deep. Wee Beastie was an ugly creature physically, but once they spent time with him, they cared for and were willing to risk the trust they had with their father for him.
For the multiple intelligence factors, I chose that of the artistic side. As we were reading about Wee Beastie and the detailed descriptions of him, I stopped the students mid chapter, and asked them to make a model of what they thought Wee Beastie looked like. Some chose just to draw a picture, some used clay, while others went as far as using paper mache to make the creature. Their creativity and detailed amazed me. These projects will be at the festival.
Next, I would like to evaluate the characteristics of the Best Young Literature according to Nilsen and Donelson’s criteria. This book especially was written from a young person’s point of view. As I stated earlier, it showed the feeling and emotions of Zaidee, Loch, and Sarah in contrast to the adults in the book. By using this viewpoint, students can associate with these feelings and make connections to his or her own lives in this way. This book definitely is written optimistically, with the outcome showing that Dr. Sam could overcome the idea of the adults, and find his true passion for life once again. It also shows how the plesiosaurs were taken care of and able to survive the grasp of Cavenger’s greediness. As I stated in the first paragraph, I believe this book does deal with the emotions of young people. Zindel shows the feelings of Loch and Zaidee as they figure out they cannot trust their father any longer, and how that break in trust hurts them. Many students can relate to a time when they wanted to tell their parents the truth, but were afraid of what the outcome might be.
The only area I see, according to this criteria, in which Zindel is lacking is that of using characters from many different ethnic groups. Although, we do see him use the Aborigines girl in the other story, in most of his writings the people are of Caucasian background.
For the intervention purposes, I would like to again focus on the connection to science, reading, and technology that can be made with this book. Because this book deals a lot with the water and boats, I think it is necessary to teach students the parts of a boat and the terms used most often; such as, bow, stern, wake, starboard, outboard, anchor etc. For this activity, we would first use the site to look up information on the boats. Although, this site deals with ancient boats, we would compare and contrast the instruments used then to those that would be used now. As we are looking this information up on the computer or encyclopedia, I would have another group finding out the definitions to the words given above. Finally, we would come back together as a whole class and have each group report on his or her findings. Finally, I would pair the students up, and using the computer drawing program, I would have each student design his or her own boat using the information learned during the presentations. Finally, after drawing the boat, they would also have to go back and label all the parts using the vocabulary words we learned earlier.