The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy
February 21, 2009
Small Beauties
Big Fresh reader Ellen McEvoy wrote in recently with a timely
recommendation:
Concerning the advice to breathe-smile-notice-enjoy in last week's newsletter, yesterday I hauled home about 20 library books, looking for something to read to a third-grade class tomorrow. One of my favorites turned out to be Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O'Hara by Elvira Woodruff (illustrations by Adam Rex). A little girl living in Ireland during the famine drives her large family crazy because she lives by these words--but they also lead to her being the one who helps her family feel at home after they
emigrate to the United States.
With St. Patrick's Day right around the corner, I couldn't resist
ordering a copy of the book. It is a treasure - young Darcy
receives her middle name "Heart" because her grandmother prophesies
at her birth, "One day this child shall hold the very heart of our
family in the palm of her hand." What follows is a historically
accurate rendering of the suffering Irish families endured during
the famine and political unrest in the 1840s before the forced
emigration of many to the United States. Through it all, Darcy
collects and carefully sews into the hem of her skirt keepsakes - a
butterfly's wing, dried heather and buttercups, a rosary bead, a
bit of hearthstone scented with peat. In the end, her
grandmother's prophecy comes true.
I read the book and thought about the hardships so many children
and families are facing right now, and how literature can provide
little moments of hope, even as it takes students' minds off the
challenges of the day. St. Patrick's Day is reduced to shamrocks
and leprechauns for most of us, if it's mentioned at all in the
midst of the spring testing stress in many districts. But there
are remarkable stories to be told about the Irish, with lessons of
resilience which might resonate this year more than others for some
children.
This week, we've got lots of resources for linking literature to
St. Patrick's Day, a fun nonfiction routine for Mondays, plus more
as always. Enjoy!
Brenda Power
Editor, Choice Literacy
Free for All
Andrea Smith creates Expedition Mondays as a way to expand her
students' exploration of nonfiction resources. The routine is a
melding of routines from Poetry Fridays and First Facts Mondays,
two popular activities in many K-12 classrooms:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/835.cfm
The Chicken Spaghetti blog has more on how Poetry Friday has spread
across the "kidlitosphere." If you want some basic information and
resources for this activity, you can find them at this link:
http://tinyurl.com/cv669c
The blog A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy has a lovely round-up
of Poetry Friday offerings from a couple years back that feature
many St. Patrick's Day poems:
http://yzocaet.blogspot.com/2007/03/poetry-friday_16.html
From the Kidsread website, an annotated list of children's and
young adult books for St. Patrick's Day:
http://www.kidsreads.com/features/020306-st-pats.asp
A hearty welcome to our newest Choice Literacy site license members
from Madison, Wisconsin; Arlington, Virginia; Glenview, Illinois;
Columbus, Ohio; Highland Park & Arlington, Texas; Hillsboro,
Missouri; Walled Lake & West Bloomfield, Michigan; and our
renewing members from New Brunswick, Canada and Akron, Ohio.
Information on our affordable site license program is available at
this link:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department63.cfm
For Members Only
Katie Doherty concludes her video series this week on teaching
inferring through picture books in middle schools with "Conferring
About Inferring." Katie writes about how she naturally integrates
discussion of reading strategies from the read aloud into regular
reader's workshop conferences. Her features includes a conferring
template:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/792.cfm
Have you ever had the experience of skipping a step in your
teaching or materials preparation, and then discovering the new
procedure works better than the old tried and true method? Melissa
Kolb doesn't have time to add captions to child-created photo books
from field trips, and finds these "wordless photo books" become
rich resources for oral language development in her preschool
classroom:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/836.cfm
Struggling readers require lots of attention in schools, but
supporting advanced young readers sometimes requires teaching
skills that are just as sophisticated. In "Harder Texts Aren't
Always the Answer," Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan offer advice
for looking beyond levels in developing strategies for helping
these precocious readers move forward. This is the first
installment in a new two-part series:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/838.cfm
Finally, we've posted a bonus video this week. If you are in the
midst of rethinking your bookrooms and conferring space for
professional development, Josie Stewart and Jessica Ardelea offer a
tour of three small spaces in their school that are in the midst of
being reorganized to support more useful book displays as well as
professional development for teachers:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/837.cfm
That's all for this week!
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Jennifer Allen
