NURSERY RHYME COMICS

I just received my copy of Nursery Rhyme Comics--a collection of "50 Timeless Rhymes from 50 Celebrated Cartoonists" with an introduction by Leonard Marcus.  This is a great collection for any classroom, home or library!  A definite new favorite!

This book is exactly as it is described on the cover-50 nursery rhymes, each illustrated by a different cartoonist. Many cartoonists are artists you'll recognize (I love that Nick Bruel of the Bad Kitty series illustrated the nursery rhyme, The Three Little Kittens!)  It is an amazing collection of art. Each nursery rhyme is short-many are done on a two-page spread. The art gives new meaning to some old favorites. I can see kids reading these in this format again and again.

Most of the rhymes are the traditional version. A few of the illustrators change things up a bit, which adds to the fun.  I love the variety of things the authors did with the comic format.  I love the different color schemes that the illustrators used. It gives each a unique look. We are getting ready to start working on comic making with 2nd graders and this will be a great new mentor for them. So many things to notice and study.

The editor's note at the end gives some information about the idea for the book and the book ends with blurbs about each cartoonist.  A definite favorite of 2011!

Letters to Book Characters

Binky the Space Cat

by Ashley Spires

Kids Can Press, 2009

Dear Binky,

You are so cute and funny. Why do you eat “Aliens”? I think you are a chubby little kittie. I have two cats at home, a big one named Luna and a small one named Taiyou. Toayou is very funny like you, they do not fart as much as you. If you have to much “Aliens” in your “Spsce station” just call an exterminator they kill all “Aliens”.

Your friend,

S.

P.S.   Please answer me.

* * * *

Dear S.,

You are so kind and know when you see a good personalty. I think aliens taste like fried chicken, it is so yummy. Luna should be the leader of the space station because she’s older. I do not need an exterminator I am the one who kills the aliens, anyway I can’t let an intruder in my space station. 

Your Pal,

Binky 

 Holly fuzz butt I forgot! I’m on a diet.

* * * * 

The assignment was to write a letter to a book character, and then write the letter the book character might write back. The students posted the letters on their blogs. This pair turned out great!

Home "Work"

After reading Making Learning Whole last summer, I really got to thinking about how to make the game of school transparent for my students, and how to honor the work they do at home for fun and personal learning.

Also last summer, when we were doing some cleaning in the basement back home, I ran across this straight line design I made with embroidery floss on black poster board back in middle school, and I remembered doodling endless variations of these designs for hours on end with ruler and well-sharpened pencil. I remembered the sketchbooks full of floor plans that my cousin and I made, as we imagined ourselves becoming architects in the future. I still have the writing journals I filled with adolescent angst, cartoons, poetry and fits and starts of stories.

It's this kind of "work" that I want to honor in my students. I want them to see connections between the learning we do in school and the playful exploration of these ideas that they can give themselves as "assignments" and bring in to share with the class.

Filling the wall around the straight line design which was my long ago home "work" are photos of students and the things they've brought in. One budding car enthusiast brought in the engine he made from a kit during the summer. Several have brought in collections. One girl has made several different tri-o-ramas, following directions she found either online or in a craft book. They have practiced math facts, and made a connection to a read aloud (I got a cupcake in honor of PAULIE PASTRAMI ACHIEVES WORLD PEACE).

When we were studying landforms, they made paper and cardboard and clay models of the landforms we were learning about. Although the landform unit is complete, a student was looking at the wooden M on her wall (one of the letters of her name) and she saw a canyon between the two peaks of the letter. When she shared it with the class, another student saw two plateaus on the flat tops of those points. They have seen that learning and thinking about a topic don't have to end just because they've taken the end of unit assessment.

Last week, when I was exhausted beyond belief and in a value-added/data-induced funk, my student who has inspired girl and boy readers of all abilities with her quest to read every Babymouse book in the series (she and several others have created checklists), brought in the Cupcake Tycoon board game she made.

Because of the way we start our day, I was able to play the game with her in the ten minutes the class and I spend together at tables in the cafeteria before they go to related arts. I played as Wilson and she, as Babymouse, thoroughly whomped me.

The time, energy, detail and thoughtfulness that this student put into her board game, which was an assignment SHE GAVE HERSELF, repaired my funk. My students really are more than just test scores, and I have finally found a way to honor their joyous learning "work" that is more like play, and which they seek out on their very own.

Poetry Friday -- Sleep

In Praise of My Bed

by Meredith Holmes

At last I can be with you!
The grinding hours
since I left your side!
The labor of being fully human,
working my opposable thumb,
talking, and walking upright.

(the rest of the poem is here)

As you can see from the picture, even those who don't have opposable thumbs and walk upright love the embrace of the bed.

It's been an exhausting week. At some point yesterday when it was feeling like the endless week from you-know-where, I actually thought it was Wednesday. Time passed in an amazing rush when my students corrected me and said, "No, tomorrow is Friday."

How time can feel slow or fast and yet pass by at the same measured rate has always fascinated me. Years for a little kid are a gigantic fraction of their total life, and so years are huge. The older we get, the smaller the fraction of our life for a year, and the faster time slips by. Or so it seems.

And the time we spend asleep seems to be lost, but sleep is what makes awakeness even possible. There's a definite Zen trapped in that conundrum...but don't lose any sleep over it! And don't waste any valuable awake time thinking too hard about it!

How about you spend some time perusing the Poetry Friday round up? David Elzey is hosting this week  at FOMAGRAMS. (I'll be visiting the round up tomorrow morning...after I sleep in!!)

Stuck

Stuck
by Oliver Jeffers
Philomel Books, on shelves Nov. 10, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

The blurb for this book on Oliver Jeffers' website reads:

"A tale of trying to solve a problem by throwing things at it."

Floyd's kite is stuck in a tree, so he throws his shoe at it to get it down. His shoe gets stuck. Then he throws his other shoe and it gets stuck, too.

The sequence of the rest of the things Floyd throws at his problem starts off reasonable and veers decidedly to the ridiculous when he throws the kitchen sink, an orangutan, an ocean liner, the house across the street, and a whale...among other things. (Isn't that the way it goes, when you start throwing things at a problem?)

I can't really tell you about the end without taking all the fun of it away from you, but I will tell you that you're likely to have hope for Floyd's problem-solving ability, which will immediately be dashed, and yet, against all odds, there will be success...although you'll want to wring Floyd's neck in the end.

Kids will love this book. For them, it's a funny story of unintended consequences.

Adults will consider sending this book to their elected officials. Except for the fact that doing so would seem an awful lot like throwing a shoe...

Die Pflicht ruft.

We have a Living Language German phrase calendar sitting on our kitchen table. Every now and then it "speaks" to us -- it gives us the German equivalent for what is happening in our lives. Yesterday, before I spent all day with my grade level doing a data dig and curriculum mapping work, the calendar told me, "Die Pflicht ruft." (Duty calls.)

The Gapingvoid cartoon (by Hugh MacLeod) that is delivered to my email inbox every day often does the same thing. Yesterday, along with "Die Pflicht ruft," I was reminded that what I'm trying to do MATTERS.

*   *   *   *  

Edited to add (because I wrote this post last night and we never peek ahead at the calendar):

Sie ist sehr Fleißig.
She's very diligent.

Thanks, Living Language. I guess you've noticed how many hours I spend at the kitchen table working...

iPad Apps in the Library

We added four iPads to the library this year. They are not for circulation but will be used in the library. We also have 2 new iPods. As we move more of the building technology to classrooms, our library will be a place where we hope students can choose tools that make sense for their purpose.  In terms of technology, we'll have 15 laptops, 4 iPads, 2 iPod touches, 2 Nooks, 5 Kindles and a Smartboard.

I want the iPads to be tools for learning so we made sure not to put any games on these. I believe games are definitely tools for learning--we have lots of games in the library. However, since we are limited in the number of mobile devices we have, I want to give kids more possibilities for their use.  In surveys we've done with our students, playing games is something they already do quite often at home on computers and mobile devices. So, in the library, I want to show them what else is possible in terms of production/creativity/reading. So, we are starting the year with the following apps on our iPads:

Our students are familiar with Pages, Keynote and iMovie so we've added those to the ipads.  We will most likely add Comic Life as well.

As we work toward helping kids read with depth, I thought Flipboard would be a good tool for the library. Flipboard is a reader that allows you to follow sites and blogs of your choice. I will load the websites that kids read often--Wonderopolis, DogoNews, etc. so that kids can enhance their reading experiences with the iPad.

Last week, students explored Screenchomp. This is a great screencasting tool. In just a few minutes, students learned to share their learning, their drawing, their thinking and their stories with this tool. My hope is that screencasting becomes a way for them to share their learning and Screenchomp is  a great iPad Screencasting tool.

Dragon Dictation changes speech into text.  This will be a good tool for lots of things that kids do.

Talking Tom is a fun app that our younger kids will enjoy. Reading to Tom will allow students to hear their pacing, expression, etc.

I am focusing on more collaboration tools and Popplet is a great one for the iPad.  I'll introduce this one to students within the next few weeks.

We added a few draw tools such as Doodlebuddy and a few other draw tools on each iPad.

As we begin to explore ways to use QR codes, we added QR Reader.

A few social bookmarking sites we included were Evernote and Diigo.

We also put 4-5 iBooks on each iPad.  I want students to experience the best ebooks as readers. I also want them to begin to look at these as mentors--what is possible in their own creations later down the road.  Some books we purchased were:

Timbuktu Magazine is a new magazine for kids that looks promising.

Fantastic Books of Morris Lessmore is one of my favorite iPad books. Others we added were Cozmo's Day Off, and The Three Little Pigs Pop Up are three favorites so far.

This is where we'll start with the iPads.  I already have students using the apps they know and exploring others. Will be interesting to see what happen once the newness of the tool wears off.

Annotating Digital Text

I want my students to be able to track and record their thinking while they read.  Annotating text has helped so many students understand text more deeply. I work with students in grades 4 and 5 to use various tools such as highlighters, pencils, stickynotes, etc. to support their understanding of what they read.

I have loved the annotation tools I've used in my own reading using Diigo and Evernote. They allow me to do the same things I do on paper, digitally. I want my students to have experience using tools on the computer to highlight and take notes with non-paper text.  To get started on this, I decided to use the Preview tool and PDFs with students this week.  I took a web article with visuals and all and turned it into a PDF and will put one on each student's desktop.  Then I'll let them see how annotation tools work in Preview. I want them to learn the skills for annotating text and then I know those skills will transfer to more web-based reading and social bookmarking tools. I have to explore the educator accounts that Diigo and Evernote provide to determine which will best meet our needs.

After just a few conversations, I can see this helping students in their reading of online text. Often this text is overwhelming to them and these tools will help them to do what they know to do for understanding. My husband was nice enough to make a screencast of these tools for me. You can see it on his blog. Really, the preview annotation tools took me about 5 minutes to learn. I am confident that after a few minutes of exploration, these tools will be hugely helpful for my students as readers.

Poetry Friday -- Details

The Devil's NOT In The Details

The details are holy.
Wholly
life-affirming,
life-saving,
attitude-adjusting.

How can you not be recharged by
constellations marching
sun glinting
blue skies blazing
trees changing
hawks soaring.

The details are holy.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2011


It's so easy to get bogged down in the big stuff and forget to notice all the small things that can give us another way to look at the world.

I can always depend on the world to show me peace and beauty, right when I need it the most.


Mary Ann has the Poetry Friday round up at Great Kid Books this week.

Love, Mouserella by David Ezra Stein

LOVE, MOUSERELLA is a fun picture book of a letter from a little mouse to her grandmother. Mouserella's grandmother came to visit but left a few days ago. And Mouserella misses her so she decides to write her a letter. The letter is filled with happenings in Mouserella's life.  From going to the zoo, to working on her posture, Mouseralla fills her grandmother in on all that is happening.

The book opens vertically rather than horizontally which makes for some fun. Mouserella's letter continues from one page to the next. Each page of sharing is accompanied by photos and drawings.  There is evidence of some editing as Mouserella changes the spelling of a word here and there. The letter is babbly--as it would be from a young child, telling all that she can to her grandmother.

I think kids will love this book and will relate to all that Mouserella shares.  I also think that this could serve as a model for young writers.  This isn't your typical correct-letter-format example, but it is real life.  I think it can be used to talk to young kids about expanding their thinking, working to connect text and visuals, adding information, etc.  Mouserella does a great job of telling lots, that's for sure!