Fabulous Fiction

Last week I attended a 4-day Speech & Hearing convention in San Jose, California and was bombarded with information and inspiration. What a valuable four days! When I returned, I read a blog post and that led to a New York Times article by Annie Murphy Paul called, “Your Brain on Fiction”. (Thank you, Molly O’Neill from Ten Block Walk for leading me there.) This article was a great topper for what I found most appealing at the convention workshops – ideas for using literature with my students and creating “social stories” to encourage new behaviors in kids on the autism spectrum. The article stated, “Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.” No wonder stories are helping our kids!

Now that we’ve established stories are beneficial, I’d like to mention one I absolutely love! Calvin Can’t Fly by Jennifer Berne, illustrated by Keith Bendis. Calvin is a starling with a unique, bookish voice, “Oh, how the wounding words of scorn do sting!” And Keith Bendis’ blocky birds with dangling, toothpick legs are adorable. Besides being charming, this book is funny. One of Calvin’s sixty-seven thousand four hundred and thirty-two cousins (“Starlings have BIG families”) called him “nerdy birdie,” another called him “geeky beaky,” and still another called him “bookworm.” “And when you’re a bird, being called a “worm” is a very bad thing.”

What fun I had introducing this story to my students! I had no trouble tying it to the content standards. It has a plot that can be analyzed; it has a beginning, middle and end; it has enriching vocabulary, and it has entertainment value. OK, that last one wasn’t a content standard but maybe it should be – it helps keep the minds engaged.

Berne’s alliterations are almost like doing tongue gymnastics when you read this book aloud. (And as a speech therapist, I think that is a good thing.)  “So the flock made a loop-de-lop left, a dipsy-doodle right, and dove into the cave.” Calvin saves the day in this tale and he saves the reputation of bookworms everywhere, and all who dare to be different from others in their flock.

Yesterday I discovered another blog had mentioned the NY Times article, “Your Brain on Fiction”. In that Scholastic post, author Tyler mentioned that the Common Core standards now call for a 50-50 mix of fiction and non-fiction. Tyler posed a question, “Is this the right balance?”  I wonder along with him, and plan to follow the answers that come his way. If you have any thoughts on using fiction for educational purposes, I’d love to hear from you too.

An Interview with Anna McQuinn

I had the pleasure of interviewing, Anna McQuinn about her book series, Lola at the Library, Lola Loves Stories, and the newest addition, Lola Reads to Leo. After hearing these delightful tales published by Charlesbridge, my students were excited to have the opportunity to participate in the interview.  We loved reading Anna’s answers and hope you will too.


You’ve done it again. You’ve given children another adorable Lola book to love. Were you anything like Lola as a child?

You know, I didn’t think I was until Yolanda at Charlesbridge wrote some cover copy about me and she made the link – I did LOVE books and reading just like Lola. We didn’t have many books, certainly not picture books (I think I can remember about 3 or 4 and some little Ladybird books), but once I was able to read, I don’t think I ever stopped! I drove my mom crazy as I’d read the back of the cereal package while eating my breakfast etc etc.

I also loved playing at being characters out of stories I read – I guess that’s what gave me the idea for Lola Loves Stories. My fun always involved long discussions about who would be what, what their name would be etc etc

Will Lola have any new adventures in the future?

Lola is busy researching gardens in the library because her mommy has given her a corner of their patch of the local community garden. She’s reading about gardens, and writing lists, and creating little wild areas. It’s going to be great!

I’m sure my students will love that one! We have a garden at our school and the children get to tend it while learning about gardening, counting, measuring and generally taking care of our environment. 

What were some of your favorite books when you were young?

I was really stuck on Enid Blyton. I loved all the boarding school stories and when I stayed in my granny’s house, I used to choose clothes which were only one colour and pretend it was my uniform and that I was in a boarding school also. My other favourites were her Adventure stories and the Famous Five books. My world changed when I read Flight of the Doves which was the first book I ever read set in Ireland and suddenly I saw ‘me’ in the book. 

I almost forgot you are from the UK until I read your answer above. I’m from the US and it’s fun to see the different spellings we use for some words. 

What is the most interesting thing about you that you’ve never been asked?

 Most people assume that ‘booky’ people are cerebral and that that’s the opposite of sporty. So I’m rarely asked about sports. In fact I was very sporty – mostly informally – but I started athletics competitively when I was about 14 and ran on the Irish Cross Country team in the European FISEC Games when I was 15. I also played basketball (though not very well because I’m only 5’3”) but I watch a lot on TV and go to games to support my local professional team, Guildford Heat. No one has ever asked me who my favourite NBA player is!

I’ll save that question for our next interview so we can get to my students. They were excited when they heard I’d be interviewing you so I invited them to ask questions of their own.

From my older students:

How long have you been writing for children?

I’ve been editing children’s books for over 20 years. The writing grew gradually out of that – rather than something I sat down and did one day. I’ve been writing as my main thing for about 10 years now.

When did you first decide to become a writer?

 It kind of crept up on me, actually! In my editorial job I would come up with an idea for a book or a series and end up writing some text to show my colleagues how the series would work. Then sometimes, we kept those texts. So in the beginning, the writing was very much doing a job. In more recent years I’ve got to a stage where I start with the writing and the story. It’s funny, but because it happened so gradually, I’m still a bit embarrassed to call myself a writer!

What kind of education do you recommend if you want to become a writer?

I was really lucky to have a broad education – in Ireland you don’t really specialize until you go to University, so I studied English (which IS essential) French, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Irish and Art right through High School. This is an especially good grounding for Children’s publishing since you have a broad range of knowledge and interests.

I think anything which helps make you a good researcher (I think studying history in university helped me a LOT) will support writing.

I also think you need to be interested in the world around you and what makes people tick, so I read lots of (light) psychology books and related fiction (I LOVE E.R Frank) and general politics and interesting social studies. I think finding a good general magazine which has interesting articles which make you think are wonderful for prompting new ideas. Interesting bloggers do the same (here’s one of my favourites, Laurie Penny: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2012/03/eating-disorders-awareness).

Kindergarten students giving their version of a "Thumbs up"!

From the kindergarten crew:

Zayd wanted you to know he makes books – he cuts and folds and staples. He asked, “How do you make your books?”

I also cut and fold – but I glue instead of staple. This is how I make a test book to make sure everything fits together. When I’m happy, I send it off to the printers and they do all the cutting and folding for me. This happens when I make the Lola books (which have to be perfect because they’re for sale) but I still make stuck together books for myself and my friends and to test out new ideas.

Marie asked, “How did you make up the stories?

Usually I see something or someone and they give me the starting idea. Then I add more bits and pieces later. Once I wrote a whole story in my head on a bus just because I heard someone say something funny. All the authors I see in interviews seem to have lovely pencils and notebooks with them all the time. But even though I like to buy nice notebooks, I kind of spare them… and I can NEVER find one when I have an idea so I sometimes write ideas on the back of my bus ticket or a receipt from my purse, or I have to rush home and write the idea down before I forget it!

Ashland thought Lola would make a good president but she wondered, “How did you figure out Lola’s name?”

I think Ashland is very wise and if Lola were president, the world would be a better place. You know, I think Lola’s name came with the idea for the story. I know I sat down at my computer one day and just wrote “Lola Loves Tuesdays.” I am very interested in names (I like my name very much but it’s a bummer that it’s the same backwards – that’s quite boring). Do you know that in Holland, the word for library is Bieb, so in Holland Lola is called Bibi!

What a great name! Bodie didn’t have any questions but after hearing, Lola Loves Stories he said, “I wish my dad could take me to the library every day so I could check out lots and lots of books.” 

I hope Bodie can get to the library with his dad. He could check out lots of books, enough for a whole week, and then he wouldn’t need to go every day.

Joden said he loved, Lola Loves Stories, but he had one question, “Why didn’t you put a cat in the story?” 

That’s an excellent question. I think because I put a tiger, I thought that was a sort of big cat – but I’ll certainly consider putting a cat in the next story.

Thank you, Anna McQuinn for taking the time to answer our questions and for telling your stories. We look forward to reading more in the future.

They were great questions, thanks for sending them. They made me think – which is always a good sign.

Best,

Anna

World Read Aloud Day

I stopped by a kindergarten classroom this week and Cathy, the teacher, told me about a conversation she had with a couple of her students. One child, Hope, had done a fabulous job on a project and Cathy said, “You’re my first and last hope.”  Jesse, another kindergartener interjected, “She’s your only hope!”

Of course he didn’t understand the double meaning but it was a sweet and funny comment to hear from this serious little guy. And it got me to thinking about hope.

Recently, I’ve been scanning the website of LitWorld, a non-profit organization, which celebrates the power of words. They communicate such hope! One of their stated core values is; “We believe that all children have the right to read, to write, and to share their words to change the world.” LitWorld declared March 7^th as “World Read Aloud Day” and I passed on that message to my students and coworkers. (You can find out more about their organization here: http://litworld.org/ )

Take a look at some of the activities around our school that day. With 24 classrooms on our campus, I couldn’t get to every room but, I assure you, all the teachers at our school make reading a top priority.

One of our second grade students, Abigail, reading to a kindergarten group.

 

Cathy Wallace reading to her class.

Juan, reading to younger students.

Beth Kirkley, our resource specialist
carrying a heathy snack to young readers.

   Mary Heister, one of our school
secretaries reading with students.

  Ashley reading to younger kids.

Jim Blanton, a kindergarten teacher
who supplies his own class clown.

                                                    

Philip, another second grade student,

reading to a group of younger kids.

Marcia Douglas reading to her
kindergarten students.

 

Tonya Miller, our health aide, with a
group of kindergarten children.

Linda Stephens, school secretary
reading with students at her desk.

At the end of the day, Jesse’s words came back to me, “She is your only hope”. I couldn’t help but think, yes, she and all the other children in my care, and all the children across the world; they are our hope for the future. Those of us who are educators, parents, writers and illustrators of children’s literature can build on that hope by the transforming power of words and education.

Figurative Fun

Last week I had lunch with a friend and her teenage son, Mason. He had a great story about communication. When he was picking up his cousin from school, she came out of her first-grade classroom wearing a large sticker on the front of her shirt. He asked, “What does your sticker say?”  She gave him a “look” that seemed to mean, ‘Do you really think I am that gullible?’ then tore off the sticker and said, “It doesn’t say anything, Mason - it’s a sticker.” He wasn’t about to fool her!

I loved that story. So many kids in the early years of elementary school are very literal-minded. Image the confusion when they hear things like: Are your ears burning? Could you lend me a hand? I’m in a pickle.

Is it any wonder there are Common Core Standards to address that issue? If you aren’t familiar with these standards, they were developed to specify what students are expected to learn and teachers expected to teach at each grade level. (I’ve added a link on the sidebar in case you’re interested.) In kindergarten, teachers use grade-level stories to teach their students to “identify new meanings for familiar words . . .” For example, the word “duck” can mean a feathery kind of animal or the action you take when something comes flying too close to your head. This standard is upgraded slightly as students get older, and they are taught more sophisticated multi-meaning words and idioms as they progress through their school years.

In speech, I often get to work on this standard with students who have language delays. I’m always on the lookout for books that will make it fun, so I was thrilled to find Ted Arnold’s three books, Parts, More Parts, and Even More Parts. They are full of idioms and hilarious illustrations to match the phrases. In the last book, my students cracked up over the pictures accompanying the phrase, “It cost an arm and a leg.” A child is pictured in a store with his detached arm and leg on the counter, ready to make his purchase. The cash register is open and full of appendages. At the bottom of the page there is an illustration of a child saying, “I had to pay through the nose.” I won’t go into the details of that one but I’m sure you can picture it on your own. Then there is the boy who said, “I lost my head.” He’s wandering around headless with arms outstretched in search of his missing body part. There are clever depictions throughout the book that kept my students in stitches.

Now, let’s get down to brass tacks. Don’t you think Mason went the extra mile by giving his cousin a ride home from school? I have a gut feeling – the sky’s the limit for this guy.

Round and Sparkly!

Last week, I had a group of kindergarteners in speech, discussing animals. It’s a good subject for learning about categories and building vocabulary. When I asked them if they had any pets, the youngest student in the group said, “I have a snake.”

I asked, “What does it look like?”

“It’s round and sparkly,” she said.

Before I could probe further, the other students were blurting out their response. I heard about the usual cats, dogs, and hamsters but I was still wondering what kind of snake is round and sparkly, maybe a stuffed toy.

During the first few months of school, the child with the snake wouldn’t speak at all in her classroom. That’s why she was referred to me - her teacher thought she was nonverbal. It didn’t take long for her to open up in a small speech group. But it soon became apparent she had significant language delays. I wasn’t about to make her uncomfortable that morning by putting her on the spot but I wanted more information about that snake. I was getting ready to ask when she spoke again, “I have a dog.”

“Oh,” I said, “tell me about it.”

“It’s round and sparkly.”

Adjectives! They must be working on descriptive language in her classroom. Now they just need to be fine-tuned a bit. It was easy to take the adjective, “sparkly,” and apply it to her shoes; they were glittering with pink and silver sequins, which reminded me of the perfect book to demonstrate more descriptive language – Shoes for Me! by Sue Fliess, illustrated by Mike Laughead. It is full of vibrant illustrations, vivid word pictures and rhymes.

“Girls shoes, boys shoes, flowers, stars. 

Jewels and glitter, trucks and cars.”

Shoes clattered and clopped, zipped and hopped and generally entertained my students while they listened to this story. By the end of it, the kids were bubbling with adjectives and they wanted to show off their own shoes so I took some pictures. Take a look:

Our group will return to the topic of animals in a week or two and I’ve asked them to bring in photos of their pets so we’ll have more information to go on. I can’t wait to see the round and sparkly snake and its twin – the dog.

Helpful Highschooler & Hurt Go Happy

In my work as a school speech therapist, I provide consultation services to our local high school. Of course, if I’m going to consult with a teacher regarding their student’s communication skills, it helps to meet the kids. I check in with a few of them on a regular basis and those kids expand the dimensions of my job in a wonderful way.

Last spring when our Special Education department purchased a few iPads, I took one of them to the high school, planning to make a video of a student so he could evaluate his own speech. At the time, I knew very little about how to use an iPad. However, it took only one consultation with this student and he set me on the right path. (I had to promise first, not to post his video on YouTube.) I was amazed at his improvement after one self-assessment.

Everyone is different. Another high school student loves to talk about books - no iPad for her. Literature is easy to use for communication development. I can listen to her rate of speech and fluency as she reads or discusses a story; I can see if she slips into an old speech pattern - using “w” for “r”; and I can check her comprehension. Recently, I had the pleasure of introducing her to the book, Hurt Go Happy, by Ginny Rorby, a local author and friend of mine.

Joey, the main character in this YA novel, has a severe hearing impairment. I won’t go into the plot except to say that another major character, Sukari, is a chimpanzee. I fell in love with her. Sukari opened my eyes to the controversies around animal testing. Hurt Go Happy also touches on many areas of communication: American Sign Language, lip reading, written communication, voice quality and miscommunications in relationships. It certainly opened a good discussion with my student.

For a detailed review of this book check out this link:   http://www.books4yourkids.com/2012/02/hurt-go-happy-by-ginny-rorby-256-pp-rl.html

On a related note, this past week Ginny was in St. Louis serving on a federally funded panel, helping to establish writing standards for 8th and 12th grade students. The majority of the panelists were educators but many others were writers. I’m grateful for the work they did. Just think of all the young authors who will become better writers because of their hard work. And think of the books we may get to read some day, by those young authors.

Young people and education… recall the high school student at the beginning of this post? At my next consult, he suggested he could show me how to play the game, “Angry Birds.” I don’t know, it sounds like too much fun. But I imagine there are readers out there who could turn Angry Birds into an educational tool. What do you think?

Happy (Almost) Valentine's Day

I love the approach of Valentines Day with all the colorful decorations, children’s artwork and the lovingly-made cards. I thought you might enjoy a peek at some of the decorations from around our school.

Hand-made cards

"Stained glass" window hearts 

I bet you can guess what these are. 

They are just waiting to be filled on Valentine's Day.

Our school librarian, Allison Brown, is in the spirit of the holiday. Take a look at our library:

And yesterday, I got to see her at work; it looks like she's having fun to me. She loves children's literature and children. It certainly comes through when you see her with students at story time.  Here she is introducing her favorite Valentine's book, Slugs in Love, by Susan Pearson. Illustrated by Kevin O'Malley.

And here she is with a happy crowd of First Graders listening to the story:

What a perfectly charming Valentines tale! It is full of poetry, love, devotion, and slug-slime. Who could resist such a combination; certainly not our kindergarten, first, and second grade students - nor those of us who work with them. 

The kids didn’t take their eyes off the book as Allison read about the shy slug, Marylou who “loved everything about Herbie—how his slime trail glistened in the dark, how he could stretch himself thin to squeeze inside the cellar window...." She was too shy to approach him directly so she used her slime trail to write secret poems for him. Marylou didn't see what Herbie wrote in return and so, like any good love story, the tension mounted. You’ll have to read the book to find out how it ends but since it is a picture book, you’ll probably guess - the ending is a happy one.

If you have any favorite Valentine’s Day books, I’d love to hear about them!