Raising Readers and Writers

Today was a great day!  I went to Cover to Cover Children’s Bookstore to purchase more non-fiction books for our non-fiction genre study.  Melissa, the doctoral student who will be doing research in my room, received a grant that enabled me to buy books for my classroom.  Can you think of a better way to spend a Saturday?  It was way better than fighting the crowd at the grocery store, which is what I usually do on Saturday.

As I drove to the bookstore, I was thinking about the kinds of books I wanted to buy.  My wish list fell into several categories.  First and foremost, I wanted a wide variety of books that would be interesting to my students.  That meant books about cars, construction machines, sports, creepy crawly insects, how to make things, space, etc.  I also wanted books with beautiful photography, detailed illustrations, and ones that used a variety of non-fiction conventions (labeling, diagrams, bold print, index, table of contents, captions…).  Added to that I wanted books that had rich language that would support my students’ writing.  Next, I looked for books that we could use in our content studies.  I chose books at a variety of reading levels.  Some of them my students will be able to read by themselves, and some will be read alouds.  My emerging readers and writers will be able to glean information from the illustrations and photographs when they are not able to read the text.  Finally, I wanted books that gave information about a topic in interesting ways.  Steve Jenkins’ books always fit the bill for that category and I was able to find other great examples. 

I can’t wait to share these books with the kids on Monday.  I bought more book baskets for my room so we can sort through them and decide how we want to categorize the books.  We already have many nonfiction baskets, so the task won’t be too daunting.  Here are a few of the books I bought.  I’ll share more later along with why I chose the books.  I’ll also be sharing our genre study, especially how the kids grow as writers and researchers through the process.  I think life has settled down enough that I will have time to keep up with my blog!

One World, One Day by Barbara Kerley is a beautiful book recently published by National Geographic.  It depicts a day in the life of children all over the world from waking up and eating breakfast, to going to school, to doing chores and playing after school, to eating dinner, to settling in for the evening and finally going to bed.  The photographs’ rich details give the reader an insider’s look into life in different cultures.  The last pages contain the author’s notes and thumbnails that give more details about each of the pictures (specifically where the photograph was taken and more information about what is happening in the picture).  Some even show the photographer’s notes.  This book shows the reader that even though we live in different parts of the world, we all have many things in common.  The author writes at the end of the book, “…the more we can embrace our commonality, the more tolerant we can be of our differences.”  I knew I had to have this book for our “Children Around the World” basket.  My kids will be able to relate to the every day happenings in the photographs.  This book also shows one way to organize text…making a comparison.   I can also show them how they can add more information at the end of their writing  just like Barbara Kerley. 

Mystery Vine: A Pumpkin Surprise by Cathryn Fallwell is actually a fictional story about a family planting  a garden and waiting to see what grows from the mystery vine.  (If I had written the story, it would have been non-fiction because I was certain that the pumpkin plants that I put in the garden this spring had died.  Imagine my surprise  when I found pumpkins growing in August!  I probably wouldn’t be so surprised if I marked my plants and actually kept up with the weeding.)  Anyway, I digress.  Sally Oddi, the owner of Cover to Cover shared this book last week at a book talk she gave for the Columbus Area Writing Project.  (One Day, One World was also featured).  What drew me to the book was not only the story that is very engaging, but the fact pages in the back of the book.  The author gives recipes for roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin apple bread (you know how I love to bake…can’t wait to make it with the kids) in the “Pumpkin Recipes” section.  In the “Gardening Fun” section, she tells how to grow grass hair in an empty egg shell and how to start bean seeds in a glass jar so you can watch the seed sprout.  She also gives directions on how to plant seeds from the fruits and vegetables you get from the grocery store and how to start a sweet potato vine.  The final page tells how to make a book vine where the kids  write the title of each book they read on a cut out leaf and create a vine around the room.  I will be able to use this book to show kids how to write “how to” pieces. 

There are so many more books to share!  However, I have an article waiting to be read before I meet with Melissa next week.  I’ll post more tomorrow about my great finds.

Sara, the ELL K-1 teacher, and I were at Cover to Cover last week searching for new nonfiction titles for our classroom libraries.  Both of our classrooms will be the focus of a research study on nonfiction writing in the primary grades during the upcoming school year.  Apparently, there’s limited research out there on young writers doing research and writing nonfiction.

I met Melissa (our researcher friend and doctoral student at OSU) when I was a fellow at the Columbus Area Writing Project.  She spent quite a bit of time in my room last year doing informal observations and getting to know the kids as readers and writers.  They always looked forward to her visits.  The more we talked, the more we knew we wanted to delve into learning more about the kind of thinking and talking kids do when they are reading and writing nonfiction. Melissa wrote and received a grant to buy nonfiction books for our classroom libraries.  The three of us are going to create a study group to analyze the work being done in Sara’s room as well as mine.

On Thursday, we met for lunch to talk about the kinds of books we wanted to buy.  Barb Kiefer from OSU, also came to lunch  to talk about nonfiction books.  Boy, do we have a lot to learn!  She explained that what I had been calling literary nonfiction is actually called “hybrid” nonfiction in the book world.  Hybrid nonfiction is a type of writing that uses literary techniques usually found in poetry or fiction.  We had a lot of conversations about each of the books we chose and what type of nonfiction each book was.

One of the books we chose is a brand new one by Molly Bang, Living Sunlight:  How Plants Bring the Earth to Life. This poetic book, beautifully illustrated by Penny Chisholm, is written from the point of view of the sun.  It explains the process of photosynthesis and how important the sun is in sustaining life in our world.  She takes a very complicated idea and makes it understandable for the young reader.  The vibrant illustrations pop out on each page.  For the more sophisticated reader, there are end notes with more scientific details about photosynthesis and other organisms that are the foundations of life on earth (i.e. phytoplankton).  I can’t wait to share this book with the kids.

Sara and I left with a bag of expository nonfiction and hybrid nonfiction books that we can use at the beginning of the year as mentor texts.  As the year goes on and we get to know our classes, we’ll go back to purchase more books.  We want  to find a variety of books about a variety of topics.  We want our students to understand that nonfiction is about more than animals.    I’ll be talking about some of the books we choose in this blog as well as the different things we learn in the research project.  I am looking forward to working side by side with these 2 wonderful teachers and making new discoveries about our young readers and writers.

  I was only able to read a total of 5 hours, but I enjoyed every minute.  It’s been a long time since I’ve read for pleasure for any amount of time.  I began Saturday morning meeting some Kid Lit bloggers from the Columbus area for breakfast at Northstar Cafe.  It’s so fun to sit and talk with like-minded people.   Karen from Talkworthy, Katie from Creative Literacy, Mandy from Enjoy and Embrace Learning, Bill and Karen from Literate Lives and Franki from A Year of Reading are all seen here posing for the camera.  After breakfast, we trekked over to our favorite children’s bookstore, Cover to Cover.  There, I learned all about ARCs (Advanced Review Copies).  It was like Christmas morning when we walked into the back room and saw the table filled with books for us choose.  Then it was time to shop.  I left Cover to Cover with 28 books in total, some of them picture books for my classroom, and some young adult reads to help me stay in the loop.  I laughed and said my  husband wasn’t going to let me stay in this club when he saw how much I spent.  It’s a known fact that I can’t go into a bookstore without buying something, but who knew how dangerous it was for me to go to the bookstore with other book lovers.  Everyone knew a good book, and I just had to have them!   So…it’ll give me lots of good reads to review this summer.

I can’t wait to start Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge tomorrow.  I plan on beginning tomorrow morning around 9:00 and will finish at 9:00 in the morning on Sunday.  I’ve been invited to go to breakfast with other Central Ohio KidLit bloggers on Saturday.  After breakfast, we are going to my favorite children’s bookstore, Cover to Cover.  I can’t imagine  a more fun challenge…reading and blogging as much as I can in 48 hours.  I’m looking forward to meeting some new people on Saturday morning and hopefully getting some new ideas for new young adult fiction.  I’ve kind of lost track of those titles since I don’t teach in the upper grades anymore.  I have a friend who’s starting a book club with her 5th grade daughter.  She asked me for some suggestions, so I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for her.

I will have some interruptions…I’ve got a flat of strawberries getting very ripe in the fridge that are calling me to make them into jam.  I’m babysitting a friend’s preschooler and 5 month old tomorrow night.  The preschooler asked me to bring all the pigeon books I have, so I’m stocked with Mo Willems books for the night.  I’m also working on writing an essay about my young writers.  And I need to make a cake for my mom’s birthday (a triple layer cake from my favorite cookbook right now…Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes ).  Whew!  Guess I won’t sleep. 

Check in once in awhile to see what I’ve read.  Let me know if you’ve got any suggestions for good reads.  I am donating $2.00 for every hour that I read to the Alzheimer’s Memory Walk in  honor of a colleague’s husband who just passed away.