Category Archives: Vocabulary

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.

Why Wordless Books Work: The Lion and the Mouse

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If we’re trying to help our kids learn to read, why read wordless picture books? Isn’t reading all about letters and words?

Yes and no.

Reading is: to inspect and apprehend the meaning of writing or other signs or characters. (Thanks, dictionary.com based on the Random House dictionary!) So, reading a book means gaining meaning from the words and from the pictures.  Here are some key reading skills kids build when they read wordless books:

  1. Comprehension as they follow the story shown in the pictures
  2. Print concepts (we read top to bottom, left to right)
  3. Sequencing
  4. Inferring
  5. Predicting
  6. Vocabulary

How can a wordless book build a child’s vocabulary? Research led by professors Sandra Gilliam, Ph. D. and Lisa Boyce, Ph. D. from the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University showed that mothers used more complex language when sharing a wordless book with their children than they did when they made comments while reading a book with words. (Utah State University Study Shows Parents Are More Engaged With Their Children When Reading Books Without Text June 07, 2011, www.Businesswire.com retrieved June 15, 2012)

And of course, the most important reason to share wordless books is because these books draw kids into a world where even those who struggle with letter recognition can successfully read a fantastic story.

The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney is a gorgeous “retelling” one of Aesop’s fables. It won the Caldecott medal, with good reason.   Young ones will enjoy the art, and older ones can discuss the deeper layers of the fable.

Before reading The Lion and the Mouse, talk about reading a book with no words. We readers have to really examine the art to understand what is going on. Share this book and let your students either turn to a partner to share or tell the whole group what is happening in the story. Ask students to predict what will happen when they see the hunters setting up the trap and then the lion’s foot stepping on a rope. Use rich vocabulary yourself as you add to the conversation about the plot and what will happen next.

As a writing activity, students can write the dialogue between the lion and the mouse on sticky notes and put them on appropriate pages to read aloud to a friend. It’s perfect for retelling if you make a storybox with a stuffed lion and mouse, and a length of string. No matter what the reading level of your students, all of them will enjoy successfully reading The Lion and the Mouse.

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.

Dream Something Big

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Dream Something Big: the Story of the Watts Towers, written by Dianna Hutts Aston with collages by Susan L. Roth, is a visually stunning biography of an artist you may never have heard of before. Simon Rodia was simply Uncle Sam to his neighbors in Los Angeles. Over 34 years, Sam built towers from broken bits of tile, glass, and cement that soar up to 99 feet high. His incredible recycled-art structures are now a National Landmark.

At the end of this gorgeously illustrated book you’ll find jaw-dropping photos of the Watts Towers. I’m including a close-up of the towers here so you can see the details as well as a photo that shows just how huge these works of art are. Share Dream Something Big with your students and do a fun math activity. Just how tall is a 99-foot tower? Get out the rulers and chalk and head to the playground or parking lot. Divide 99 by the number of students you have and let them take turns measuring and marking out each foot in 99 feet. Stand at one end of the length when you are done and imagine that distance soaring into the sky. Decorate the 99 feet with chalk “collages”, coloring bright shapes to resemble Sam’s art. Build your own towers with scrap materials, pipe cleaners, clay, etc. and encourage your students to “dream something big” like Sam did. For more inspiration, visit Dianna Hutts Aston’s website: diannahaston.com or Susan Roth’s website: susanlroth.com