Picture of Ron Clark and I

At the bottom of my blog is a picture of an educator that I really admire.  Ron Clark was Disney educator of the year in 2006-2007, and has made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey show for educating inner city school children.  He is well-known for his book The Essential 55.  He opened a school in Atlanta, Georgia for underpriveledged students that received scholarships to attend his school.  Ron Clark is not only a terrific educator, but he inspires other educators.  I had the privilege of attending his school for a day to watch him teach back in 2008 and watch his 6th grade classroom come to life with learning Mathematics.  I recommend reading his book The Essential 55 to help with establishing routines and clear expectations in the classroom.

Fantasy amd Realistic Fiction Writing

After completing my author study on Kate DiCamillo, I realized that there are a lot of great ways to encompass the style of writing from the author with children.  Kate DiCamillo focuses a lot on writing realistic fiction and fantasy stories that include unique character qualities, problems and solutions, as well as unique vocabulary and a message from the author.

Here are some ideas for a Unit on writing a realistic fiction/fantasy story:
- Create a character web with detailed adjectives that describe the character's personality
- Create a list of possible problems and solutions that include unexpected turns and surprises for the reader
- Jot down unique vocabulary usageon sticky notes that are included in the story
- Construct a story that includes real characters with real problems and lessons to learn about the journey of life

Reading and Writing Connections

When reading a novel, read aloud, chapter book, or any kind of story, there are numerous writing activties that students can do to connect to the text.  Here is a list of writing connections to support reading:
- Sequence the events of a story
- Use graphic organizers to record the plot of a story
- Record facts and opinions from the text
- As students read, have them record connections they make to the text with themselves
- Fill out unknown words on a graphic organizer and what you think the words mean based on using context clues
- Record predictions about a story and then explain why your prediction was correct/incorrect
- Write a summary of a story or chapter
- Write down the main idea of a text and find details to support the main idea

“The world is dark, and light is precious.
Come closer, dear reader.
You must trust me.
I am telling you a story.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

The quote above continues to give me motivation to live the life I choose in a positive light, and throughout my journey in life, I can overcome darkness through strength and motivation.

Strategies to engage with text

Students have specific genres that are more appealing for them to read than others.  To help students get engaged with what they are reading, I have a few strategies that work well in my classroom.  If students are reading in groups or with partners, provide a set of focus questions to discuss while reading through the text.  Provide students with sticky notes to reflect after each chapter or page (depending on the size of the book), where they can record questions, connections, or unknown words.  I also give my students Kagan reading comprehension chips to discuss and analyze stories out loud.

Read Alouds

In my classroom, I have done read alouds in different ways, since I have taught three different grade levels.  This year, I started out the year with a fun read aloud called The Chocolate Touch.  I always try to start out the year with an entertaining chapter book that gets students motivated to read books that do not have a lot of pictures so that I can teach them how to visulaize and create images for the stories in their minds.

Throughout the year, I incorporate read alouds that go along with the theme of stories we are reading in class.  Our first Unit in reading was about friendship, so  I read the book Stuart Little to my class to tie in the theme of friendship and how it relates to other stories we have read about friendship.

I also like to give the students choices in read aloud books for the class.  If we are learning about a certain topic such as explorers, fractions, or habitats, I give the students choices in what kind of book they would prefer to listen to about that topic.  When students are provided with choices, they start to feel more involved in the read aloud process.

Creating Choices for Students in Reading Centers

Here are some helpful ways to provide choices to your students during centers, so that the routine of centers does not become monotonous:

1. When students read to self, allow them to choose books from a certain genre or books within their reading level.
2. When reading a DRA level book with the teacher, have students choose from a set of 5 different choices of books for the week.
3. In a writing center, provide choices such as journal writing, writing a story, or practicing handwriting (cursive).
4. Every week, my students focus on a Florida Center Reading Research skill such as vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.  Each week students can choose between 2 vocabulary skills that they want to focus on.
5. Game boards that go with the reading series of SRA in my classroom provide a workshop kit with different skills for the students to practice on.  Giving the students a choice of 3 different game cards such as homophones, vocabulary, and sentences allows for choice, but still focuses on the skills that we are learning for the week.

My Recommended List of Classroom Sets of Books

Based on the books that I read for my annotated bibliography and author study, I would recommend class sets of the following books:
      - The Tale of Despereaux
      - Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride
      - Crispin

The Tale of Despereaux and Mercy Watson goes for a ride are both written by the creative children's fiction writer, Kate DiCamillo.  I think these stories would appeal to kids because they contain an adventurous plot with themes that relate to adventure and belonging.  Kids could easily relate to a character in the story and make connections, as well as work on creative writing assignments about how they would react if in the character's shoes.  Adventure is also a common theme in Crispin, and I think that children would enjoy learning about the history of England in the book as well.  This book kept me engaged to find out the fate of Crispin and this would help motivate students to keep reading to solve the mystery.

Giving Students Choices in Reading

With the mandated stresses of FCAT and Common Core Standards, when is there time to provide choices in reading to our students?

Actually, the choices are out there!  As educators, it is how we differentiate to provide choices in our day to day teaching. 

Here is a list of ways to provide choices to your students in reading
 - DEAR (Provide weekly choices in what students read for enjoyment)
 - Reading Centers (Allow students to choose from a list of journal writing prompts  
    that interests them to write about)
- Students can have choices in their weekly spelling homework such as writing spelling words in sentences, in a story, ladders, ABC order, reverse ABC order, typing them on the computer, or in fancy letters.

           

A great tale about a young mountain girl who attends an Academy to become a future princess in the country of Danland.  Learning proper etiquette, mannerisms, and history of the country are just part of Miri's day to day routine at the Academy with her mentor, Olana.  There are so many unexpected turns in this book to keep you reading to find out who the prince chooses as his princess.

The following website can be viewed for literature circle discussion questions about the book: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/princess-academy-discussion-guide.

This is a great early primary book that can be used with counting in math, finding rhyming words, phrases that repeat, and making predictions.  I found this book to be very entertaining and would relate to multiple curriculum areas such as math, reading, and holidays.

Meet Kate DiCamillo

Meet the author Kate DiCamillo!  She is a great Children's Literature author, and some of her well-known books include The Tale of Despereaux, The Magician's Elephant, Louise: The Adventures of a Chicken, and Mercy Watson.  I chose this author as my author study project to learn more about her books, so that I can use reading recommendations and strategies along with her books in my classroom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyJJ1XnNy0U&feature=player_detailpage

This is a true story about the original puppeteer of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  It involves learning about pulleys and connections can be made in Science to this book.  Tony Sarg, the inventor of balloon puppets kept working to modify the balloons and was a creative inventor who became curious about how things moved at a young age.


There are great resources to use from this book from the following website: http://www.hmhbooks.com/kids/resources/BalloonsOverBroadway_ActivityKit.pdf.  You can find activities to make your own stick puppets, finger puppets, and marionettes.

This is a great book to use that overlaps in connection with Science and Social Studies.  When studying about plants in Science, this book can be used as a read aloud extension, and during Social Studies, students can learn about the geographic location of the African country of Eritrea, where the story takes place. 

      The students can also look up the websites that go with the book and write a report about what they learned from the sites as a Social Studies and Language Arts connection: http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/manzanar/default.htm and

  http://themanzanarproject.com

A mystery takes place when a former rescue dog, J.J. Tully, is convinved by chicks to help them rescue their missing siblings.  The whole story was a ploy to trick the rescue dog into going in the neighbor's house.

This is a very witty and engaging story for younger readers.  A great activity as a read aloud would be to have students work on making predictions at the end of each chpater and draw illustrations as to what they visualize from hearing the story.

 

 

 

 

This is a hilarious story about a duck helping to hide an alligator in his house for escaping from the zoo and being wanted for eating an owner's pet.  I really enjoyed this book as part of my annotated bibliography, and this book would be great to use when having your students identify examples of onomatopoeia.

I really enjoyed reading this early primary picture book as part of my annotated bibliography. 

An extension activity to go along with this story would be to identify different illustrations and discussing reality/fantasy events from the story.

This is the story about a hare that does not understand the purpose of his large feet.  Learning from his granddad, the young hare realizes that his feet can take him anywhere he wants to go in life.  Although this is a picture book for younger students, the illustrations and message in the story are underlying.  Through careful interpretation of the pictures, students can learn the importance of viewing flaws about themselves as opportunities for success.

This is a biography about Harriet Tubman escaping slavery and finding the strength through God to guide her to freedom, as well as making many trips back to the South to rescue her family and other slaves. 

A recommended reading sight for finding other books and videos about slavery and Black history: http://www.blackhistoryreview.com/book/Moses.php

I am currently reading the book "Dead End in Norvelt."  This book is definitely quircky and would appeal mostly to young adolescent boys.  It's the story about a 12 year old boy, Jack, who spends his summer grounded after getting in trouble with his parents.  He's only allowed out of the house to help out his neighbor, Miss Volker.  His job is to help her write obituaties in the town of Norvelt.  Jack starts to develop a close realtionship with Miss Volker, and his summer is not turning out so bad afterall.