Sunday Silliness

It's that time of the year again. Time for holiday greetings.

We're celebrating two holidays today: Report Cards Are Done (a holiday celebrated by teachers around the world), and Elf Yourself (a holiday brought to you by OfficeMax).

CHEERS!

(If you're feeling grumpy today, you can Scrooge Yourself here.)

Word Work

I'm always looking for fun, engaging, motivating ways for my fourth graders to build up their knowledge of the way words are built -- roots, prefixes, suffixes, and even the little parts that make rhymes, like -at, and -up that make cat and pup.

This week, I tried out this game, Eight Letters In Search of a Word, with my students. I was worried that they would get frustrated, and some did, but because they have grown up on Nintendo and Xbox and Game Boy, they had no problem with running out of time and trying again. They worked to beat their own high scores, they were realistic about low scores when they got a tough set of letters, and when one student figured out the "big word," a new standard was set for ALL of the students (a REAL standard set by the students, not by some governmental committee...but don't get me started). They got really good at finding every variation possible on a small word by substituting consonants, they were smart about using s to make every plural possible, and they worked -ed and -ing for all they were worth when they got those letter combinations. Because all the letters given can ultimately make up an 8-letter word, there was even a little vocabulary development thrown in. When you play this game, you might think it is too hard for 9 and 10 year olds. That is, however, precisely why they liked it so much. It was hard. They had to work for their success. They knew they earned it when they got a high score. And those times when they got the "big word?" Priceless.

Next week, we're going to see how much rice we can donate through the United Nations to help end world hunger by learning new vocabulary words. At Free Rice, you donate 20 grains of rice for every vocabulary word you get right. As you play, the game automatically levels the words you get -- if you get words right, you get harder words, if you miss words, you get easier words. I'm not sure how this will work with my students. Just like we did with 8 Letters, we will play together first, with my computer hooked up to the class TV. I think we can have some great conversations about root words and related words that can help us make a smart guess about the words. Stay tuned for a report on how this goes in my classroom. In the meantime, how much rice did you donate today?

Poetry Friday: New Poetry Book

"Have you watched the fairies when the rain is done
Spreading out their little wings to dry them in the sun?
I have, I have!
Isn't it fun?"

This is the beginning of a poem by Rose Fyleman that is part of a new collection of fairy poems. I just picked up a copy of IF YOU SEE A FAIRY RING: A RICH TREASURY OF CLASSIC FAIRY POEMS illustrated by Susan Lockheart. It is an interesting combo for a poetry book. The book will definitely appeal to my readers who love the new fairy tales and stories out there. It is such a phenomenon in my class! When I opened the book, I realized that many of the poems were written by classic poets like William Shakespeare. I was thrilled to see one by Laura Ingalls Wilder too. Some are excerpts from longer poems which is a nice idea too.

There is something about the illustrations and the way that the words are displayed on the page that make this book one that I am sure my 3rd and 4th graders will pick up. The watercolor illustrations include several "magic windows" that change as the page is turned--showing a different scene from the book. A nice way to get them into more classical poetry, I think.

Because of the window illustrations, this is a big book. Large in size, and thick. But not too big. A fun size for a poetry book.

Perfect timing for a book like this.


Round up is at Two Writing Teachers.

Three Holiday Classics

...and MotherReader's November Carnival of Children's Literature -- The Tips Edition.

Thanks for the gift of knowledge, MotherReader!

Princess Thinking

On the plane home from NYC, I read several articles in the newest issue of Newsweek. I was particularly intrigued by the one called "Princess Power". It was pretty interesting--seems Disney's is marketing to a new crowd with its Disney Princess things. Not only do they want little girls to get into princess things, but they will be marketing to middle class women well beyond their teens. I have not seen the new movie "Enchanted" yet but would like to soon. It is part of the whole princess expansion--sounds like a fun movie that spoofs several of the fairy tale events in a way that gives more strength to the protagonist.

I like fairy tales--always have. But I have always been bothered by the shallowness of the princesses in the ways that they are portrayed. Seems a bit crazy. But seems they are doing something about it.

So I picked up Cynthia Rylant's new book WALT DISNEY'S CINDERELLA. I was shocked to see Cynthia Rylant's name on this new book. Really, she is the last person that I thought would write a version of this fairy tale. But, then I read the book and realized that she is the perfect person for this! It may be my favorite fairy tale now! Somehow Rylant has been able to retell this story with her own voice, staying true to strength and love and the tradition of Cinderella. The language she uses reminds me of the words that make VAN GOGH CAFE one of my all time favorites. This new version is illustrated by the original illustrations done by Mary Blair at Disney. All but a few of the illustrations are from the Walt Disney Library.

Rylant starts the story off like this:

"This is a story about darkness and light, about sorrow and joy, about something lost and something found. This is a story about Love."

and I loved this line:

"One day into these lives came something unexpected, something momentous. It was news which would affect the destiny of each of them in ways none could yet imagine."

and this one:

"The prince had no wife because he had not yet fallen in love. Any young maiden in the kingdom could have been his, for he was brave and kind and destined to be king. But of all the girls he had ever known or seen, not one touched his heart. Not one moved him."

and there are so many more lines that I love.

I love the way Cynthia Rylant retells this story. How she tells the story of Cinderella and the prince falling in love. It is totally true to the story and totally true to Cynthia Rylant.

A huge hit. I love it more and more every time I read it.
Maybe Cynthia Rylant will rewrite all of the fairy tales in a way that will make me want to share them with my daughters. I am a huge Disney fan and a huge Rylant fan. The combination makes me happy. And if Disney is going to market to the 40 year old Moms out there, I guess this is the way to go.

The Sisters' Newly Designed Website

If you love "The Sisters" (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) who are the authors of THE DAILY 5, you must visit their newly designed website! I just spent quite a while on it. And like Gail and Joan, it is packed with information and it is lots of fun! They have book recommendations, favorite teaching tools, music they use in their classrooms, information on the DAILY 5, CAFE Assessment and more.

If you are a primary teacher and don't know The Sisters, you will want to.

I just spent lots of time browsing their new site and realized I had to share it with someone! (The graph with the Shrinky Dinks may be my favorite thing-of-today.)

Enjoy!

My NCTE Purchases

I am finally home from NCTE. What a great convention! I learned lots and connected with lots of friends. And I came home with a HUGE bag of books. I promised my class that I'd pick up books and I really lucked out this year. On Sunday of the convention each year, the exhibitors have great sales. So I picked up some older and some new titles. Here are some that I wanted to share.

CHESTER by Melanie Watt is a pretty hysterical new book. Melanie Watt begins to tell the story of her pet mouse but Chester, the cat, interferes with the story. Great humor! (Melanie Watt will be at the Dublin Literacy Conference in February!)

Anthony Browne has a new picture book out called MY BROTHER. The book shares all of the ways that his brother is "cool". He does this with words and great illustrations. Labels really add to each illustration. I have been collecting books on different ways authors write about people so I was happy to add this to my collection.

Something new to add to the SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES--THE CHRONICLES OF SPIDERWICK: A GRAND TOUR OF THE ENCHANTED WORLD NAVIGATED BY THIMBLEWICK is a huge book (a scrapbook) filled with letters, photos and artifacts from the mansion. This one will be fun for students to browse--I think it will be one that would be best after having read the entire series. A pretty fun book with lots to absorb.

I picked up VENOM by Marilyn Singer. It is a pretty big nonfiction book about poisonous animals. It has great photos and is organized by the places you find each particular type of venom. Singer's writing has great humor and her headings are definitely some that can be studied when learning about creative nonfiction writing. Her section on poisonous spiders is titled "A Few Spiders Miss Muffet Should Avoid".

I was thrilled to meet Michale Buckley, author of The Sisters Grimm. A new, fifth in the series, book is out. It is called Magic and Misdemeanor. And it sounds like there are more to come!

I picked up a series that I read about on Planet Esme. There are 5 books in the KEEKER series-a series about a girl and her horse. I am always looking for good new, early chapter books series and this one is perfect. Each book is about 50ish pages long. There are simple illustrations on each page and the stories are perfect for 2-4th graders. I think it will be a big hit since I have so many students who love horses.

I had to pick up THE HOLLY JOLIDAY by Megan McDonald. I haven't read it but it is filled with lots of great color illustrations. It is the first book featuring Judy and Stink. I am happy to see this and hope that she writes more that include both of these characters.

I am always looking for fun, new wordless picture books. So I bought a copy of BOW-WOW BUGS A BUG-- a pretty funny wordless picture book with great, bold illustrations and a great story about a fun dog. Hopefully we'll see more of him soon.

There are others but these are my highlights. I know once I get them to school, I won't be able to get my hands on them again for a while:-)

Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
illustrated by Sonia Long
Amulet Books, 2007
2007 Cybils Graphic Novel nominee

Library copy. Due today. No renewal possible, which means someone has it reserved. I hope the person who has it renewed is a high school student who desperately needs to read Shakespeare in manga in order to access and comprehend this play. Better yet, I hope the person who has renewed it is a high school English teacher who is gathering all possible versions of Romeo and Juliet in order to meet the needs of every learner in her/his class.

It is what the title says it is: Romeo and Juliet in manga. The setting is present day Tokyo, where two teenagers, Romeo and Juliet, fall in love. Their rival families are still at war. But Romeo is a rock idol, and Juliet is a Shibuya girl (a Japanese "Goth Valley Girl"). Tybalt is tattooed with dragons and Mercutio has dredlocks. Friar John and Friar Laurence are Shinto monks.

Shakespeare's exact words are in speech bubbles rather than lines of poetry, while the story is played out in the classic conventions of manga (as defined by Scott McCloud in his book MAKING COMICS): the iconic characters with simple emotive faces; a strong sense of place; frequent use of wordless panels that prompt readers to "assemble scenes from fragmentary visual information"; small real world details; "various emotionally expressive effects such as expressionistic backgrounds, montages and subjective caricatures"; and "subjective motion -- using streaked backgrounds to make readers feel like they were moving WITH a character, instead of just watching motion from the sidelines."

If you think you know Shakespeare, you must check this out and think again. If you want to know Shakespeare, you should check this out because it will give you a different way into the canon of English Literature. And if you need to know Shakespeare for the test on Monday, this seems like a much better way than CliffsNotes to get a unique understanding of the story.

Poetry Friday -- A Noiseless Patient Spider

"It launched forth filament, filament, filament..."
First, I scanned my shelf of poetry and decided on Walt Whitman. I chose the Nature Company collection in the cardboard sleeve, illustrated with provocative black and white photos.

"It launched forth filament, filament, filament..."
I quickly found a poem that spoke to me -- A Noiseless Patient Spider. But could I use the whole poem? What would Copyright say?

"It launched forth filament, filament, filament..."
I did pointless Google search after fruitless Google search until I ran across the phrase I needed but couldn't find inside my brain: Public Domain. And my answer: Yes, you can use the whole poem.

"It launched forth filament, filament, filament..."
But then I found LibriVox: "LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books." And here are eight different readings of A Noiseless Patient Spider. Eight. As in, how many legs does a spider have?

"It launched forth filament, filament, filament..."
And those eight readings made me think of this email I got from Franki (she's still in NYC):

Did you pick this up at the exhibit hall?
Might be a good poetry Friday post--just an fyi.
It is a pretty cool project and site.
Videoclips of kids reciting these poems.
Much more fun than a spelling bee, I would think.

Franki

http://www.poetryoutloud.org/

Poetry Out Loud dot org. Out loud. Like LibriVox.

Enough. Here's the poem:



A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
by Walt Whitman

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
xxxxxconnect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.



Roundup is at Susan Writes.

On Second Thought

Squiggles: A Really Giant Drawing and Painting Book
by Taro Gomi
Chronicle Books, 2007
review copy compliments of the publisher

I grew up with coloring books and paper dolls. I learned to keep my coloring inside the lines and my cutting on the lines. I can only wonder how my life would be different if I had had this drawing and painting book that is filled with partially drawn pictures to be completed however one wants, and provocative sentences that pluck one's creativity strings (for example, in the "Time to Eat" section -- "This is going to be very difficult to eat.")

Initially, this book went up on the gifts-to-give shelf in my closet to wait for the children of my friends to be old enough to enjoy and provide a "guest review." ON SECOND THOUGHT...I am going to take this book to school and give it to my students for homework. Stay with me here: each child will take the book home for a night and complete one of the pictures in any way he or she desires. It's a big book ("A Really Giant Drawing and Painting Book") so everyone will have a chance to do more than one page over the course of the rest of the year. We will make a very different kind of class book that will preserve these students' art and writing in a unique way.

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Junior Edition
by David Borgenicht and Robin Epstein
Chronicle Books, 2007
review copy compliments of the publisher

This seemed at first glance to be the perfect mentor text for a unit of study in writing workshop on "how to" writing. The book is divided into four chapters where a child's survival skills would be tested: at home, at school, in her/his social life, and outdoors. In each chapter, there are about a half a dozen "How To" situations, ranging from "How to Survive Being Grounded" to "How to Survive Farting in Public." Each survival situation begins with an introductory paragraph and a short numbered or bulleted list of steps. Perfect, right? Well, ON SECOND THOUGHT, I considered the very serious, very difficult, very un-frivolous survival situations that several of my students are going through right now. This book will be a part of my classroom library, and we'll discuss the format of the book when we look at nonfiction writing. I will probably invite students to add their own survival tips on 4x6 index cards in a pocket I'll make in the back of the book. But I don't think that in this class this year I will use this book for a whole-class project on "How To" writing.