Category Archives: Range of Reading

A Little Book of Sloth

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a-little-book-of-slothFor me, summer reading is all about slowing down, relaxing, and reading for pleasure.  To help you unwind, I’m sharing this irresistible book,  A Little Book of Sloth by Lucy Cooke. Flip through the pages and just try not to squeal at all the sleepy-cute faces and snuggly, furry bellies.

This is a non-fiction picture book about Slothville, a sanctuary for orphaned and injured sloths in Costa Rica. Baby sloths cling to their mothers for the first year of their lives, so little orphans each get a special stuffed animal to hug. All the snuggling and relaxing in the shade and hanging out make me think that I need to spend more time being sloth-like.

Share A Little Book of Sloth with students first for the pure pleasure of learning about these easy-going mammals. Take your time and enjoy the photos and the “who knew?!” facts. You’re hitting the Core Standards of Range of Reading with the age-appropriate non-fiction, and the author’s high-level vocabulary makes this an easy lesson on Craft & Structure (what is a “Xenarthran”? You’ll find out in this book!)

After reading, visit Lucy Cooke’s website www.slothville.com where you can watch videos of the sloths at the sanctuary. My favorite video teaches how caregivers at the sanctuary potty-train baby sloths. Enjoy A Little Book of Sloth and take a page from the sloth’s book: slow down, enjoy hanging out, and spend lots of time hugging.

Body Actions

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body-actionsThere seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of days left in a school year and the amount of time students are able to sit still and focus.  Now is the time to grab interesting, interactive, move-your-body books like Body Actions by Shelley Rotner and David A. White.

Body Actions is the kind of informational book with enough facts to be useful in a science unit and it’s still engaging enough to read for pleasure. Shelley Rotner’s fabulous photographs of kids are the basis for all the pictures,  and David A. White made the illustrations that go over the photos and show what’s happening inside each body. Facts like “you have 206 bones in your body, and more than 50 are in your hands” are shown with a photograph of a kid’s hands playing the piano and one hand has all the bones drawn inside it. Each body system – skeletal, cardiac, digestive, etc. – is represented in kid-friendly terms.

Share Body Actions with your students. After you amaze them with all the cool anatomy facts (you have about 650 muscles in your body!) let them test out their own personal models. In the book you’ll learn that “you take about 14 breaths a minute.” Get out the stopwatch and have your students test this for themselves. You can do these experiments as a whole class or create a center for students to try them in small groups or pairs. Students can time themselves for one minute and count each breath. Then, create challenges. How many breaths do you take after 20 jumping jacks? How many breaths do you take after sitting quietly for two minutes? Do your students blink about 15 times a minute? If your digestive tract is about six times longer than you are tall, measure yourself and multiply your answer to find out just how long that tract is.

If you have a digital camera and a printer, take photos of your students in action and let them draw in on the printed photo their digestive system, their lungs, their heart, etc. Or get the big rolls of paper out, let students trace each other’s bodies so they can make a life-size drawing of their amazing interiors.  Spend a little extra time outside if you can, and put those bodies in action!

For more information, please visit shelleyrotner. com.

My favorite Earth Day book: Wangari’s Trees of Peace

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2010-wangari-trees-of-peace-africaSometimes I fear that I can’t make a real difference in helping the planet, but Wangari’s Trees of Peace: a true story from Africa by Jeanette Winter shows how powerful one person’s actions can be. Wangari Maathai was devastated to see how barren Kenya was after thousands of trees were cleared. Soil was eroding and crops wouldn’t grow. The birds were gone. Women walked for miles to gather firewood. “I can begin to replace some of the lost trees here in my own backyard – one tree at a time.”

Wangari started with nine seedlings, which grew into a nursery. Wangari gave new seedlings to village women for them to plant, and gave them money to keep those trees thriving. When Wangari tried to stop the clearing of old trees, she was beaten and arrested. But her message of caring for the Earth was taking root just like her trees were, and because of her, Kenyan women planted over 30 million trees, saving their land and making life there better.

For Earth Day/Arbor Day/natural resources units/biography units/non-fiction read-alouds that you can finish in one sitting, this is my new go-to book. Just by reading it and discussing it with students, you’re hitting the Common Core Standard of Range of Reading (a biography that teaches science and social studies? Non-fiction score!) Wangari’s Trees of Peace is also excellent for an ecological cause-and-effect lesson, one of the big pieces of Key Ideas and Details. Using the book for reference, students can write and draw the effects of deforestation (crops wouldn’t grow, birds were gone, lack of firewood) and the effects of planting all those trees (women don’t have to walk so far to gather firewood, more birds, crops growing in the soil.) Winter’s picture book doesn’t delve deeply into the science of why a lack of trees leads to soil erosion, so you can share Planting the Trees of Kenya: the story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola if you need to build that knowledge with your students. Use both books as resources for student writing and drawing, and now you’re Integrating Knowledge and Ideas!

If in the past you’ve received more apple-themed coffee mugs than you need as end-of-the-year teacher gifts, you can suggest that in lieu of a present for you, students can give a gift to us all by planting a tree. If you can spring for a seedling or if your parent-teacher organization will chip in, plant a tree with your students and let them help take responsibility for watering it (seeds are cool, but watering a visible seedling is way more exciting than watering a patch of dirt.) Wangari’s Trees of Peace may plant in your students a dedication to care for our planet.

 

The Pet Project

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petproject As soon as I picked up this new poetry book, The Pet Project, I thought of the animal reports many of my students are doing and I knew I must get this book into the hands of those kids and their teachers! The Pet Project: Cute and Cuddly Vicious Verses written by Lisa Wheeler and illustrated by Zachariah Ohora begins with this ominous verse:

Warning!
If you’re the type who oohs and ahhs
at furry faces, precious paws,
the words ahead may be alarming:
Animals aren’t always charming.

Considering that I’ve been giving stacks of informational animal books to teacher-friends for student research projects, this poetry book comes at exactly the right time. It’s poetry month (hello, Range of Reading Standard!) and each poem about a different animal just begs to be compared to an informational book that will confirm the cool, and sometimes gross, facts. (Integrating Knowledge and Ideas? Check!)

For example, if you’ve got students who’re interested in monkeys, share this gem:

Monkey
He looks so like a little man
     with smiling teeth and grasping hand.
He chatters to his monkey friends,
     but that is where the likeness ends.
His hair is full of bugs and lice.
     He flings his poo – His aim’s precise.
His scream sounds like a banshee’s wail.
     He swings from his prehensile tail.
And worst of all he smells so funky.
     If he’s a man, then I’m a monkey!

After your students calm down from giggling over poo-flinging, the research-sparking discussion can begin. Do monkeys really fling poo? What does prehensile mean? Do monkeys really smell funky? Time to pull out the informational non-fiction books for a fact-finding expedition. I love that Wheeler never dumbs down her vocabulary (you’ll find query, devise, and formulate all in the second poem). Discussing all the wonderful words she chose will help you hit the Craft and Structure Standard. So one little picture book can help you teach three Common Core State Standards, kick off student-led research projects, enrich vocabulary, and strengthen the love of poetry. I think we’ve just found a new teacher’s pet in The Pet Project.

For more information on the author, please visit: lisawheelerbooks.com.For more information on the illustrator, please visit: zohora.com.

Oh, No! Where Are My Pants? and Other Disasters: Poems

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wherearemypantsPoetry doesn’t have to be “roses are red, violets are blue…” As David Lubar wrote in his young adult novel, Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, “There are as many types of poems as there are types of food. As many flavors, you might say. To claim you don’t like poetry because you hate ‘mushy stuff’ or things you don’t immediately understand is like saying you hate food because you don’t like asparagus.”

April is National Poetry Month, but don’t relegate poems to just one month – share all kinds of poetry all year long! (If you do, you can check Range of Reading off your Common Core Standards list!) One of my go-to poetry books is Oh, No! Where Are My Pants? and Other Disasters: Poems edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins with pictures by Wolf Erlbruch. These “disaster” poems range from funny to poignant, and your kids will find at least one to which they can totally relate.

For example, here’s one titled “Oh, No!” by Katie McAllaster Weaver:
“Hello apple!
Shiny red.

CHOMP. CHOMP.

Hello worm.
Where’s your head?”

and here’s part of one called “My Friend is Gone” by Lillian M. Fisher:
“A hug, a tear, and you are gone.
Your swing is missing from the lawn.
Your house is silent, dark and lone.
Your window says no one is home.”

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, so read Oh, No! Where Are My Pants? and Other Disasters: Poems to your class and then choose one or two of your favorite poems to read aloud again. Talk with your students about why you liked that particular poem. Encourage your students either to choose a poem to practice reading or to write a disaster poem of their own. Then, have a disaster poetry slam where you and each of your students read a poem aloud expressively to the class. You can bring a stool for kids to sit on, and a beret to wear, and students can snap for each other instead of clap (I like to teach them phrases like “cool cat” and groovy, man” because it makes me giggle.) Your students will build their reading fluency (another Common Core Standard checked off!) and find that poetry isn’t just mushy love stuff.