How often does your bedtime routine involve reading aloud nonfiction?  I know what you are thinking.  Nonfiction can be so boring! But, not so fast.  There are wonderful examples of nonfiction texts out there now that are engaging to read.  Not only that, but nonfiction read alouds are a perfect opportunity to share with children the differencesbetween fiction and nonfiction.

A few ways to use a read aloud to discuss differences between nonfiction and fiction:

• Talk about the table of contents.  How does a table of contents help a reader locate information?

Often times, my son will pick a nonfiction book for me to read aloud.  Instead of reading the whole book, because let’s face it who has time for that, I will read him the title of each section of the table of contents.  He will pick a few topics that he would like to hear about and that is what we read that night.

• Discuss the index.  How can using the index make your nonfiction reading experience easier?  Do you have to read the book from cover to cover if you are looking for specific information?

• How do photographs enhance the reading experience?

So when should you start to read aloud nonfiction to your child?  I started reading aloud nonfiction to my son when he was 2 or 3, but he made it easy for me.  He would choose nonfiction books to read aloud.  Boys tend to lean toward nonfiction more readily than girls do.  That is not to say that I haven’t read nonfiction to my daughter (who is now 3) because I have, though not as much as I have read to my son.  Typically, I let my children lead me to the nonfiction.  I tend to find books on whatever topic they are interested in at the time.

A few months back, I wrote a guest post at No Time for Flashcards about incorporating nonfiction into the lives of preschoolers.  Check it out for additional ideas on how to incorporate nonfiction into your family reading.

If you are interested in ways to bring nonfiction into the fabric of your family, check back soon!  For the remainder of the month, I plan to focus on ways to enhance our family lives with nonfiction including reviewing nonfiction books!

What are some ways you incorporate nonfiction into your family’s reading repertoire?  Do your children have favorite nonfiction texts they ask you to read?

Conclusions: The data indicate that both SLI and N-SLI represent significant risk factors for all the outcomes identified. There is a strong case for the identification of these children and the development of appropriate interventions. The results are discussed in terms of the measures used and the implications for practice.

from the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research

Some kids love story time, others have a hard time staying focused. Not only is this distracting, but it can make story time a negative experience for everyone involved.

To get and hold the attention of a variety of different learners, try adding rhythm to your story time. I don’t mean sing story-songs (though if you’re comfortable doing that, go for it!) Rhythm exhists in the words we speak. Just make a special effort to bring out the rhythm that is already in the text of a lot of great read-aloud books. There are so many benefits, incluing:

• It emphasizes syllables in words to improve language acquisition
• It encourages controlled movement and coordination for kinesthetic learners
• It brings a musical element to reading for those with a strong musical intelligence
• I promotes the sense of being part of a larger group as children clap or move together to a rhythm
• It enhances children’s understanding story sequencing

Some simple steps you can take to bring rhythm to story time include:

• Choose stories with strong rhythm or repetition in the text such as Dr. Seuss books, I Went Walking, by Sue Williams or Brown Bear, by Bill Martin Jr.
• Encourage children to clap out the syllables of repetitive text or common phrases
• Incorporate simple rhythm instruments (rhythm sticks, maracas, tone blocks) to emphasize parts of the story such as the “clip clop” of the hoofs of the Three Billy Goats Gruff

Many of the language activities in our Activity Binders for preschool include a lot of ideas for bringing rhythm and music into reading language learning. I’ve noticed a big improvement in children’s language skills and ability to retell a story when these techniques are used.

 by Esther Jantzen, guest poster 

Kids have lots of different reasons for asking questions. Sometimes they want attention or they want to argue with the family rules. Sometimes they are seeking new information and understanding, and those are excellent questions to encourage.

The trick is to notice thoughtful questions when they are asked, and praise children for them with a response like, “That’s a great question!” If you can answer those questions right away, do that. But sometimes you don’t know the answer or the timing is not appropriate. Be sure to remember those questions and answer them later. Here is a way to do this:

1. One of the best ways to get your child to ask good questions is to ask thoughtful questions yourself.

Here are some examples.

Ask “I wonder” questions:

• How does it work?
• What came before this? Why?  
• Ask “Do I believe it?” questions:
• Where did this information come from?
• Is it based on facts?

Ask values questions:

• Is this honest?
• Is this helpful?
• Does this hurt anyone?
• Is it fair?

Ask questions that encourage creativity:

• What can we do with this information?
• How could we solve that problem?

2. When your children ask thoughtful questions like these above, praise them with a comment like, “That is an interesting thing to wonder about!”

3. This activity can be done any time, anywhere. The more often you do it, the more comfortable both you and the children will become, and the better questions you will each ask.

Esther Jantzen, Ed.D, is a mother, an educator and the author of Plus It! How to Easily Turn Everyday Activities into Learning Adventures for Kids available at www.plusitbook.com and the Way to Go! Family Learning Journal available through www.jantzenbooks.com

“As regards Dumfriesshire, whither both fame and notoriety had preceded the newcomer, the figure of a poetical farmer was rather an object of suspicious curiosity than of neighbourliness.”

Thus wrote Catherine Carswell of the poet Robert Burns when he took over the tenancy of Ellisland Farm near Dumfries in 1788. Fortunately, neighbourliness and hospitality were much more in evidence from the good people of Dumfries and Galloway when I went visiting them this week. First stop, on Tuesday, was the very attractive new Castle Douglas Primary School on Tuesday (I’m sure the heating in your lovely games hall will be working again soon!), to work with primary staff from across the region, before moving on the following day to contribute to the staff development day at Lockerbie Academy, where the secondary staff  and their primary colleagues had come together to discuss Literacy Across Learning, and to begin to lay the foundations for a cluster-wide approach to literacy, which will ensure that their pupils are well prepared to deal with the complexities of life in the 21st century. What impressed me most when talking to the cross-curricular literacy group was the willingness of the staff to get to grips with some very challenging issues, for the sake of the common goal of providing the best possible experience for every young person in their care. I thoroughly enjoyed both sessions and appreciated the very positive response to the workshops.

One promise I made - which is a pleasure to keep, as I think it demonstrates the fact that developing common reading strategies which apply to all media is the way forward - is this one. In Tuesday’s session, after some input from me on reading strategies, the staff were issued with a text which is fairly commonly used in upper primary or lower secondary schools – A Case of Murder by Vernon Scannell - and given the following task:

 “Rather than asking pupils to answer a set of questions on the poem, how many alternative lessons could you come up with, using the seven reading strategies, to develop and demonstrate an understanding of the poem and poetry in general?” 

The results, not surprisingly, were highly creative, rich and varied, so I have collated them (all 33 of them) below. Feel free to add more!

Thirty-Three Ways to Promote Close Reading of A Case of Murder by Vernon Scannell

 Predicting

• Provide title and first line. Discuss what might follow.
• Read up to ‘he loathed all that’. Write and/or discuss what might happen.
• Provide title and last line. Predict what happens.
• Read poem up to ‘under the stair’. Write possible ending before reading actual ending.

Asking Questions

• Groups generate own questions which arise from the poem. Groups swap questions for further discussion.
• Ask pupils to discuss what one single question they would ask each of the characters.
• Use ‘surprises’ grid to list all the surprises which occur.

Making Comparisons

• Talk about own ‘guilty secrets’ (could be risky!)
• List the stories/characters in fiction this reminds you of.
• Find other poems/stories with the same theme and compare against agreed criteria.

Looking for Patterns

• List and count the words which are used more than once
• Use Wordle (www.wordle.net) to re-order the poem and pick out most significant words
• Find all the rhyming words.
• Use highlighter pens to highlight adjectives (descriptive words)

Making Pictures

• Draw the cat. Draw the boy.
• Storyboard the poem in 6 pictures.
• Create cartoon version of the poem using online cartoon maker such as Comicbrush.
• Draw character MindMaps for the boy and the cat.
• Draw the murder scene.
• Draw something to represent each of the emotions found in the poem. Discuss most appropriate colour for each.

Summarising

• Write the boy’s diary/blog entry for that day.
• Issue the poem with the title removed. Ask pupils to write the best title. Discuss and compare with original.
• Write the story of the poem in 6 words/50 words/140 characters
• Write the newspaper headline as it might appear in the local paper.
• Write the newspaper story.
• Write the poem as a story in your own words.

Evaluating

• Make a list of the excuses the boy might use for the cat’s disappearance.
• Conduct the mock trial of the boy for his crime.
• Write an alternative ending (in the style of the author?)
• Stage mini-debate on the reasons for writing the poem.
• Write the story from the cat’s point of view.

Finally, make a podcast or videocast of the poem. Rehearse and READ IT ALOUD with as much fluency, understanding and expression as possible!

Figures released today say that one in five school children in Scotland have a problem with reading and writing. This means that our schools are failing our children and if this is the case then how do we solve this problem? Many parents have to work and simply do not have time to educate their children themselves, that’s why we send them to school. But how do we know what school is the right one and how good an education will our children get at these schools?

Apparently one million Scots have a problem with literacy. Does this mean that this problem has been bubbling away for years, waiting to be exposed? How can this problem have went unnoticed for so long and if parents are having problems with literacy, how can they be expected to help their children progess with reading and writing?

I also have to ask whether these figues take into consideration those children suffering from dyslexia? If so, then should this be an issue that we are tackling also, and are the one in ten Scots that are suffering from the disease recieving the proper help?

It’s all very well releasing these figures and bringing the problem to the public’s attention, but unless the problem is tackled immediately I fear we will be failing not only a generation of children, but a generation of Scots.

30th January – 6th February 2010

A decade in celebration of storytelling!
Once a upon a time an idea was proposed for a week to highlight the art of storytelling – not just for the young but for all ages who share the creations of thought and the creativity of imagination.

Douglas: The more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills; http://j.mp/8FDmeg

Li-Ann went for her usual once-a-month therapies at NUH – PT (Physiotherapy) and OT (Occupational Therapy) on Monday. We have noticed an interesting pattern – whoever takes LA for therapy first will have to get her warmed up. Hence, the next therapist will benefit more from LA’s willing co-operation. The good thing is that every month (I happen to notice), the OT and PT appointments seem to ‘take turns’ being first or second. At least that’s fair to the therapists. Otherwise I really sympathize with them. Regardless of all these, overall, LA is more motivated now and will ‘play’ with them. To prepare her, I will tell her, while on our way, that she’s there to play and also she should listen to them etc etc. So far so good. In general, with those who are familiar, she is more willing to communicate and will even attempt to initiate interaction.

What’s new that Monday was that she would see the ST (Speech Therapist) for the first time. The good thing was the appointment was the LAST one – so we figured she’ll be SUPER warmed up by then. In fact it wasn’t too bad for someone she’s seeing for the first time. She was very quiet when told to do tasks and she responded very softly at first. But she opened up when the ST brought out the BUBBLES!! That did the trick. After that she was asking and speaking and playing in her usual VERY LOUD voice and it was amplified coz we were behind closed doors. I had to put my fingers to my ears, really. I didn’t know she was SO crazy about bubbles. But I’m so happy The ST commented that for LA’s age, her pronunciation was very clear and she knew what LA was talking about. From the ST’s observation about the way I talked to LA, she thought it was very good as I spoke standard English, using complex words and sentences, and the best part was – LA comprehended me perfectly. So the ST concluded that LA’s receptive and expressive languages were excellent and she doesn’t really have any problems. She went on to say that she was so happy to say that of a child. Oh I am so so so so so (sorry, wish I can emphasize this more) excited and encouraged and relieved!! If you are a parent, you’ll know what I mean. Such kind words really warm my heart. This ST has been very patient and understanding. I thank God LA is seeing her.

Now that the OT, PT and ST are all under one roof, they can put their heads together to think of how to ‘play’ with LA better so that all will look forward to an enjoyable time of ‘playing’ together.

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Proverbs 16:24

Following the success of last year’s initiative customers at Blackwell’s book shop on South Bridge can once again support Edinburgh’s most vulnerable children through an exciting initiative, The Children’s Book Tree.
Blackwell’s are working with City of Edinburgh Council, Edinburgh Women’s Aid and Edinburgh Young Carers to help make Christmas a little better for disadvantaged local children. The scheme means that children who will be living in difficult circumstances at Christmas, who have caring responsibilities beyond their years or those who won’t be at home for Christmas and will have few personal possessions, will each receive a book to treasure.

The scheme is coordinated by volunteer Lizzie Poulton who explains: “The Children’s Book Tree is different from other charity donation schemes as each child has had the opportunity to say what their interests are and what kind of books appeal to them. Customers can then choose a book for that child, knowing that it will not only be a present they’ll really appreciate, but that books and stories can inspire, reassure and provide escape for children in difficult personal circumstances.”

The children have each put their Christmas wishes for a book on a gift tag which is then hung on a Christmas tree in store. All customers need to do is choose a book they think that child will really appreciate, from dinosaurs to fairies, Jacqueline Wilson to James and the Giant Peach. Staff in the children’s department will be more than happy to help people with their selections if they are unsure. The customer than pays for that book and leaves it with staff in store who will ensure that it gets wrapped, before being distributed to the right child for Christmas day.

The Children’s Book Tree is now in store and will be until Sunday the 20th of December. Please pop by, select a tag and buy a book for a child. If you are in a rush ready-selected books with labels are placed beneath the tree or if you are unable to drop in the shop you can call Blackwell where a member of staff will be happy to select and take payment for a book over the telephone.

The tree has only been in store since 25th November and is already a success as customers shopping for Christmas presents are taking a moment to buy an extra present for a child who will be spending Christmas away from their family, in a refuge or caring for others. One child who requested a book by popular teen author Louise Rennison, will be in for an extra treat as the author herself purchased the book for that child and added a personal note, when visiting Blackwell’s this week. 

Aye, it takes me back.

Enjoy.

Carrie Donovan – cdonovan@indiana.edu

Laurel Cornell – cornell@indiana.edu

Visual representations on paper and in one’s mind

Creating visual representations initiates a recursive process whereby the learner spatializes an idea, which enables deeper reflection and perhaps a greater understanding.

Many ways of describing the idea of visual learnging:

Search Terms in Lit Review:

“learner generated drawing”

“self generated images”

“mental representation”

Information Literacy: Scaffolded

• Research with instructor’s specifications
• Create a databas of relevant information
• Reflect on Search process/results
• Use of both popular and scholarly sources

Initial Lesson Plan (2007)

• Concept Mapping
• Visualization of the research process
• visually-enhanced research tools

Revised Lesson Plan (2009)

• searching for data
• information evaluation
• data visualization

Quintura.com

Raw data can be communicated in meaningful ways with visual representation

wolframalpha.com

simplymaps.com

“What they needed help with was how to get to data and statistics and how to make sense of that information and how to situate it in their own brains” Carrie Donovan

When you draw during instruction, the students get to see the process and development of a concept or model.

alphaworks.ibm.com

inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org

flowingdata.com

infosthetics.com

inspiration – visual tools

freemind.sourceforge.net

Hans Rosling on TED – a good example of visual representation

Visual understanding environment – Tufts

sketchcast.com

      The Big Read is accepting applications from nonprofit organizations to conduct month-long, community-wide reads between September 2010 and June 2011.

      The Big Read is a national program designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture.   Organizations selected to participate in The Big Read will receive a grant ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, access to online training resources, educational and promotional materials, inclusion of your organization and activities on The Big Read Web site, and the prestige of participating in a highly visible national program.   To download the Guidelines & Application Instructions visit The Big Read Web site.   Questions? Call Arts Midwest at 612.238.8010 or email TheBigRead@artsmidwest.org (2)

The Library will host a Holiday Gathering for all of our volunteer tutors on Wednesday December 9, 6 – 8 pm. Desserts and coffee will be served. This gathering has always been a wonderful celebration of all your accomplishments so we look forward to seeing you all there! Please RSVP to Melanie by Monday, December 7 at 626-256-8272 or literacyservices@ci.monrovia.ca.us

Nancy Evans is a teacher-librarian in London, Ontario. She sent me a thank you note recently that made my day and she’s given me permission to post it here, along with the accompanying photos.

I wanted to sincerely thank you for sharing time with us. Our students are all in a buzz this week as I follow-up with them. You truly connected with our children on many levels and the common thread that keeps coming through is that you cared, you listened, you truly answered their questions and you inspired the creative juices in the young minds of today and the creative thinkers of tomorrow.

One of the reasons this note meant so much to me is because my author visits with kids are just that – visits. I don’t sing or dance or do magic tricks. I have no high-tech visual aids. It’s just me and my books and a group of kids in a classroom or library. That’s the way it’s been for over 25 years now. With invitations to visit schools less plentiful than they used to be, I began wondering recently if I should be jazzing up my presentations. One writer-friend suggested I do up a power-point presentation. Nancy’s letter made me think maybe it’s just fine to keep doing what I do to inspire kids (or re-inspire them) to read more good stories and write some of their own, too.

The letter continues, referring to my signing her copy of Red Is Best from its first print run, artwork some of the students have been doing based on an unpublished story I read them, and eventually coming to:

Find attached a few photos of your visit with us for you to enjoy & re-live our morning together.

Thank you, Nancy Evans, for helping the teachers at Blessed Kateri prepare so well for my visit there. Thanks also to the B. K. students for giving me a morning I’m happy to remember. Read on!

A supply of columned paper encourages children to draw the steps in how to make things.  These can be used as directions or recipes by other children.

Literacy

Graph by: timba, via our Graph Jam builder.

This year Wombat is old enough to part in the nativity play, ‘so with his heart full of hope and his head full of dreams, he hurried along to the auditions.’ It’s hard to find a part that’s just right for him and when all the parts have been handed out, he’s a very sad wombat indeed. Everyone crowds around to comfort him but then Bilby has a brilliant idea.

This picture book is a favourite at our house. And the good news is – we have one copy of Wombat Divine to give away! To enter, tell us how you heard about Soup Blog by leaving a comment in the comments box for this post. We will draw a winner at random on 10 December 2009 and ask the winner to contact us with their posting address.

Wombat Divine by Mem Fox, illustrated by Kerry Argent, Omnibus Books for Scholastic Australia, ISBN 9781862918412

This book was selected for review from the Editor’s own collection but we also received a review copy – the prize in the giveaway.

This week we started to look at Journalistic writing.  At school each week we get First News for Kids.  We started out by recalling the features of a newspaper report, before looking at a number of articles within the First News papers.  Once we were happy with what was in a newspaper report – Mr Sale informed us of the 5 W’s

WHAT?

WHEN?

WHERE?

WHO?

WHY?

As a journalist writes a report then need to try and include enough information so that he reader could answer those 5 questions.  We decided to have a look at the articles we had to see if this was true.

We soon discovered that most articles were full of information, however a number of the reports could not answer all 5 of our questions – in particular when?

A recommended site to read a british newspaper online

Today – we looked at the above mentioned site – we selected a story in one newspaper and then selected another paper, tried to find the same story in another paper – we then compared the 2 stories using the 5 W’s as questions to gather information from the reports.

The shape of the pitcher and the water in it flashed across my mind’s eye as I walked into the staff room and I thought, “How nice, a fish bowl on the staff room table, how calming…”  But it wasn’t a fish bowl;  it was a pitcher of water set on the table with a stack of paper cups because there were guests – lots of guests!  Today was my day to be video-taped and interviewed as a studio classroom teacher – meaning – my classroom was to be a fish bowl and I was the fish!!  

I have known about this day since early October but I really didn’t pull plans together for my lesson until the week before Thanksgiving.  It has been hectic with parent/teacher conferences but I had a vague idea of what I wanted some help with.  Over the holiday I sent off my lesson plan to David Matteson, who was to be my mentor in this process.  I had a worksheet to fill out which helped focus my thinking by asking me to name my intent and what I knew about my students and their writing efforts.  My students have become fairly successful in drawing people to begin their stories but only a few of them add more details to help tell their stories.  I wanted to model a story for my students where I demonstrated setting, event and action because I have noticed the impact of my modeling on my students writing.  The second part of the lesson would be conferring with students as they were writing in their journals.  This was where I really wanted to see David in action.

David led me and the participating staff through a pre-brief process and then we went into my classroom where I did the lesson with half of my class while the other half was in PE.  Then the groups switched places and I repeated the lesson.  I thought I might learn “on-the-fly” and be able to do things differently the second time around but I was really too nervous to do any real thinking and ended up not changing much the second time around.  Because of that I’m especially thankful for the debrief session afterwards where David asked me how I thought things went, the group gave feedback and we summed up the important learnings of the experience.

The story I told was about going for a walk in the rain with my dog and about how I walked around the puddles while my dog splashed through all them all.  Of course my dog came home very wet.  My learning about my story modeling is: my simple picture was successful and the simple story line was one that the children could respond and relate to;  the kids really liked thinking about my dog getting wet in puddles.  Something I would do differently the next time is – simplify the sentence I choose to tell the story – i.e. “Sasha splashed in the puddles and got wet.”  It was also suggested that I conclude my story with a “cartoon-like” ending with me coming home dry under my umbrella only to have my wet dog shake all over me.  (That would be a great revision – next chapter – writing lesson to do!)

David and I worked side-by-side conferring with the kids as they worked in their journals.  I am eager to see the video because I missed some of what he was doing while I was working with students.  He is very direct with the children, asking them pointedly about their stories, pinpointing details that can be intensified through illustration to become key narrative elements in a story. 

Sometimes David named an idea and then helped the children create the image in their work.  (I have taped an arrow pointing to the castle additions that David helped draw in for a student.)  He constantly asked the child to repeat the story and explained during our debrief that this helps him stay tuned in to whether the student is maintaining an interest and ownership of the story or not. David also labeled the characters the students had drawn as a way to help embed sight words or high-interest words into their writing.  I’ve always struggled about whether to write the child’s name or “me” next to their drawings and David explained that by writing “me” it becomes a word they learn to recognize as well as their names.

In the afternoon, the PreK and K teachers met together and reviewed journal work by both grade levels.  We used a writing continuum to sort the student’s writing into low, medium, and high quality work.  The single criteria we used for this first sorting was on the drawings themselves, whether the student demonstrated fine motor control and defined figures. It was not a criteria I would have named as essential but David emphasized that by this time of year, the students should have mastered this. I have to agree in reviewing the journals that I would have expected the students at the K level to be drawing figures more successfully than many of them were.  If my students continue at the pace they are now they will be well on their way along the continuum. 

David complemented me on the work I’ve done with the students so far in that they are pretty successful in their figure drawing.  I can see how I need to continue this emphasis and help my students consistently draw bodies and refine their motor skills.  By including more hand-over-hand work and directly prodding my students to put in essential details, their stories should become more memorable for them to retell – which is my goal – to increase their oral language.  David emphasizes that this is all about building comprehension – his quote for the day – Comprehension is a life skill!