Category Archives: Fluency

A Ball for Daisy and the Power of Wordless Books

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ballfordaisyI am super-geeked that I am a guest blogger for Nerdy Book Club. Nerdy Book Club is a great resource, especially for those readers who are hard to match with just the right book. I like their Top Ten lists, like Top Ten Middle Grade Novels featuring Homeschoolers  and Top Ten Books featuring Autism Spectrum Disorders. My list of Top Ten Wordless Picture Books will post on March 30.

In honor of my Nerdy Book Club debut, I’m sharing with you a wordless book that did not make my Top Ten. It’s the Caldecott winner A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka. (Why not in my Top Ten? Check out my post on Nerdy Book Club to see which of my favorites nudged this one out!) Daisy loves her red ball. She loves it so much, she even sleeps with it. One day, she and her owner take the red ball to the park to play. Daisy and her owner are playing fetch when another dog chases – and pops! – the red ball. Daisy is heartbroken. But the next day at the park, the other dog’s owner presents Daisy with a new, blue ball. Now Daisy has a new ball to love, and a new friend.

One element of the Common Core Standard of Key Ideas and Details is “retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson”. A Ball for Daisy has such a simple plot that this is easy to do. If you’re working on problem/solution, this book works. If you’re working on first/next/last, this book works. And, if you’re looking for ways to build vocabulary, this book works. (How do wordless books build vocabulary? Read my article on ReaderKidZ.) As you “read” this story to your class, use those rich, expressive words. “Daisy looks distraught over the loss of her ball. She is so sad, she is practically inconsolable.” Your students will develop their listening vocabulary and may even use your Scrabble-worthy adjectives themselves as they retell the story.

A Ball for Daisy would be a great Storybox. Put the book along with two dog puppets and two balls in a Storybox and let students act out their retelling. Your students will have a ball!

Banana!

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Want a book that every kid in your class can read with expression and enjoyment? Try Ed Vere’s nearly wordless picture book, Banana! I love using wordless and nearly wordless books with young readers. (If you want the myriad of reasons why wordless books are great for building narrative skills, fluency, top-down processing, etc., check out this article by the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement or this one from Education Week.) The facial expressions on the two monkeys are so engaging, and the text is limited to two words: banana and please with either question marks or exclamation points. As you read, point out how the exclamation mark and question mark change the way we read the words. (Print Concepts mini-lesson? Check!)

Banana!  is perfect for young readers’ theater. After reading the book to your students, split them into pairs. The kids can make their own monkey masks or hats or puppets. Give students time to practice their lines (nailing that Common Core State Standard of Fluency). Then, kids take turns performing for the class, reading their lines as you hold up the book and turn the pages.

You can make a silly spin-off book called “Apple!” Take photos of two teachers arguing over who gets to eat the apple and lay them out like Ed Vere’s pages. You can make lots of little class books like this if you have a digital camera – let your students be the stars of the book, arguing over and eventually sharing an orange, or a pencil, etc. Your students will go, well, bananas for this book!

“This Is Not My Hat” wins the Caldecott Medal!

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If you’re a kid-lit lover like me, you already know that This Is Not My Hat written and illustrated by Jon Klassen won the Caldecott Medal for 2012. (Were you huddled around your computer screen that morning, too, watching the live broadcast and squealing when your favorites were announced? Just me? Ok.)

This Is Not My Hat is an ideal picture book to teach the Common Core Standard of Integrating Knowledge & Ideas: “Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot”  and “explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting).” The story told by the text is not exactly the same as the story told by the pictures. (Working on a lesson on inference? Grab this book!)

A little fish (the fellow you see on the cover) is narrating the story as he swims. “This hat is not mine,” he admits. He stole it from a big fish, and we see the big fish sleeping. “…(H)e probably won’t wake up for a long time,” says the little fish, and we see the same illustration of that big fish, but now his eyes are wide open. So all the words are from the little fish’s point of view, but we see in the illustrations what the little fish doesn’t realize – the big fish does realize his hat was stolen, does know who took it, and is out to get his hat back. The end shows the big fish with his tiny hat back on his head, and the little fish is nowhere to be seen. Anyone want to infer what happened in the end?

Kids who loved Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back will adore this book, and find similarities beyond the hat theme. So share This Is Not My Hat and compare the information gained from the illustrations to the information we get from the text, and then compare the two books, and you’ll have a double-whammy Integration of Knowledge & Ideas lesson! The endings for both books is left up to the reader to figure out. You can have students debate what they think happens at the end, and give reasons to support their position. Do any of your students think the little fish got away? If he did, what might happen next?

Because there are only three characters in This Is Not My Hat (little fish, big fish, and tattle-tale crab) it’s super-easy to make a Storybox with the book and either stuffed animals, puppets, or felt pieces of the characters for kids to retell the story. If you’re crafty, have kids make hats from brown paper bags (keeping with Klassen’s muted tones) for them to swap and declare, “This is not my hat!”

Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word

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I know, I know, it’s September, we should be discussing fall titles, but here in Michigan it’s a glorious sunny day, perfect for Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word  written by Bob Raczka and illustrated by Nancy Doniger. Using only the letters from a single word, Bob Raczka makes short, sweet poems. (In the book, Raczka and Doniger show the long word, the letters falling, and how the letters rearrange to make new words, but for the sake of brevity I’m tightening the line spaces here. Use your imagination.)

Spaghetti:    papa has a pasta appetite      he eats heaps

Earthworms:     a short storm    worms here     worms there       wear shoes

Share this book with your students and you’ll squeeze in three of your Common Core State Standards for reading: Range of Reading (because you’re sharing poetry), Print Concepts (recognizing all the letters of the alphabet, understanding how letters form words), and Fluency (these simple poems will be read and reread easily). To show how Raczka squeezed poems from words, write one of the words he chose on a large whiteboard. Use magnetic letters to spell the word again below your written word, and then begin rearranging those letters. Encourage your students to call out words they could make, or let them come up and arrange the letters themselves to make new words. Keep a running list on your white board of the words you formed. Now, can your class make a sentence using just those words, or a poem?

Students can use this as a writing prompt in a high-tech or low-tech way. In a large font, you can print off words for students to cut apart into letters they can manipulate, perhaps their names, vocabulary from a science or social studies unit, etc. and see if students can form words, sentences and poems. If you have access to iPads, you can download the Magnetic ABC iPad app (free for all capital letters, $1.99 for lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols). I like this app better than using real magnet letters because you always have as many of each letter as you need, and none of them get lost under the refrigerator or shelves. On the iPad, students can arrange the letters to make words as well, keeping a list of words they’ve made on  Notepad ( a free app that comes on the iPad) and using that list to write poems.

Any time of the year, Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word invites readers in for a refreshing sip of poetry.

For more information, visit Bob Raczka’s website: bobraczka.com or Nancy Doniger’s website: nancydoniger.com.