Passionately Curious

Journey Around

I discovered Journey Around Chicago A to Z  a few years ago in our school library when my students were writing postcards to teach family and friends in other states about our great city.  This book contains wonderful facts, trivia, history and the kids love to search for the hidden cardinal on each page. It's one of a series including other cities and places (New York, Boston, Cape Cod, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Maine). Each book features its own feathered tour-guide.   Recently, I decided to find out more about the author, Matha Day Zschock.  As a former third grade teacher, she was inspired to write Journey Around Cape Cod and the Islands From A to Z when she couldn't find other books to enhance her students' field trip experiences.  Her sister, graphic designer Heather Zschock, has co-authored a couple of the books in this series and she describes how it all began on her website. 

Summer Slide

At the end of the school year, I always recommend that my students continue to read everyday over the summer. I hope that they are learning to love reading; that they'll curl up under a shady tree, at the beach or in the backseat on a long car trip with a book that they just can't put down. I know for some, this will be a chore.  It's amazing, however,  how much can be lost or forgotten over a few weeks, let alone a few months.  This advice comes from my personal experience and knowledge as a teacher.  It's always seemed like common sense and I never felt the need to find supporting evidence.  In looking at recommended summer reading lists, I recently came across an article at Reading is Fundamental called Keeping Kids Off the Summer Slide that reinforced the importance of reading over the summer.  Here's what that authors of a 2002 report done by Johns Hopkins' Center for Summer Learning said,

A conservative estimate of lost instructional time is approximately two months or roughly 22 percent of the school year.... It's common for teachers to spend at least a month re-teaching material that students have forgotten over the summer. That month of re-teaching eliminates a month that could have been spent on teaching new information and skills."

The "summer slide" impacts reading progress and growth over the summer as well as into the next school year. I want kids to begin their new academic year with solid reading skills.  Although, I alos hope they make gains in reading over the summer, I don't want my students to lose any ground with all they've learned in second grade. 

There are many summer reading lists out there.  Here's one the fabulous librarians at my school put together.  RIF's 2007 Summer Reading Guide also has other wonderful reading lists, incentives and tips for kids and grownups to prevent summer learning loss.  Happy Summer Reading!

  enjoy your summer reading 
  Originally uploaded by lucy96734

 
 

Why Read Aloud?

As a teacher of second graders, I feel the need to convince some parents of the importance of reading aloud to their children.  Parents often want to know why reading aloud is still so important when their child can now read and choose his/her own books. After a full schedule at school and work, soccer practice, piano lessons, and ballet, parents want to know what they can give up.  Despite the findings that correlate reading aloud with future school success, reading aloud is often the first thing to go.

At my Open House in the fall, I strongly encourage parents to read aloud each day and to do so as long as their child will allow it.   Here's what I tell them:

• Reading aloud gives you a chance to share and create an experience with your child that shows how fun reading can be.  Share the laughter, suspense, and tears together. Make memories and build a list of favorite books your child will always remember.   Encourage curiosity and leave your child wanting more!
  
• There are so many wonderful, content-rich stories beyond your child's independent reading level.  Reading aloud can build your child's vocabulary and background knowledge, improve listening skills, and provide an introduction to comprehension strategies that will help him or her make meaning of stories.  Make predictions, stop to talk about characters and story elements, compare one story to another you've read before. Introduce your child to new genres and authors. 
  
• Be a reading role-model.  Give your child an opportunity to hear fluent and expressive reading.

For over 20 years, Jim Trelease has provided parents and teachers with invaluable information and recommendations in his book, The Read-Aloud Handbook (sixth edition released this summer). Here are some other great tips for reading aloud:

Mem Fox's Ten Read Aloud Commandments

Madame Esme's Hints for Reading Out Loud and her Read Aloud Resuscitation (recommendations for big kids, grades 4-8)

What Makes a Good Second-Grade Book?

Thanks to Chicken Spaghetti for this link from the September/October issue of Horn Book Magazine.  I'll be sending a copy home with my next newsletter.

What Makes a Good Second-grade Book?
A Letter to Parents      

BY ROBIN SMITH      

ear Parents,

Reading is a big part of every second grader’s life. But reading can be fraught with anxiety for these new readers.  Most seven- and eight-year-olds in my classroom can read, but their reading levels vary widely, and they are not yet very good at finding books for themselves. They often notice what everyone else is reading and become fretful if some of their friends can read books that they can’t yet. They may even report to you that “I am the worst reader in the class.” Please do your best to ignore this anxiety, as it is just part of the age, and help your child choose books that he or she will love. Here are some ways to go about this task.             

Books for you to read aloud to your child should:

• be interesting to her. Second graders like all sorts of things, from dinosaurs to tornados to fairies   to family stories. I tend to choose shorter books because they are so likely to want to read, themselves, the books I read aloud to them. I do read them longer, more complicated books, but I save those for later in the year when the children are more settled and can accept that some books are too challenging . . .for now.

• be interesting to you. You can’t fake this any more than they can. Make sure you really want to read that book about giant lizards of the Galápagos before you start it.

Books for your child to read independently should:             

• be short. New readers are great starters and not great finishers. So make sure the book is short enough to get through. (The Magic Tree House books, Martin Bridge, Judy Moody, Ruby Lu, Andy Shane, Marvin Redpost . . . that sort of book.)

• be illustrated. Most new readers see chapter books as the Holy Grail and turn their backs on picture books. This is unfortunate because new readers really need those picture cues to help them understand the story. If you show an interest in picture books and never give the message that they are for younger children, you might get your new reader to read them, but don’t fight that battle too hard. Once your child calms down about reading, he will not worry about whether a book is a picture book or a chapter book. But right now, he will. Help your child find some chapter books with at least one picture in every chapter (Johanna Hurwitz’s series of books about Russell or her PeeWee & Plush books come to mind).

• be humorous. As dour as your second grader can act at times, she loves humor, the goofier the better. If the word underwear is in the book, that’s a sure sign of a winner (hence the tremendous success of the Captain Underpants and Melvin Beederman books in the second-grade reading world).

• be easy on the eyes. Young children need a lot of white space around the printed word in order to see it without strain. They should track the words with their fingers, too, but many of them see that as juvenile and will not do it. So large, clear typeface is really important for this group of readers. (And for older ones as well: I have often wondered if the success of the Harry Potter books has something to do with the generous font and white space.)• be exciting. Think cliffhanger endings and tears. Think Stone Fox. Think My Father’s Dragon. Think The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Think melodrama.• be easy to understand. This is not the time for magical realism or unreliable narrators. This is the time for straightforward plots, easy-to-understand characters, and clear settings. The story can be set in the Indonesian rain forest for all these readers care, but the book should not use up much ink describing it.       

• be a part of a series. Not all new readers read series, but in my experience with this age, most       do. And most feel a need to read the books in order. So, if your child really, really loves the first Boxcar Children book and wants the second one, that’s what she means. The second one, and then the third. Your eyes might roll back in your head while your child is on a steady diet of Pony Pals or Rainbow Magic books, but try to be patient. She will move on when she is ready. When children read their way through series fiction, they are building confidence and fluency. They are meeting characters and getting   to know them. Eventually they will tire of them, but for now, that kind of repetition is just what they need.

If you help your child find books to read, it won’t be long before he or she will be passing books on to you. Imagine the joy you will feel when you hear, “I just finished  this book and you will love it, too! Want to read it?”

Happy Reading,             

Robin Smith teaches second grade at the Ensworth School in Nashville, Tennessee.

You can also find a list of Robin Smith's favorite second grade read-alouds here.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Getting Boys to Read

I used to get concerned about some of my students' reading selections during Reader's Workshop.  I wasn't as worried about the child who wanted to read books that were too difficult (often the ones her best friend was reading) or the child who found security in reading books that were easy because he didn't have to worry about making mistakes.  I was hopeful that with with proper support, instruction, and encouragement, these children would learn to choose appropriate texts, to feel confident in their abilities, and to take greater risks.   Each year, however,  it seemed that a group of boys would discover books like The Adventures of Captain Underpants  or The Day My Butt Went Psycho (yes, that's really the title) and want to spend all their independent reading time with these texts.    I wondered about the value of these books - could they provide opportunities for responding to literature, for practicing comprehension strategies, for making connections?   Because I felt it was so important to give children a choice about what they read, I never discouraged these texts, but tried to guide the boys toward other titles as well - ones about sports, fantasy, adventure, or non-fiction.

It wasn't until author Jon Sciezka visited with the first and second grade classes at my school that my thinking changed.  My kids already loved The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.  Mr. Sciezka connected with the children, especially with the boys, as if he were just another eight year old and he made them feel smart. His sense of humor and silliness appealed to them.  He spoke about things that most adults would consider impolite, disgusting or weird.  At the end of his presentation, he mentioned his new project, Guys Read.  I later realized that my boys, some reluctant readers, were engaged in the texts I was questioning.  They were reading and loving it. Isn't that our ultimate goal - to instill a love for reading, to create life-long readers?  It begins first with knowing how to read,  then having the interest and desire to read more.  From there, children will begin to explore other books/genres and learn to read with meaning and understanding.

Here's an interview with Jon Sciezka.  He used to be a second grade teacher!