Raising Readers and Writers

A few weeks ago, I was having breakfast with an old friend. We’ve known each other since our girls (who are now 22 years old) were in kindergarten and we decided to take on the role of Girl Scout leaders. She is a gifted teacher and someone I enjoy spending time with. We share the same passion for literacy and can commiserate about our children. She’s contemplating starting a blog and is worried about having enough to say. As we talked that morning, I came up with about 4 different topics that she could blog about. I told her that as things happen in your classroom or even your life, you  automatically think about how you could write about that on your blog.  She laughed and said, “It’s Blog Curse, you know, like Math Curse!”

Well, I was afflicted with “Blog Curse” yesterday at the Dublin Literacy Conference. As I listened to Dr. Tim Tyson and the other speakers, I thought of a million things I could write about. As Dr. Tyson talked about the possibilities with technology, he kept coming back to the point of teachers as leaders. He said, “School can be anything you imagine. The hard part is not plugging in the interactive white board. The hard part is envisioning the possibilities.”

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about the possibilities for my 4th and 5th grade after school writing club. We finished writing scripts for the drama club and are ready to start something new. I want each of them to choose a topic that is important to them and makes them feel passionate. I want them to think about what means to much to them that they want the world to hear their voices. And I want them to know that their voices matter. Our final project will be a multi-modal, multi-genre display. I sent an email with my rambling ideas to our technology teacher and we are going to meet this week to discuss the possibilities. (I think she’s afraid to open any emails from me!)

I’ve also been reading The Digital Writing Workshop and Teaching The New Writing to get some ideas of where to go. Since I meet with my writing club tomorrow, I wanted to get started on something.

To begin with, I want the students to create a page that tells about themselves. I am going to read Looking Like Me by Walter Dean Meyers. I read Karen’s review and bought it right away (thanks to one-click shopping). I think the kids will love the vibrant illustrations and jazzy language. (I looked in the mirror and what did I see?  A real handsome dude looking just like me.  He put out his fist.  I gave it a bam!  He said, “Jeremy!  I said, “That’s who I am.”) I’m going to use it as a springboard for the students to think about the different roles they play in their lives. Then I’m going to have them create a page that shows who they are using Glogster. I just recently heard about Glogster and I took some time to explore it tonight (which means I’ll be up really late tonight finishing up my lesson plans). Here’s my attempt at introducing myself. I’d love to spend more time with it, but I do have to get more school work done tonight!

Kevin Hodgson commented on yesterday’s post how attending conferences like these energize us. I so agree with him. I can’t wait to get to school tomorrow and see my little ones and my writing clubbers. I have so much to share with them!

This is such a crazy, yet fun time of the year.  One of the reasons I love first graders is that my own children are way past the Santa phase and it’s very fun to hang out with kids who still have that awe and wonderment about the holidays.  I have been wracking my brain to think of something meaningful for my students to make for their parents to give as presents.  I have so many precious ornaments that my own children made in school hanging on our tree.  Each ornament brings a special memory.  I wanted to give my students’ parents that same gift.  However, this year, I have one student who does not celebrate Christmas, so the ornament idea was nixed (plus I wanted to be more original).

My idea was to use I Am America by Charles Smith Jr. as a mentor text for the kids to create their own I Am poems.  I was going to type their poems, add their photograph and create something that could be displayed year-round.  Well, you know what happens when great minds start working together.  Your original good  idea instantly becomes a much better idea that you never imagined.

I was explaining this project to our tech teacher and saying that I’d also like to  podcast their poems against a backdrop of their self-portraits.  She suggested we use Wordle as part of the project.  I had heard of Wordle a while back, but it never occured to me to use it as part of this project.  Wordle creates a word cloud for the text you type in.  The words that are use more often show up more prominently in the cloud.  You can then tweak the fonts and colors and layouts.  It’s addictive once you get started.

So here’s our plan:  The kids will still write their own I AM poems Monday and Tuesday.  Then on Tuesday afternoon, we are going to bring the laptops down to my classroom and each child will type his or her poem into Wordle.  (You can see an example of mine at the beginning of this post.)  Then the adults will take a screen shot (that’s what I’ve been learning to do this morning when I couldn’t sleep) of the Wordle, put it into Pixie and save it.  I haven’t decided if I will have the kids take their pictures with the computer camera and just add it to Pixie or if I will take their pictures individually and print them.  Either way, the Wordle and picture will get printed and I’ll mat the whole thing.  I’ll post some examples next week.

I’m also excited to give the kids their presents.  I remembered reading katied’s post last year about these sketch and tell journals.  As much as my kids like to write, I knew that this was the gift for them!  I ordered them online from Dick  Blick for $1.59 each.  I’ll also get some special pencils and if I make it to Scholastic’s warehouse sale this week, I’ll add a book.  (I’m having a hard time not giving the kids a book, so I guess they’ll get both!)

Please share any of your great ideas for gifts for parents or students in the comments section.  I think it’s so neat when we can all share our ideas and learn from each other.

What a week it’s been.  My kids have loved exploring all of the new books.  I always begin a new genre study by just reading lots of books.  One of the first books I read was Flip the Flaps:  Animal Homes by Judy Allen and  Simon Mendez.  I chose this book for several reasons.  First, the detailed illustrations draw the reader right into the book and the text is engaging for young learners.  My emerging readers are sure to find information in the pictures if they read the book independently.  Secondly, each habitat (pond, stone, tree, etc.) is a short chapter that includes a flap to be lifted.  Don’t all kids like “lift the flap” books?  The authors list 3 questions on each flap, which can be lifted to reveal the answers.  This book led to more questions from my students.  It was the perfect segue into the students writing their own “I wonder…” questions (an idea I got from Debbie Miller’s Reading with Meaning).  More about that later.  I know that I will go back to this book again and again.  Not only is there is a lot of information to be learned,  it is also a great model for writing informational books.

I am a huge fan of Steve Jenkins’ books.  I have quite a few in my classroom and was happy to add some more and other books that reminded me of his style.  He always takes an interesting look at his subject that keeps kids captivated, instead of the traditional take on animals (habitat, appearance, diet, etc.).  I love that my students can look at his books and envision a wide variety of possibilities for their own writing.

Living Color tells the reader how animals use color to protect themselves, call to other animals, attract mates, or warn predators.  The vibrant illustrations are textured cut paper collage.  The animals virtually pop out of the page.  Each double page spread focuses on one color and what it means for different animals.  Text also flows around the illustrations, another technique that students can do in their own writing.  For instance, “Red says…This is my space. The male hooded seal marks its territory – and tries to impress female seals – by inflating a sac of loose skin that hangs from its left nostril, blowing it up like a big red balloon.”  Who knew that could be attractive?  The book is filled with interesting facts about some very uncommon animals and insects.  The end of the book tells more about the role of color in an animal’s life and as is typical in Steve Jenkins’ books, the last pages give a bit more information about each of the featured animals (size, habitat, diet).  I know the kids will love this book as much as the other Steve Jenkins’ books.  I have enough now that I’ll be making a Steve Jenkins basket.  I will use this book as a mentor text to discuss all the possibilities for presenting information in an interesting way.

This next book, Hello, Hello by Miriam Schlein, looks at the different ways animals greet eachother.  Eight of her books have been honored as Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children.  Again, I chose this book because it gives lots of information about animals in an unusal way.  We learn that “Elephants are very, very, very, very, friendly.  They touch trunk tips or they put the tips of their trunks in one another mouths.”  Zebras take a different approach as they stretch out their necks and sniff eath other’s noses.  Then they make little chewing noises.  The books ends with the ways humans say hello.    I can see kids using this book as a jumping off point to research other ways animals greet each other.  The illustrations, oils on textured paper, are bright and give the reader a glimpse into each animal’s habitat.  Students will learn that much information can be gleaned from illustrations and that they will need to think about what kind of information they want to portray in their own final illustrations.

I have the books packed up ready to take into school tomorrow.  I’ll be sure to post about how the kids react to all of the new books.  I’m sure to hook everyone with something!

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.

My classroom is buzzing during writing workshop.  I love to watch the excitement in my young learners’ eyes as they create their first pieces of writing in first grade.  They eagerly go back to their places and can’t wait to talk with their tablemates about their ideas.  I know that this “talk time” is very important to helping my writers plan their writing.  Right now, we are finding the balance between this important talk and talk that is just silly giggling.  I know with some patience we will get there.

I’ve used 2 of my favorite books this week to help my students think of important topics.  Yesterday I read The Best Story by Eileen Spinelli.  The main character in the book wants to win first prize in the Best Story Contest.  If she wins, she will be able to ride the  Sooper Dooper Looper roller coaster with her favorite author.  She’s not quite sure how to make her story the best, so she consults her family members.  Her brother tells her that good stories need action.  Her father tells her she needs humor.  Her aunt tells her that great stories make people cry and her cousin thinks the best stories have lots of romance.  (That got a lot of “OOOOHHHHS” from the kids).  Finally, her mother gave her the best advice.  She tells her that the best stories come from the heart.  So after reading the book, we discussed that authors write about what is important to them.  My students couldn’t wait to get to their spots to write.  I had stories about cooking with Grandma, playing football with friends, and going to the park.

Today, we read, Taking a Bath With the Dog and Other Things that Make Me Happy by Scott Menchin.  This is another of my favorites!  In fact, I showed it to another teacher in our building and she spent her lunch doing “one click” shopping on Amazon so she could have her own copy.  In this story, Mother notices that Sweet Pea is feeling sad (very evident by the frown on her face).  Sweet Pea decides to ask anyone and everyone she meets what makes them happy.  Her dog (dressed in a robe and shower cap) likes to take a bath.  An older gentleman enjoys stripes (he’s wearing a very loud striped jacket with a striped cat sitting beside him).  The rabbit likes running on the hamster wheel.  The story is hilarious!  The kids noticed that as the story progresses, Sweet Pea’s frown slowly turns into smile.  By the end of the book, she is feeling much better and we find out that she likes taking a bath with her dog.  The kids couldn’t wait to share what makes them happy.  They were so excited and so full of good ideas that we decided to make our own class book  about what makes Room 14 happy.  Each child wrote one page and illustrated it.  We have pages about making cookies for Dad, reading with my brother, playing with my monster trucks, and swinging with my family.  I typed the pages tonight and we will put the book together tomorrow.  It will be a grand celebration when we add it to one of the baskets in our classroom library.

The rest of the week is going to be spent focusing on where authors get ideas.  I’m looking forward to see where they take their ideas!

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.

The Black Book of  Colors by Menena Cottin and Rosina Faria intrigued me right away.  It’s a concept book about the colors of the rainbow, but it’s written from Thomas’ point of view.  Thomas is blind and he describes the colors using his other senses (taste, touch, smell).  His descriptions will give children a whole new way to experience colors.  (Brown crunches under his feet like fall leaves.   Sometimes it smells like chocolate, and other times it stinks.)  What makes this book so different, it that every page is pitch black.  The text is written in white, with raised braille text about the type.  On the right side are raised illustrations in glossy black.   The raised illustrations invite you to sit, explore and imagine, while you feel the images.  The Braille alphabet can be found at the back of the book.

Even though this book was written for younger children, I could see using it for all levels.  My own 2 kids (14 and 16) thought this book was really cool!  Children are given the opportunity to experience the world from a different perspective.  I can also see kids using it as a mentor text as they think about colors using their senses.  I wonder if there isn’t a way to work with the art teacher to create our own Black Book of Colors.  There are so many possibilities with this book.  This is another one I can’t wait to share with my new group of kids.

I just got back from the Columbus Area Writing Project’s Retreat at Kenyon College.  Since participating in CAWP two years ago, I always look forward to returning for the retreat to do some writing and reading just for me.  One of the things I most look forward to is my visit to the college bookstore and once again, I wasn’t disappointed.  Because, once again, I went along with Robin, one of the co-directors of CAWP who owns more books than I do!  She put this gem in my hand and I knew right away that I had to have it.  Where do I begin with Wabi Sabi?  It’s a beautiful concoction of prose, poetry, and collage.  Wabi Sabi is a cat who lives in Kyoto Japan and begins to wonder what her name means after friends from another country inquire.  Her master answers, “That’s hard to explain.”  And so, Wabi Sabi goes on a quest to discover the meaning of her name.  In the Japanese culture, Wabi Sabi means finding  beauty in simplicity, the imperfect, and the ordinary.  Through her visits with other animals, each of who give her a peek into the meaning of her name, she discovers that she is truly pleased with the name her master gave her.  The reader holds the book vertically to view full page spreads of striking collages, which look real enough to touch.  In fact, my friend put her hand on one of the pages to see if she could feel the picture.  Haiku, written in English and Japanese, along with a sparse text are interwoven on each page.  The author even translates the  Haiku written by the great Japanese poets, Bosho and Shiki, at the end of the book.

I will use this beautiful book in a variety of ways with my students.  My first graders will love the beautiful illustrations and we will talk about all the things Wabi Sabi encounters in her travels.  I will even ask my students at the beginning of the year to find out what their names mean and how their parents picked their names.  It will be great for community building.  I will also use this book to prompt my fourth and fifth grade  writing project students to write about their own names.  How do they feel about their names?  How did they get their names?  How does their name affect them?  I will also use it as a mentor text to study haiku and ways to use collage to support the meaning of your text. 

I can’t wait to show this book to my new students next year.  I know that all of them will love it!

Bill from Literate Lives recommended Savvy by Ingrid Law during our trip to Cover to Cover.  I absolutely loved this book.  I always gravitate toward an author’s first book, and this one did not disappoint me.  The quirky characters reminded me of the  somewhat peculiar Southern women in The Secret Life of Bees.  The age 13 for the Beaumont family is magical.  It is then that they gain some kind of supernatural ability called a savvy.  One of Mib’s brothers can cause hurricanes (the family had to move to the middle of the United States, away from all major bodies of water) and another one  can create electricity, or even cause a power outage.  Right before Mib’s 13th birthday, her father is in a terrible accident, causing Mib’s mother and oldest brother to travel to his bedside  leaving Mib, Grandpa, and her siblings at home.  All’s well, until the well-meaning, nosy preacher’s wife shows up to  take care of the family and plan a huge birthday party for Mib.  Knowing that she can’t attend this party, because who knows what might happen when her savvy appears, and being determined to get to her father’s hospital bed, Mib, along with her brothers, and the preacher’s kids hide on a bright pink bus that is going toward the town where Poppa is recovering.  However, it’s not an ordinary bus.  Lester, the bumbling bus driver, is having a hard time selling the boxes of pink bibles stacked in the back of the bus.  And unfortunately, the bus turns in the opposite direction of the hospital when he leaves the parking lot.  This eccentric crew encounters one adventure after another, which brings them many surprises and teaches them about each other. 

Not only is this a hilarious, fantastic tale; the author weaves interesting words and descriptive language throughout this story.  For example, outraged at the box of pink Bibles, the minister yells at poor Lester, “What do you think we are?  A church full of mollycoddled sissies?”  I found myself either grinning or laughing through most of the book!  I could see using this book to collect examples of colorful language an author uses to help the reader get a better understanding  of the story or characters.  This would be a great read aloud for 4th and 5th grade and a fun read alone for 5th grade and up. 

Check out Ingrid Law’s website.  It looks fun!!