World-Wide Reading: Across America and Beyond

This was a busy book week at Redwood. We celebrated Read Across America on Monday with volunteer readers from around our community. In Marcia Douglas’ class, a high school student came to read Green Eggs and Ham to her kindergarteners. The kids decided to ham it up when I took their picture.

Marcia had a creative activity lined up to accompany the story. She introduced the students to the art of making green smoothies. 

They took their jobs seriously as they chopped the fruit and kale leaves for this creation. 

Speaking of chopping greens, Yoyo had a similar task in the original folktale, The Market Bowl by Jim Averbeck. 

In this wonderful tale, set in Camaroon, Yoyo had to slice bitterleaf (a leafy green vegetable) “thin as a whisper” to make her first bitterleaf stew. She was impatient and ignored her mother’s instructions because; “people just chew everything up anyway.” So she didn’t bother slicing, grinding or measuring the ingredients. When she showed her mother the creation, Mama Cecile gasped. My students grimaced at the clumpy, dripping greens in this fabulous illustration. Yoyo hid her stew in the market basket and several students cried, “oh no.” Others started laughing. They were sure there was trouble ahead and they were right.

The striking illustrations in this book inspired my second grade students to try some of their own.

I read this book to several speech groups and a first grade class in celebration of World Read Aloud Day. It was the perfect choice for March 6^th, a day celebrating the power of words across the world. After reading the story, we looked at Cameroon on an African map in the back of the book. Then we went online to find out more information about the author.

Jim Averbeck brings personal experience to this story. He was a Peace Core volunteer in Cameroon for four years. On his website, he shared some interesting facts and I passed on one to the kids. When Mr. Averbeck was in Cameroon, he ate crocodile, boa constrictor, and fried termites! That created quite a stir with my students. They loved the drawing on his website, depicting his Cameroon diet and they tried their own rendition. Take a look at one:

I haven’t shared this book with Ms. Douglas’ class. If I do, I’m curious what sort of cooking project it might inspire. Fortunately, there is a recipe in the back of the book for bitterleaf stew and it sounds almost as good as the green smoothie I had with that generous kindergartener group. 

Cindy Moo Inspires Students to Greater Heights (of Creativity)

I discovered Lori Mortensen’s book, Cindy Moo, last spring and fell in love with it. From the cheery cover to the expressive cows within the book, Jeff Mack’s illustrations are a perfect match for the text. I had planned to use the story with my students when I first read the book but it was due back at the city library before I had the chance. This week, my students finally got to meet Cindy Moo.

The story begins when a charming barnyard cow eavesdrops at a farmhouse window where she hears a child reading the nursery rhyme, 

            “Hey Diddle Diddle, the cat and the fiddle

                        The cow jumped over the moon.

            The little dog laughed to see such sport

            And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

Eyes wide, ears perked, Cindy Moo puts a hoof to her mouth and smiles. She is inspired by the cow of the nursery rhyme and hopes to follow his example. The other cows of Diddle farm don’t share her optimism and an argument ensues about the probability of a cow actually making it over the moon.

            “The cows began to argue.

            Each took a different side.

            But in the end they all confessed

            that none of them had tried.

            So Cindy Moo raised up a hoof

            and said that it was true.

            ‘If that cow could jump the moon,

            by golly, I can too.’ ’’

My students loved the rhyming text, the charming illustrations and the optimistic cow. When they first heard the words “debate” and scoffed,” they didn’t understand their meaning, but a quick vocabulary lesson took care of the issue. The book opened up other learning opportunities as well. We talked about rhyming words and used Mortensen’s premise to create stories of our own.

We wondered; what if a barn cat was listening at the window instead of a cow. And what if that cat heard the line, “Hey Diddle Diddle, the cat and the fiddle;” what would he think?

Ariel decided we should give our imaginary barn cat a name and she suggested Andro. Mariah thought the cat should sneak into the house looking for a fiddle to play. Malachi suggested he wouldn’t know what a fiddle was so first he’d try to find out. That opened up some wild possibilities. Andrea thought perhaps there should be a dog in our story named “Fiddle”.

We moved from plot ideas to rhyming structure and compiled lists of words to use in our story. We especially had fun with “fiddle,” “middle” and “riddle.” Our story isn’t complete yet but this activity kept several five and six-year-old students fully engaged. All the while, they were working on the common core standards: learning new vocabulary, recognizing and producing rhyming words, and retelling stories. We may not end up with a book to compete with Lori Mortensen’s, but I can’t be too sure. The kids have caught Cindy Moo’s optimism. They now have high hopes for their writing futures and I must say – I do too. 

Autism and an Uncommon Benefit of the Common Core Standards

Alex was a fact collector. He collected many things over the six years I worked with him: marbles, containers, floor plans from model homes, but by sixth grade, his largest collection was a wide variety of facts.

Alex has autism and he’s brilliant. In the sixth grade, he aced all his math tests; in fact, he was one of the top math students in the school. He was also great with computers and could navigate the Internet to discover any bit of information you might want to find. He knew the make and model of every car in the school parking lot and the Blue Book value. More than once he recommended I get rid of my old Toyota and move up to a BMW. (I didn’t.)

But Alex had his struggles with social language and reading comprehension. He could read fluently at a high school level but, if the subject didn’t interest him, the information didn’t stick.

He had failed every comprehension test of his sixth grade year when his teacher asked if I might be able to help him prepare for his next exam.  I had him bring his novel, My Side of the Mountain, to speech the next day. If you know the story, you know the main character, Sam, ran away from home to live in the wilderness where he trained a peregrine falcon.

I asked Alex, “What did you think of Sam’s bird?”

“There isn’t a bird in the book.”

“Yes there is. You know, the peregrine falcon.” 

Alex scowled. “There’s no falcon.”

“How far have you read?” I asked.

“I finished the book yesterday.”

“Alex, take a look at the cover. What do you see?”

“A boy and a bird.” Alex said.

“A book cover usually gives you some idea of what the story will be about. That bird is a peregrine falcon.”

I then suggested we research falcons on the Internet. Alex loved the idea. After we read a few facts about the bird and looked at several pictures, Alex read portions of the story with new interest. Then we expanded our research, read another section of the novel and soon he was hooked. We didn’t have time to reread the entire book before his next exam, but his scores improved substantially after a few sessions.

I think about Alex often, especially with the growing emphasis on nonfiction in the Common Core Standards. I imagine students like Alex will benefit from this shift. Of course, not all students are like Alex. Some seem to need a story to help the facts come alive and lodge in their memory. A blend of the two will likely be good for all students. I remember wishing my high school history teacher would find a good novel about World War I instead of insisting we memorize a list of facts and dates.

I have a new kindergarten student this year who has autism. He’s not interested in books yet, but I imagine that will change. He is just beginning to discover that language is powerful and he has started making requests for objects he wants. Before long, I’m hoping, books will be one of those objects. I’m not sure if he’ll prefer fiction or nonfiction, but I’ll be armed and ready for him with a good supply of both.

It has been several years since I last saw Alex but he is one student I’ll never forget. And from the way things are going with my new kindergarten student, I think I’ll be saying the same thing about him in years to come.