Category Archives: Range of Reading

Suryia Swims!

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suryiaswimsIt’s the end of August, so before we pull out the books about apples, pumpkins, and leaves changing color, let’s give one last hurrah to summer with Suryia Swims! How an Orangutan Learned to Swim.

“Their evolutionary history has taught (orangutans) to beware of dangers, such as crocodiles, that lurk in the water. Because of this, the intuition that would have encouraged orangutans to swim never developed.” Orangutans like Suryia don’t swim, but then again, Suryia is not a typical orangutan. He lives in South Carolina at a wildlife preserve called T.I.G.E.R.S. (The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species) instead of Southeast Asia like his wild counterparts. His best friend is a dog named Roscoe. And when the tigers, the otter, the elephant, and the tapir go swimming in T.I.G.E.R.S. pool, Suryia jumps in, too.

The photographs by Barry Bland are incredible. Suryia cuddles leopard cubs in the water and dives for plastic rings, things an orangutan would typically never do. In the safe wildlife preserve that Bhagavan “Doc” Antle founded, animals don’t have to struggle for survival, so “their intellect and curiosity can grow”. Seeing all the other animals have fun in the water may have encouraged Suryia to overcome his fear, too. Sounds a bit like a good classroom, doesn’t it?

Use this nonfiction picture book to teach the Common Core State Standard of Key Ideas and Details: students retelling the who/what/where/when/why of a text. After you share this book with your students, discuss the information found in the author’s note. Why is it so unusual for Suryia to swim? Why do you think Suryia took the plunge? At our library, we have found that Storyboxes or magnetic Storyboards are great vehicles for retelling. We find puppets or stuffed animals of the characters in the book, or make copies of open-source images and glue old magnets to the back. We put the characters and the book in a center for students to retell or act out the details they’ve learned. Students can use a puppet orangutan and say why he’s afraid of swimming. One by one, students can put Roscoe the dog in a pretend pool, then Bubbles the elephant, Tonks the tiger, the baby bear Ondar, etc. and retell the details of the book. Go to suryiaandroscoe.com to see video clips of this amazing, swimming orangutan and his best animal friend. Suryia Swims! written by Bhagavn “Doc” Antle with Thea Feldman and photographs by Barry Bland will reaffirm for your students that anything is possible!

 

 

Panda Kindergarten

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Panda Kindergarten by Joanne Ryder and Dr. Katherine FengIt’s back-to-school time, even for pandas. Joanne Ryder and Dr. Katherine Feng have made the world’s cutest informational book, Panda Kindergarten. The photos of the baby pandas at the Wolong Nature Reserve in China are unbearably adorable.  Sixteen roly-poly panda cubs are learning the skills they will need to survive in the wild some day. No math or phonics lessons in this kindergarten class, but lots of social skills are learned as the pandas climb on the wooden structures, tumble in the snow, and even take afternoon naps together.

One of the Common Core State Standards in reading across all grade levels is “range of reading”. More and more, our students will be expected to read informational text and “show what they know”. One of the best ways you can help students become more fluent informational readers is to surround them with irresistible nonfiction books. Panda Kindergarten is a picture book with simple text and great photos, so it works as well for a read-aloud as any story picture book. After reading this book aloud, and pausing for the inevitable “Awwwww!’ with each photo, read the “fast facts” on the last page. “A newborn giant panda is the size of a stick of butter and weighs about four ounces…. an adult panda can weigh well over 200 pounds.” How much is four ounces? How much is a pound? Make a list of weight predictions: “I think a stapler weighs four ounces.” Bring scales into your classroom. Let students weigh and record a variety of objects to find out what else is about four ounces to get a sense of how small a newborn panda is. Students can also weigh themselves on a scale. How many students would it take to weigh about as much as an adult giant panda?

Students can also compare “panda kindergarten” and kindergarten for humans using a Venn diagram, or by writing and drawing things that are the same and things that are different. Go outside to see if your students can “swing and climb and play with their (new) friends” like panda cubs do!

To find out more about the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda at the Wolong Nature Preserve, please visit pandasinternational.org.

Go, Go, Grapes!

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Go Go Grapes by April Pulley SayreHip, hip, hooray for April Pulley Sayre and Go, Go, Grapes! A Fruit Chant! How do you make healthy eating fun? With Sayre’s vibrant photos of fruits taken at her local farmer’s market paired with her contagious rhymes:
“Nectarines, tangerines,
hit the spot.
Glum? Go plum.
Or apricot!”

Start your lesson by asking students, “What do you think a mangosteen is? Or a pomegranate?” Read Go, Go Grapes! and see if your kids can discover what those uncommon words mean. Reread the book and encourage kids to chime in (“Fruit is fun!”) Next, play “Cross the Line”: have all the kids stand on one side of the classroom and imagine an invisible line down the middle of the room – or put down tape if your maintenance team won’t go bananas. Say “Cross the line if you’ve tried kiwi,” and go through the fruits listed in the book. If you have time and funds, bring in some fruits for kids to try! (Check for fruit allergies first – some kids are allergic to certain berries.) Take photos of the fruits and have kids use those Logic Smarts to sort the photos – by color, or by which they liked and which they didn’t. With all the gorgeous colors of fresh produce, you can make a “color wheel” using fruits –  challenge kids to eat a rainbow! Go, Go, Grapes, hooray for healthy eating, and super job, Ms. Sayre!

For more information, visit aprilsayre.com.

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.

America the Beautiful

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When I see the words “O beautiful for spacious skies”, I  automatically sing in my head “for amber waves of grain”, but I didn’t know some of the other verses of this song that, for me, are so moving:
“O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!”
Katherine Lee Bates wrote the patriotic poem America the Beautiful in 1893, and Wendell Minor illustrated the verses to make the perfect book to help us celebrate our Independence Day. An introduction at the beginning of the book gives a bit of history about the poem, but the rest of the book is filled with Minor’s gorgeous paintings that bring to life the words we’ve sung for over 100 years.

Before reading the book, sing the familiar first verse of the song with students. The imagery is lovely, but may be hard for young ones to envision. What do amber waves of grain look like? Or purple mountains above the fruited plain? Ask students to do a quick draw of what the song makes them picture in their minds. Then, read aloud a bit of the introduction where we learn that Katherine Lee Bates wrote this poem after traveling from Massachusetts to Colorado. As she traveled, she wrote in her diary about the amazing, diverse landscapes she saw in our big, beautiful country. Read/sing the book once straight through with your students without stopping to comment just for the enjoyment of the book. Then, go back and revisit how the artist interpreted the poet’s words.

Minor includes in the endnotes the settings for each of his paintings. On the map in the back of the book, show students where you might see those fruited plains, those purple-shadowed mountains. Bates wrote her poem back before Alaska and Hawaii were part of our country – what might she have said about those states in her poem? Talk about your state and what its natural features look like. Have students draw and write about the beautiful state they live in, and celebrate the America in which we are so lucky to live.