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This week we bring you a couple of student poems that appear in Debbie Miller’s book Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades. They appear in the chapter about creating mental images, so read these poems and then let your mind wander to the images the words conjure.
Icicles
Icicles drop
in the morning light,
and freeze
in the darkness
of the night.
Icicles scream
as if they were talking
to the wind.
– Caroline
Henry
When I hold my Guinea Pig
Henry
he makes me feel
safe inside.
Warm fur
red eyes
chubby little body.
Henry is my buddy.
– Olivia
Leaves
The leaves
tiptie to the ground
with only a soft, gentle sound.
We hear the leaves go
crinkle, crackle
crunch, crunch
under our feet.
We rake them into a mountain
of red, orange,
yellow, brown and purple.
The leaves
tiptoe to the ground
with only a soft, gentle sound
– Madison and Camille
December 3rd, 2010
On this Poetry Friday right before Thanksgiving, I selected a poem by Elizabeth Alexander titled “Butter.” Because what’s a great Thanksgiving meal without butter?
Enjoy!
Butter
Elizabeth Alexander
My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes…
Read the rest of the poem here
November 19th, 2010
“One genre that is sometimes overlooked for nonfiction, but should definitely not be forgotten, is poetry,” write Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli in their recent book Nonfiction Mentor Texts: Teaching Informational Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-8. Poetry is a “wonderful vehicle to deliver information with a powerful voice,” they argue. One example they cite is J. Patrick Lewis’ collection of Monumental Verses – a book of poems about timeless monuments. This poetry Friday we offer you one of his poems, “Empire State Building.” Enjoy!
Empire State Building
J. Patrick Lewis
I am an American boy, standing up to the world.
I sleep the city sleeps. We dream
the riveter’s dream, held island-fast.
I wake to taxi alarms.
I am a 102-stop elevator ride to heaven.
I am ten million bricks of unshakable faith.
I capture imagination at its peak.
I hugged King Kong, he hugged me back.
I look down on Broadway for a work of art,
the Fulton Fish Market for a slice of life,
United Nations Headquarters for a little peace.
It’s lonely up here without my twin brothers,
the World Trade Center Towers.
Wait here on my doorstep, Central Park,
while I look over Harlem.
I am an American boy, face to face with the world.
October 22nd, 2010
In Beyond Leveled Books, authors Karen Szymusiak, Franki Sibberson, and Lisa Koch, offer their perspective on moving transitional readers from the basic supports of leveling to independent book selection. In this week’s Quick Tip, they describe the basic characteristics of transitional readers and how these characteristics impact instruction.
In our work with transitional readers, we have found certain characteristics that are common to many. We have identified six areas of skill development that most often require explicit instruction and support from teachers.
Learning to Select Appropriate Books
Transitional readers often struggle with recognizing books that are appropriate to read independently. They often choose books that are either too easy or too hard. They tend to choose books on the basis of an inviting cover or a topic of interest to them. These can be good reasons for selecting books, but without a more sophisticated awareness of a variety of strategies for choosing books, transitional readers sometimes spend a long time picking a book and often waste time reading books that turn out to be inappropriate, given their skills or interests. Teachers often see these transitional readers wandering aimlessly in front of the bookcases. Or they may notice that these students make frequent trips to the bookcases and baskets because they have failed to make a good choice and quickly return for
another book. Part of our instruction with these readers needs to be spent in teaching them ways to select a book that is a good fit at a certain time. Students need their own strategies for selecting books that will help them throughout their lives as readers.
Sustaining Comprehension
Difficulty in sustaining comprehension for a longer text is another common characteristic. These students struggle with monitoring their comprehension, so when faced with reading a longer text, they often lose comprehension as they continue to read. Because their monitoring strategies are not as sophisticated as the books they are reading, they often push forward, continuing to read the text (decoding the words), but never stopping to think about what they are reading. They frequently get to the end of a chapter and cannot recollect what they have just read. Sustaining comprehension over an extended period of time can also challenge transitional readers. They may struggle to remember what they read the day before, so they need a set of strategies for remembering. This is often an issue for students who are just starting to move from single- story texts to short chapter books.
Maintaining Interest over an Entire Book
Early or emergent readers take up books that are simple and brief. As children move into longer texts, they need to develop persistence in their reading. Only then can they maintain interest in a text long enough to complete it and understand what they have read.
Understanding Many Genres
Transitional readers may enjoy feeling comfortable in their reading and may therefore be reluctant to explore new genres. They revisit books they have read before, they read books that the teacher has shared with the class in a read-aloud, and they may limit their choice of books to those that are similar to the ones they have already read. If these transitional readers are going to move to a higher level of independence, they need experience with a variety of genres, texts, and authors. Because each genre has unique features, transitional readers need strategies for making sense of any text. They cannot make the leap to independence until they have thoroughly explored a variety of genres and learned a wide range of reading strategies for each.
Decoding and Fluency Skills
Many transitional readers are skilled at decoding but still need to develop more sophistication as they read texts with more complex vocabulary. They are ready to look more closely at the structure of words and patterns in language. Although many of them have developed decoding skills, they may need to become more fluent in their reading. Very few of the transitional readers we encountered had decoding problems that got in the way of their reading. But as texts become more complex, children need instruction to support their fluency.
Using Text Features
As transitional readers move from simple books to a wider range of reading material, they encounter texts with new structures and features and often lack the strategies they need to make sense of them. As plots become more complicated, the number of characters increases, and issues of changing time and place become more prevalent in the books they are reading, transitional readers struggle with comprehension. As they encounter nonfiction texts, they struggle with the variety of ways content is presented (text, graphs, pictures, tables, charts) and how to find relevant information.
Some transitional readers lack skills in only one of the categories just described, but that one problem may be serious enough to stop their growth as readers. Many transitional readers have needs in multiple categories and will need a wide range of instructional and support activities to continue to develop as readers. All transitional readers need to build their own identity as readers.
October 19th, 2010
Happy Poetry Friday! We have another original poem from Shirley McPhillips this week! Enjoy and check out her poem from last week as well!
The Rolling Pin
Shirl McPhillips
A wine bottle for crust
would do just as well
as a rolling pin I’m told,
but the clerk hoists it aloft
like an Olympic torch
and I sprint up the aisle
to claim it, to bring it home.
Tempted as I am to take
the devil’s easy path, my
Mama Divine, I must
not scare what is sacred.
Splinters of your holy light
slice through a mountain
of shadows. Not in my house
you would say. Not in your
house where the laws
of prohibition ranked right up
there next to the tablets of stone.
Not in your house, my Holy
Mama where, heaven bent,
you cut labels off cans of cocktail,
so hellbinding was the Word—where
groceries packed in a box blazed
with Miller High Life once sat rejected
out back, like the sinner who brought it.
And a wine bottle, my Keeper
of the Faith, will not shape a pie
in my house. Chilled, heavy
with butter, the dough is stiff
and unforgiving like the promise
I wish I hadn’t made to shape it. Yet
somehow it yields to the gentle
steering of my wooden wheel
and folds up in flutes over the late
summer peaches I remember.
When your soul flew up
to its final reward, sweet mama,
Guardian of the Everafter, we
sorted the magic of your high
craft into boxes—five dollars
take all—ice picks, oyster
knives, spatulas, eggbeaters,
skillets of iron, a rolling pin.
I claim the teapot,
the crystal candlesticks,
green plates of depression glass—
I claim your recipes,
the pinch
the tad
the dash—
small bits of grace.
I claim the taste
but not the tools of it.
October 8th, 2010
School has already started in many parts of the country or will start next week. This week’s Poetry Friday poem goes out to all students and teachers who are facing one of school’s inevitable features: the spelling quiz.
Enjoy!
Perfect
Kenn Nesbitt
Today I managed something
that I’ve never done before.
I turned in this week’s spelling quiz
and got a perfect score.
Read the rest of the poem here…
August 27th, 2010
This week’s Quick Tip comes from Janet Allen’s recent book, Inside Words: Tools for Teaching Academic Vocabulary Grades 4-12. In Inside Words Janet provides teachers with important instructional tools that support building background knowledge; teach words that are critical to comprehension; provide guidance during reading and writing; develop a conceptual framework; and assess students’ understanding of words and concepts.
You can download one of these tools today titled Concepts and Vocabulary: Categories and Labels. This activity helps student think about a cluster of technical vocabulary words and students categorize and label the words based on common attributes.
August 17th, 2010
In “The Words Came Down!” English Language Learners Read, Write, and Talk Across the Curriculum, Emelie Parker and Tess Pardini detail workshop formats for reading, writing, and content-area studies. In this Quick Tip, they talk about ways to help ELLs read independently during reading workshop. This is especially a challenge for teachers when some of their students speak little or no English. But strategies like Buddy Reading ensure that all students can work independently.
Independent Reading Time
A favorite lesson for some primary teachers at Bailey’s to introduce children to the expectations of independent reading is a reading response to a Big Book called Bubble Gum by Gail Jorgensen. The children in the book learn to blow a bubble bigger and bigger and bigger. The last page has a great illustration of a popped bubble all over the children. The class enjoys acting out an innovation on the text of Bubble Gum. Without speaking, they pretend to unwrap gum, stick it in their mouth, and blow and blow. As they blow, they spread their arms out wider and wider. They carefully walk with their arms spread out to a place in the room where no one can pop their bubble.
If a child steps into or sits too close to someone’s “bubble space” then the balloon pops. Loud words can also pop a bubble. After the children can do this without fuss, the teacher explains that they will now take books inside their bubble to read alone. Later, after children learn to read independently in a bubble space, we show them how to let a friend come in and sit shoulder to shoulder in their bubble for buddy reading.
Buddy Reading
At the beginning of the year, teachers might find that there is a natural flow into this time of joyful book sharing and choose to establish the routines of buddy reading before those of independent reading. Buddy reading is an important option for reading work when students are not able to sustain independent reading for more than a short time. Buddy reading is important for many reasons.
- It is fun!
- Book discussions between students provide another opportunity for language development.
- It allows students alternative ways to engage with a variety of levels of text in a peer-coaching situation. For instance, ELLs can look at pictures and join in conversations about content even if they cannot read it
themselves. (See Figure 5.2.)
- ELLs can talk in their home language to reach a deeper understanding of the book from the pictures.
- ELLs can practice reading books in pairs.
- Advanced readers can support each other in challenging text or content.
In order to establish a calm working atmosphere for buddy reading time, Tess clearly models her expectations in a “fishbowl.” She demonstrates the procedure with one child as the others watch from the circle. She asks the students to comment on what they notice. They watch as Tess and her buddy discuss their choice of books at the bookshelf and then sit side by side with the books they have chosen, deciding which one to look at first. As Tess and her buddy talk quietly about the pictures or as one of them reads to the other, the students listen and hear them decide that they are ready to change books and then discuss what their next choices should be. Because the students have noticed all this, Tess knows that they are ready to practice this procedure themselves.
Then Tess joins the circle and asks two other students to model the procedure, again inviting brief comments from the class. She wants to move on quickly so that the whole class can practice the procedure. Tess names the ELLs, one by one, and tells them to pick a partner. She wants this first experience to be with a child with whom they feel comfortable interacting. Then Tess moves around the room, gently refocusing students on the expectations if necessary. After about ten minutes, the class meets back in the circle to reflect on how the experience went and discuss any modifications that might be necessary.
When it is time to practice this routine again the next day, the class helps to create a list of expectations first. For example:
1. Choose two books.
2. Sit side by side.
3. Sit at the same level.
4. Listen to the speaker.
It is simple to add pictures to this list so that the expectations are just as clear to the second language learners. The list is a reminder that can be revisited at any time.
The fishbowl technique can provide invaluable guided practice in many situations. It clarifies expectations for all students, but it is also a helpful way of making sure our ELLs see and experience the expectations with the group. There is then less chance of them misunderstanding directions, doing something the wrong way, or embarrassing themselves in front of their peers.
Our buddy reading expectations usually begin with pairs of children going to the library corner and choosing two books each. We talk about suitable spots for reading and places to avoid (like behind the door), and then the children are free to take their books anywhere in the room within the teacher’s sight to read, to look at illustrations, and to talk. Therefore, you will find children under the tables, squeezed into nooks and crannies, or sitting on our feet under the reading table as we work with other students (a great spot for ELLs to be absorbing reading behaviors!).
There are many ways to structure this time that depend on teaching style, schedules, class size, and makeup. But for us, the nonnegotiables are the elements of book choice and the opportunity for talk. Thus, we might modify our framework to involve more or less structure, depending on the needs of each year’s class. We might ask them to read the books in their book boxes to each other, or let them choose to do this if they wish. If necessary, we will pair up our ELLs with students who will be good language or behavior role models.
Sometimes we want to designate the partners for a particular learning or social purpose, but more often than not, we want the ELLs to have an opportunity to enjoy books with a friend, perhaps being able to talk in their home language about the text. Having an opportunity to discuss concepts or content in their home language is going to give the ELLs a chance to expand their understandings. These understandings provide the knowledge around which they can begin to build their English vocabulary and control of sentence structure.
June 22nd, 2010
“I want to hear laughter. Humor is essential! I want to see writing displayed on the walls that reflects what kids do at that age. Instead of typing up correct (standard) first grade stories, put stories on the walls written in their own handwriting, in their own zany spellings.”
Patrick Allen recently interviewed Ralph Fletcher on his blog, All-en-A Day’s Work. The two discuss Ralph’s latest book, Pyrotechnics on the Page, what makes for playful writing, and how to promote playful language in the classroom. Patrick is the author of Conferring: The Keystone of Reader’s Workshop.
May 17th, 2010
Stenhouse editorial director Philippa Stratton has been named Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts for 2010 by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). The award, which will be presented to Stratton at the NCTE annual convention in November, recognizes a distinguished national or international educator who has made major contributions to the field of language arts in elementary education.
Stratton, who co-founded Stenhouse in 1993 with her husband Tom Seavey, was honored for her decades of work “shaping some of the most important innovations in literacy education, including whole language, readers’ and writers’ workshop, reading comprehension strategies, literature circles, and literacy centers.” Prior to starting Stenhouse, Stratton worked in the London offices of Heinemann and moved to the U.S. where she and Seavey began to develop Heinemann’s publishing in the field of literacy education.
In announcing the award, NCTE highlighted the enormous impact the books Stratton has edited have had on education: “With her quiet, behind the scenes work spanning decades, Philippa Stratton has dramatically influenced the profession of English language arts.”
“I’m very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with so many wonderful authors and colleagues over the years,” Philippa said. “I see this award as a testament to the importance of giving teachers a platform to talk with, and learn from, one another. Tom and I founded Stenhouse to highlight the voices of individual teachers and I continue to be inspired by the creativity and commitment that teachers bring to the huge challenges they face in teaching students to become independent readers, writers, and thinkers. And some even make the time to write about their work while in the midst of it — amazing!”
The award will be presented at the NCTE convention in Orlando on November 18th by NCTE’s Elementary Section, which represents a diverse group of teachers, literacy coaches, reading and special education interventionists, teacher educators, and school administrators interested in literacy development and in literacy teaching at the elementary school level.
Read more about the award on the NCTE site.
March 17th, 2010
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