Category: Reading

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Classroom Reading

I’ve got the Magic

When I think about my time as a child, some of my closest memories are with picture books. I can still remember the thrill of the welcome invitation to jump into Mom’s bed and how fun it was to get tangled in her soft sheets. But mostly, I remember when she finally got my brother and I to be still, and listen to a story. It was magical; it didn’t matter that my brother had picked Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel for the tenth night in a row, because each time she read it I could live in the story and be amazed at Mike’s bravery and strength.

While I have kept these memories close to my heart, I haven’t really used picture books in my teaching. Sure, I’ve used them a few times— Who doesn’t want to read The Lorax during a propaganda unit? And Three Nasty Gnarlies is my favorite book to read them at the end of the year . . . but during my time at Columbia’s Reading Institute I was reminded not only of the magic behind these books, but of their power in a reading classroom (even an 8th grade language arts room like my own).

Reading a picture book that’s written for slightly older kids lends itself to instruction beautifully. First, with an interactive read aloud students can easily practice the skills from the minilesson within the context of a whole story. Picture books that are aligned with your unit of study, done once or twice a week, with a consistent structure provides your kids a wealth of opportunity to practice, without a major loss of time. During your interactive read aloud get kids to turn and talk using prompts like: discover, categorize, question, teach, wonder, compare & contrast. Get them thinking, get them talking, get them to remember the magic too.

The other big bonus of using picture books in your classroom is their ability to be used as a teaching tool in small skill based groups and independent reading conferences. When you see that your kids are struggling with a skill, you can think back to these books and teach from there. It’s so much easier because you already know the text and they do too. This way, let say if you haven’t read the independent reading book they’re reading, you can still teach a skill for them to use within their book. At Columbia they recommended that you actually carry the book with you to your conferences, just in case, and believe me, I’ll be doing just that— hopefully it will work like magic.

Categories
Classroom Reading

Because I want to know.

The Fourth of July was on a Monday this year, and I was in NYC. Although I knew I had class the next day, I still managed to make it quite a magical night out in the city. Wisdom tells me that next year I should probably plan on making it to bed sooner than I did, but alas sometimes I just HAVE to be twenty-something and in New York. Can you blame me?

I guess you could when you find out that I missed the Keynote for the first day of the institute—I’m gonna blame that on the Subway.

My first day at the Reading Institute started off slowly, with a cup of coffee in hand. Traces of my week working with writing were still dancing through my head, and friends from home were texting me in full force. I wasn’t sure I would be able to focus at all.

Then I saw Brooke Geller walk into the room; and I knew I would be fine. After all, I am ahappyteacher and tired or not I could never pass up an opportunity to learn from the best.

Class started off with a question: What are three books that you remember reading?

My answer: Hidden Gems, The Hunger Games, & Nickle and Dimed

Then we were instructed to fill in the blank. I’m the kind of person who likes to read books about _____________________________.

My answer: justice and compassion and their struggle to work together.

The tone was set. We needed to care about reading as teachers of reading. Right off the bat, they wanted to know who I was as a reader.

Immediately I found myself thinking of the first days of school this year, of all the work that would need to be done, and the importance of giving my students these kinds of reflective questions. The importance of saying, right off the bat, who are you as a reader? Because I want to know.

Categories
Classroom Grammar Reading Writing

reading-and-writing classroom

I’ve got a group of students who are suddenly waking up and becoming more aware of the way sentences are formed. I’m so excited for them; I want to tell them the answers, but I am holding back, knowing meaning is more valuable if you find it on your own.

And so we found ourselves in a quandary on chapter two of Jerry Spinelli’s Loser, when he describes the town they live in as a “brick-and-hoagie town”. First we discussed the meaning, why would Spinelli call a town that? Were there Hoagie shops on every corner or were bricks crumbling and the town starting to fall apart? Is it close to a city? Does everyone know what a hoagie is or is the story taking place somewhere near us in Pennsylvania? We discussed, we argued, we stepped back and described our town.

Then somewhere in the middle of all of it Kyle says, “hey guys do you see those things there after brick and before hoagie?”

“It’s called a dash,” one of the girls says quickly and inquisitively, recognizing that Kyle might be on to something.

“Yeah, well I mean why are they there? Maybe the author is trying to tell us something? He doesn’t need them, does he?”

The conversation went on, and I let it; it didn’t matter that we had only covered the first sentence in chapter two. The kids decided that this was a town where bricks and hoagies went together. They compared the town to Detroit saying if the author wanted the setting to have been in Detroit he would have said, “highway-and-Coney city.”

After our discussion, the kids wrote the words “brick-and-hoagie town” in their language log and promised to be on the lookout for more cool ways Jerry Spinelli was playing with words.

After our discussion, I went to my journal and copied down “brick-and-hoagie town” & “highway-and-Coney city,” after it I wrote, the dash draws me in and connects me, reminds me that one without the other just isn’t right.

Categories
Classroom Reading

NYC & Good Things

Anyone who knows me, knows in order to get my full attention quickly all you have to do is say the words, “New York City.” Needless to say when I was in Barnes and Noble this Friday after school I went home with three new books, all of which tie into New York City in one way or another.

Book 1:  The Misfits by James Howe. It’s a book I’ve been meaning to pick up since this past summer. James Howe was one of the keynote speakers at Columbia University’s Writing Project that I attended in August. Not only was he AmAzInG at Columbia, James Howe’s Bunnicula was one of my personal favorites as a fifth grader, so I’ve been itching to get my hands on this book for awhile to see if I could use it with my kids. I’m only fifty pages into the book, but I’m already in love with the quirky misfits Howe created in this book.

Book 2: Hip Hop Speaks to Children edited by Nikki Giovanni. On the New York Times best seller list and featuring poetry written by both Langston Hughes and Kanye West, I’ve had my eye on this one for a long time. It is a picture book that comes with a CD of the poets reading their work. This book of poetry can be used for a variety of ages and purposes. Certainly some of the pages cater to a younger crowd with poems titled, Ham ‘N’ Eggs and The Girls in the Circle but there are plenty of places to stop and reflect with older kids as well. I can’t wait to use it in the classroom and see what my kids have to say about calling some of their favorite musicians poets (Jay-Z minus the curse words = poetic genius).

Book 3 (and maybe the one I’m most excited about): Pick-Up Game: A Full Day of Full Court edited by Marc Aronson & Charles R. Smith. Always on the lookout for a book that will capture the boys in my room, this anthology looks amazing. It’s a collection of short stories that form a novel when put together. The short stories are written by: Walter Dean Myers, Bruce Brooks, Willie Perdomo, Sharon G. Flake, Robert Burleigh, Rita Williams-Garcia, Joseph Bruchac, Adam Rapp, and Robert Lipsyte. It’s a lineup of all-stars if ever there was one. I haven’t had time yet this weekend to start reading this one for fear I wouldn’t be able to put it down. I’ll let you know what the boys think when I show them on Tuesday.

As a side note I wouldn’t have even picked up book three except for the fact that a kid next to me was flipping through it and I saw a photograph of the West 4th Street-Washington Square subway stop— otherwise known as my run from the A train to the F.  New York City, you always bring such good things.