Category Archives: Print Motivation

Vote for Books!

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Ms Kristen Vote for “Pete the Cat” for Best Picture Book
by: Kris1556

At our library, we wanted to involve our kids in the voting process while promoting reading and integrating technology. So we created our own “Vote for Books” campaign.  Our librarians selected five candidates to run in each category: Best Picture Book, Best Chapter Book, and Best Middle School Book. Kids are coming on Oct. 20 and 27 to make campaign posters and campaign video ads. Our local television station ONTV will be here to film students talking about why others should vote for their candidates, or kids can make digital ads like the one shown above (made for free on the Xtranormal website). Campaign videos will run on our website and on our ONTV cable station.  Monday, Nov. 5 and Tuesday, Nov. 6 are our Election Days, and anyone can vote (no photo ID required!) for their favorite books. We used Survey Gizmo to put together our polls, so kids can cast their vote in our library or “absentee ballots” can be cast via our website.

It has been so fun to use technology this way to promote great books and to encourage civic engagement. If you’d like your students to get involved in the voting, please feel free to visit our library website: orionlibrary.org. Look over our book choices and discuss them with your students – did we leave one of your favorites off of our list? Make posters or videos for your candidates (send us photos or links and we’ll include them on our website!) and encourage fact-based, polite debate.  Most importantly, exercise your right as Americans and vote on Monday, Nov. 5 and Tuesday, Nov. 6 for your candidates. For as President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “”Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

Can’t see the video clip above? Please visit: Campaign video for “Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?

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It’s August, and there’s one big question everyone has been asking: Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten? Thank goodness Audrey Vernick and Daniel Jennewein have made this fantastic book to help us find the answer. First of all, does your buffalo have a backpack? Yes? Well then, your buffalo is good to go! Tell your buffalo not to worry about being the only one in class with horns and a hump – your buffalo can be proud of being the state animal for Oklahoma! And, as author Vernick reminds us, one of the things we learn in kindergarten is that everyone is special in his or her own way.

After you read this story to your class and get the giggles out, talk about what might happen if a real buffalo came to your school. Would it fit through the door? How big is a buffalo, anyway? Time to pull out the nonfiction! (I love tying together great picture story books with informational books, and it’s a perfect way to hit the Integrating Knowledge and Ideas Common Core State Standard.) Read a simple nonfiction book like “Buffaloes” by Marianne Johnston to your class to find out just how big these animals can be. Then, use a huge roll of paper to draw a full-sized buffalo – see if you can find a spot for him in your classroom! In the body of the buffalo, you could make a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting kids with buffaloes.  Both kids and buffaloes eat plants, but only buffaloes (hopefully) chew, swallow, and regurgitate the cud to chew it again.

Find out what your state animal is, and make your own version of the book.  Let students come up with what your animal needs to do or have in order to be successful in kindergarten. It’s a great way to soothe any fears about achieving this major milestone, for students and their parents as well!

Audrey Vernick, extremely awesome person and the author of this book, has a free downloadable teacher’s guide for Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten available on her website! Gotta love free! Go to audreyvernick.com to get it. Visit the illustrator, Daniel Jennewin, at danieljennewein.com. For even more buffa-loads of fun, check out their sequel: Teach Your Buffalo to Play the Drums.

Planting the Wild Garden

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Everywhere in my yard, plants are growing, many of which I didn’t plant (some call them weeds, I call them uninvited green guests.) How do all those plants in the meadows, by the creek beds, in fields, and by the sides of roads get there? In Planting the Wild Garden written by Kathryn O. Galbraith and gorgeously illustrated by my friend Wendy Anderson Halperin, we learn that we helped those plants: “wind and water. Birds and animals. Plants and people. All of us. Together.”

I love Galbraith’s easy, poetic style for nonfiction. This book doesn’t read like an old science text book, although it is bursting with information. Scotch broom seeds pop out like popcorn in the heat, cockleburs are transplanted when they catch on the fur of a fox, and dandelion seeds are blown to new places by a child. Each page is lushly and accurately illustrated by Halperin, whose award-winning project drawingchildrenintoreading.com is worth investigating if you are an educator or parent of budding readers.  After reading this book aloud, give students colored pencils and paper for them to draw the seed transportation method they find most interesting. Read the book aloud twice as children draw, rereading pages students want to hear. Students can practice and demonstrate their listening comprehension through their art. Encourage them to use labels and descriptions to explain their art, and to use onomatopoeia like Galbraith did to build writing skills. Whether this is part of a science unit on plants, a celebration of Earth Day, or a lesson to build listening comprehension, Planting the Wild Garden  will plant a love of nature in young learners.

For more inspiration, please visit Kathryn Galbraith’s website: kathrynogalbraith.com and Wendy Anderson Halperin’s website: wendyhalperin.com.

Go Graphic with Binky the Space Cat!

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Binky the Space Cat by Ashley SpiresSummertime for kids means no alarm clocks, no spelling tests, no book reports. Summertime shouldn’t mean “no reading” – we just have to find ways to make reading part of the fun. Graphic novels like Binky the Space Cat by Ashley Spires are perfect for summer reading. Some kids (and parents) gasp when I say that graphic novels and comic books “count” as reading. Of course they do! Open up Binky the Space Cat and you’ll find rich vocabulary, an enticing main character, an action-riddled plot, all the components of a good book. But with comics and graphic novels, you also get art that draws in readers, especially reluctant ones. Spires’ illustrations tell as much of the story as her words do, so reading the pictures is as much of a comprehension exercise as is reading the text.

Before you set them free for summer vacation, entice your students by reading aloud the first 17 pages of Binky the Space Cat. This is where we learn that Binky is (or thinks he is) a super-top-secret Space Cat, with a mission “to one day blast off into outer space…” even though he hasn’t ever actually been outside. Inside his Space Station (house), he takes good care of his humans by protecting them from ALIENS!! (flies).  There’s an obvious, hilarious disconnect between the words and the pictures, and your students will realize that what Binky thinks is not exactly what’s really going on. Talk with your students about Binky’s misconceptions. What does Binky think about outer space? What might happen if Binky actually went to “outer space”? What do you think Binky would use to build a rocket ship? Tell students that this is something Binky does later in the book, then prepare yourself for lots of hands reaching to read for themselves what happens next.

The publisher of the Binky series put together these free printable Binky activity sheets from Kids Can Press. One sheet encourages students to create a secret identity for their pet and to write about it using captions, word balloons, and sound effects.  Another sheet in the Kids Can Press packet shows step-by-step how to draw Binky. Print off these sheets for your students, or if that feels too much like schoolwork, give students blank paper, rulers and art supplies to create their own comic books or cartoon strips. Comics and graphic novels like Binky the Space Cat can make reading and writing fun all summer long.

Make Poetry Delicious with “Toasting Marshmallows”

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I’ve had the pleasure of teaching poetry lessons to more than 175 students this week, and one sure-fire hit book I shared was Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems written by Kristine O’Connell George and illustrated by Kate Kiesler. Before I shared the title poem with the students, I told them how eager I am to go camping this summer. Amidst waving hands and shouts of “Me, too!” I talked about my memories of campfires – the smoky smell of burning wood, the welcome warmth after the sun goes down, and, of course, the requisite toasting of the marshmallows. I read aloud Kristine George’s poem in which we hear about two kinds of marshmallow toasters – those who like to patiently roast the marshmallow until the “pillowed confection” becomes “golden perfection” and those who shove ’em on a stick, burn ’em, flick off the soot, and eat ’em, char and all. The only thing that could’ve made the kids more eager to get their hands on this book when I was done with the lesson would’ve been to bring in marshmallows and build a campfire on the playground (a librarian can dream, can’t she?)

Kristine George has a teacher’s guide full of cool extension ideas for Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems on her website: www.kristinegeorge.com. I love the idea of bringing in flashlights to use while writing poems like the four haiku about flashlights George included in her book, or working with metaphor in a writing-skills lesson. George compares the flashlight beam in the dark to a round stepping stone. What else might a flashlight beam be like? Turn off the lights, turn on the flashlights, and let the brainstorming begin! After sharing this book of poetry with your kids, you’ll hear lots of “S’more! Read s’more!”