Celebrating the Poetry of Paul Fleischman

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to hear celebrated author and poet Paul Fleischman speak about two big influences in his life: his father, author Sid Fleischman, and his editor, Charlotte Zolotow. My students love his poems for two voices, especially from the Newbery Award-winning Joyful Noise: poems for two voices.

Joyful Noise: poems for two voices is an incredible collection of two-voice poems about insects and their lives, and the poems are a wonderful blend of information and lyricism. It is a follow-up to I am Phoenix: poems for two voices, which contains all poems about birds. Two-voice poems are a great tool to use to build fluency with students, as the rhythm and repetition helps them understand how to read and understand the words, and the natural desire to practice and perform encourages children to read these poems out loud again and again.

Last year for our annual play performed by the first through fourth graders, we decided to use poetry as our theme. Each grade level presented works by one or two different poets, as well as a little introduction about his/her life and inspiration, and Paul Fleischman was one of the poets shared by my third graders. We presented the Water Striders poem, above, as well as the Water Boatmen. (Book Lice and the Honeybees are other perpetual favorites.)

So, at last night's talk, I was thrilled to discover that Paul Fleischman had written another poetry book, this one with poems for FOUR voices! In Big Talk: poems for four voices the poems are presented much like a musical score. You read across your colored line, and the other three voices follow below. This format allows for a variety of choral poetry combinations, including single, paired, and all four voices. I am really excited to introduce my students to this book today during Poetry Friday!

This week's Poetry Friday Roundup is being curated by Michelle at Today's Little Ditty. See the whole list of hosts at Poetry Friday by Kitlitosphere.

Anansi the Trickster, part 1

Every year, my students fall in love with Trickster Tales. This sub-genre of traditional tales never ceases to delight with its tricky heroes and unexpected twists. Since Africa is our first unit of study, Anansi is often the first trickster we meet during the course of the year. This post will provide a quick overview of the five Anansi tales retold by Eric Kimmel, and next week I will introduce Anansi stories by a variety of authors and illustrators.

Anansi Trickster Tales retold Eric Kimmel

Eric Kimmel has written a series of picture book based on African Anansi tales, which Janet Stevens illustrated. These are a delightful way to introduce your students to Anansi.

Anansi and the Talking Melon. I usually introduce my students to Anansi through his story, either this version, or through the Reading A-Z version, Anansi and the Talking Watermelon retold by Kitty Higgins and illustrated by Patrick Girouard. Greedy Anansi is busy eating melons in elephant's garden when he finds himself so stuffed that he cannot get back out. Instead, he decides to trick elephant by convincing him that he is, in fact, a talking melon. (Based on a West African folktale.)

Anansi and the Magic Stick. The plot of this story derives from a Liberian story called The Magic Hoe but it will be quite familiar to The Sorceror's Apprentice in Fantasia and Strega Nona by Tomie de Paola. Anansi kidnaps Jackal's magic stick only to find that his laziness in giving directions leads to disastrous consequences!

These last three are a bit different than the first two. Anansi is successful in Anansi and the Talking Melon and suffers no real consequences in Anansi and the Magic Stick, but in these last three tales, our trickster finds himself on the end of some tricks.

Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock is probably my favorite of the bunch. Last year I turned it into a quick Reader's Theater-style play that my third graders ended up performing in front of the whole school, and it was riot. Here, Anansi discovers a strange moss-covered rock with the power to knock its viewer unconscious, and he uses it to trick a variety of animals. But little does Anansi know that he is being observed, and he ends up being tricked himself. (No attribution to this story.)

Anansi Goes Fishing. Anansi sees his friend Turtle's success at fishing and concludes that he can trick Turtle into doing all the work. But soon Turtle agrees to "get tired," while Anansi does the work and split the jobs up that way. Students find it quite hilarious to watch Anansi get drawn deeper and deeper into Turtle's nonsense. (No attribution in this book, but a similar story, Anansi's Fishing Expedition appears in The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories and is sourced to a recording in Ghana.)

Anansi's Party Time. Anansi has decided to get even with Turtle for tricking him in the previous book and so invites Turtle to a party that is doomed to fail.What Anansi does not anticipate is Turtle "returning" the favor and inviting Anansi to a similar party. (No attribution in this book either, but a broadly similar story, Hungry Spider and the Turtle appears in The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories and was recorded by author Harold Courlander from an Ashanti in Ghana.)

Next week I will introduce some of the wide-range of other Anansi stories available in picture books and compilations suitable for children.

Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday Challenge is hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy and is a weekly roundup of educator blogs that are sharing nonfiction picture books. Click the link to check out other nonfiction posts.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? was started by Sheila at Book Journey and was adapted for children's books from pictures books through YA by Jen of Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee of Unleashing Readers. You can visit either site for a round up of blogs sharing their weekly readings and thoughts or search Twitter for #IMWAYR.

Picture Books

Picture Books Biographies about People and Trees is a text set of biographies about people who made a difference in their world by planting trees and encouraging others.

Little Elliot Big City by Mike Curato. There were lots of great posts about this book when it first came out, and I finally snagged a copy from the library. As promised, Elliot is completely adorable, and I loved the historical details in the illustrations. The story for me, though, was a little meh. Nothing new. Will be interested to see how students respond, as I am sure this will be one we will introduce for our Mock Caldecott.

Happy Birthday, Jamela! by Niki Daly. I always check out a large collection of books by Niki Daly during our Africa unit, including both his wonderful folktales and his series of Jamela books. This one we shared as a read aloud this week. Jamela is a spunky character who makes creative but impulsive decisions, sometimes with disastrous consequences, but they always work out in the end. She is a very relate-able character for my third graders, and I love sharing stories with them about other parts of the world. (Jamela lives in South Africa like Niki Daly.)

Middle Grade

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. I love this book so much. I have traditionally used this for a book club choice later in the year with my third graders, but this time we are reading it together as a class as part of the Global Read Aloud. If you haven't read this book yet, you need to. (Also, just an aside, but I shared this version of the cover on purpose. I dislike the other, because that image comes so late in the book.)

Happy Reading!

Picture Book Biographies about People and Trees

I love sharing picture book biographies with my students, as they make for great, short read alouds and often spur a lot of interesting conversations and discussions. I realized this week that several of the picture book biographies that I share with students during the year are related by a connection to trees and to nature, so I thought I would share them as a text set.

Seed by Seed: the legend and legacy of John "Appleseed" Chapman by Esme Raji Codell and illustrated by Lynne Rae Perkins. I always try to share this book with students around Johnny Appleseed's birthday (Sept. 26th). I love how the focus of this biography is on five life lessons that can be drawn from his life and example. I think this makes it easier for students to connect to the story as well as to think about how to make an impact in their own life.

The Tree Lady: the true story of how one tree-loving woman changed a city forever by H. Joseph Hopkins and illustrated by Jill McElmurry. This book is a new favorite of mine and introduces the reader to Kate Sessions and her work growing and restoring trees in early 1900s San Diego. The repetitive structure of the text (compare / contrast) makes this book ideal for reading aloud and shows off the importance of being true to yourself and not just following what everyone else is doing or saying.

  

Seeds of Change by Jen Cullerton Johnson and illustrated by Sonia Lynn Sadler, Planting the Trees of Kenya by Claire A. Nivola, and Wangari's Trees of Peace by Jeanette Winter. These three biographies  focus on the incredible work on Noble Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. I used to prefer sharing  Planting the Trees of Kenya with my students because it goes a little more in-depth about her actions and some of the difficulties she faced, but Seeds of Change is my new favorite. They are all great books and emphasize the same lesson that one committed person can make a difference in their environment.

The Mangrove Tree: planting trees to feed families (2011) by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore. This poem / narrative biography features Gordon H. Sato and his work to grove mangrove tree forests along the coast of Eritrea. It is an interesting story. The "poem" part, however, I could do without, as its "This is the house that Jack built" format really did not do anything for me or for the story. The book has a detailed author's note about Mr. Soto and his work, including web links and a bibliography.

The People Who Hugged Trees adapted by Deborah L. Rose and illustrated by Birgitta Saflund. I include this book because it is on theme, but I have some problems with it. The story details the struggle of a group of people in India 300 years ago who face off against the mighty Maharajah in an attempt to protect the trees. At the end of this picture book, they succeed and have a big celebration, but the historical note at the end reveals that in fact the protesters failed and more than 300 of them were massacred. I find the choice to change the ending of the true story odd, and I think younger kids might be very disturbed by finding out the actual truth. I do think this could make for a really interesting discussion with older students, however.

Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday Challenge is hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy and is a weekly roundup of educator blogs that are sharing nonfiction picture books. Click the link to check out other nonfiction posts.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? was started by Sheila at Book Journey and was adapted for children's books from pictures books through YA by Jen of Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee of Unleashing Readers. You can visit either site for a round up of blogs sharing their weekly readings and thoughts or search Twitter for #IMWAYR.

Other Posts This Week

We are Bloggers! My students started blogging this month, using KidBlog, and this post details how we started up with blogging.

Picture Books

Community and Culture: our read alouds from September provides a quick overview of the books we shared as a class during the first month of school.

The Story of Lightning and Thunder by Ashley Bryan. I learned about Ashley Bryan from Joyce Ray at Musings and immediately requested several of his book from our public library, as we are starting our Africa unit of study. I really liked this folktale version of the The Story of Lightning and Thunder for the story, the wonderful illustrations, and the easy, storytelling rhythm of the text.

Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and illustrated by Eric-Shabazz Larkin. My recent post about the biography and geography of food spurred several book recommendations including this one from Elisabeth at The Dirigible Plum. This real-life biography introduces Will Allen and his journey to creating and running a large urban farm in Milwaukee. A great book to make a local connection to food.

Middle Grade

Wings of Fire: the dragonet prophecy by Tui Sutherland (Book 1). My students recently recommended books to each other, and I've been trying to catch up on some of the favorites. Book 1 of the Wings of Fire series introduces the five dragonets of a supposed prophecy and their first interactions with the wide world and ongoing conflict over control. I found the book generally interesting and engaging and can see why this appeals to a wide range of students. 

Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke. Another student recommendation, this is the first in this charming graphic novel series. A lot happens in just the illustrations of this book, so you need to slow down and "read" the illustrations more than you do in some other graphic novels. This book left me with a lot of questions, as lots of characters and creatures are introduced with very little background, but perhaps those questions are what drive readers to read more? Enjoyable book.

Happy Reading!

We are Bloggers

My third graders have started blogging! As part of our efforts to connect to other students through the Global Read Aloud, I introduced the basics of blogging, and students have officially launched their own blogs via KidBlog. This post lays out the steps I took when introducing blogging to my students, as well as links to some of the many wonderful articles out there that helped me get started.

(For now, our privacy settings allow only registered members of our class to read and comment on our blogs, so I will not be including any direct links to the students' blogs. If you are a teacher of another third grade class and are interested in connecting via KidBlog, please let me know in the comments.)

Paper Blogs: an introduction to best practices for blogging

Much of the credit for encouraging me to start having students blog goes to Pernille Ripp at Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension and Franki Sibberson at Click Here Next. Both sites have incredibly useful and encouraging posts about how to get started with student blogging. (I highly recommend using some form of Technology Permission Slip with parents. I modeled mine off of Pernille Ripp's version, available here.)

Given their lead, I also started by having students write and learn how to comment using paper blogs. I designed a simple blog format (above) around the question of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I figured that this would be a topic that would give students a wide range of things to talk about and one that would encourage discussion and conversations among the comments.

Student wrote out the 'post' parts of their blogs and had the option of adding designs the border as well. The day the paper blogs we due, we all gathered around and watched this video by Mrs. Yolis's third graders on How to Write a Quality Comment (H/T Franki at Click Here Next).

This video sparked a useful conversation among my students and gave them a better sense of what blogs are and why and how to leave comments. (I think the "grammar panda" may need to make a reappearance soon. Many of my students scoffed at the need to be reminded to use capitalization and ending punctuation when commenting, but then many got so excited while blogging that they often forgot.)

Students left their paper blogs out at their spots and armed themselves with post-its for commenting, once the blogs ran out of space. We rotated around the room quietly, allowing everyone time to read and thoughtfully respond to their classmates' posts. I was very impressed by the quality of their comments and how thoughtful and encouraging many of them were to each other and their ambitions for the future.

Launching KidBlog

The next week, we kicked off our first actual blog posts by sharing book recommendations. Students were given a handout with the basic outline for writing a book recommendation, as well as a step-by-step introduction to using KidBlog. I also posted both the outline and an example book recommendation post on my KidBlog account. An email was also sent home to parents inviting them to set up parental accounts and leave comments too.

It took a few tries before most students were comfortable navigating to KidBlog, finding their accounts, entering their passwords, and knowing where to go next to work on their posts or to start reading and writing comments, but by the end of the week, many students were confidently zipping through, exploring the customization options, and volunteering to help each other solve problems.

The book recommendations were an immediate hit, and we quickly started a new bucket in our classroom library to house copies of books that had been recommended. (I also have a growing list of other titles to try and add to our collection.) Students were very enthusiastic about seeking out their classmates recommendations or sharing their enthusiasm for books they had already read. I think this effort will really help us continue to grow and see ourselves as a community of readers too.

Looking forward to seeing how we continue to grow in our "virtual" community as we learn more about blogging and about each other.

Have any questions or advice on student blogging? Please share in the comments below.

Community and Culture: our read alouds from September

Every month of the school year in third grade, we will have a different theme to consider and discuss in our read aloud books. Our first theme for the school year, during August and September, is that of Community and Culture.

We spent a lot of time this month talking about what it means to be a community, the characteristics of the communities that we read about, and how we can be a more caring and welcoming community. We also talked about the ideas behind culture and how communities are often made up of people from a wide variety of cultures.

While not every book we share together needs to conform tightly to our given theme, many do. Other books we read this month related to our Geography topic in Social Studies and our writing unit of personal narrative stories. You can read more about all of the individual titles from this month below.

Community and Culture

Everybody Cooks Rice by Norah Dooley. My favorite first day of school read focuses on the people and cultures in one small neighborhood, highlighting the commonalities in the rice-based meals being prepared.

One Green Apple by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Ted Lewin. Powerful story of a new girl's experience in her first days of school in her new country, America. Important lessons about acceptance and making others feel welcome. Read more in my summary for the Top 10 Picture Books to Read Aloud.

My Name is Sangoel by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed. This book touches on many of our themes through the year, including community, world-wide connections, and the importance of honoring cultures. Sangoel and his family have moved to the US from Sudan, and he is having trouble getting people to say his name correctly. (We always follow this one up by making our own name rebuses.)

Ish by Peter Reynolds. Ramon learns the freedom in seeing his art as "ish" instead of perfect. A great one for discussing how to be a welcoming and encouraging community.

This is a Moose by Richard T. Morris and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld. A great book about the power of being yourself - even if "yourself" is a moose who wants to be an astronaut ...

The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi. When Unhei moves to the US from Korea, she is frustrated by everyone's inability to pronounce her name and decides she wants an Americanized name instead. Her class cooperates by offering their suggestions in a name jar on her desk.

Seed by Seed: the legend and legacy of John "Appleseed" Chapman by Esme Raji Codell and illustrated by Lynne Rae Perkins. I always try to share this touching biography of Johnny Appleseed around his birthday of Sept. 26th. I love how the author draws out and focuses on five "life lessons" from his story and asks readers to apply them to their own lives.

My Librarian is a Camel: how books around brought to children around the world by Margriet Ruurs. This collection of unusual and amazing libraries showcases the innovative ways children get books around the world. Read a longer review in my article Around the World in a Single Book.

Geography Books

Mapping Penny's World by Loreen Leedy. Great book for introducing maps and basic geography concepts. Always have my student do the same assignment as the students in the book - creating their own map of a favorite place.

A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme by J. Patrick Lewis. This is a great collection of geography poems that we use in our geography unit. Read more about Teaching Geography with Poetry.

Writing Personal Narratives and Mentor Texts

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. Love, love, love this powerful Caldecott-winning picture book. We use it to talk about "small moment" stories and just listen in awe to Jane Yolen's gift for words and description.

Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon. This book is a great one for writing workshop, as it tells the relate-able story of Ralph, who simply cannot write a personal narrative, because nothing ever happens in his life.

It's been a busy month for read alouds! We are excited to be joining the Global Read Aloud next month with The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and beginning our new monthly theme of Characters and Point-of-View.