Back to School 2023

It always feels like I (Nina) blinked and back to school is upon us again all of a sudden, but this summer time passed even faster than usual. I don't know how we are here already - it still feels like it should be July to me! And so many of my teacher/school friends are already back at work somehow. If you already started school or went back to work, hope you are having a smooth as possible start to the school year.

This will be my second fall in a row out of the classroom, and while I have some adventures coming up that I’m excited about (more about that in a future post) and love the extra time with my little ones, it is always bittersweet as Teacher New Year is so exciting, nerve-wracking, and just so many emotions as once. 

I may not be planning back to school read alouds for my own classroom, but I’m still excited about lots of new books! 

Here are some new(ish) books that would be amazing back to school read alouds and just generally belong in classrooms, libraries, and kids’ hands:

The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale by Aya Khalil, illustrated by Anait Semirdzhyan. We all need this book! It is based on true events (their book The Arabic Quilt was banned in Pennsylvania, as detailed in an author’s note) and readers get to hear more about what Kanzi (main character from The Arabic Quilt) is up to these days. I was happy to note that she is still writing poetry! 

My Name by Supriya Kelkar, illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat (cover photo). I have been waiting for this book all my life! Although my first name - Nina- is generally easy to pronounce and “international” I still identify with the challenges and the general other-izing/feeling marginalized depicted in the book). Her book site has classroom resources too, including posters, nameplates, and a worksheet.

Where We Come From by John Coy, Shannon Gibney, Sun Yung Shin, and Diane Wilson, illustrated by Dion Mbd. A huge thanks to Katy (@KatySwalwell) for introducing me to this one - such a gorgeous book that every classroom needs. You could make your own class version or use it as a writing prompt in a myriad of different ways.

I'm From by Gary R. Gray Jr. and illustrated by Oge Mora. I was already excited when I saw that the illustrator is Oge Mora, as her illustrations are always a high point for me. But this book seems like it will be amazing on so many levels. Sadly, it’s not coming out until September 19th!

How We Eat by Shuli De la Fuente-Lau

My toddler LOVES this book. We read it every single day for a long time. I love it too because who doesn’t love books about food? And food? And representation? It is a board book which might be a challenging entry point for older kids, but could be projected on a document camera and used as a quick read aloud, conversation starter, writing prompt, morning meeting share, and so much more. What did you eat for breakfast? What’s something delicious you enjoyed this summer? Are both low stakes questions or greetings to help draw students in without potentially putting anyone on the spot or leaving anyone out who didn’t get to travel or go to camp, etc.

What Your Ribbon Skirt Means to Me: Deb Haaland's Historic Inauguration by Alexis Bunten, illustrated by Nicole Neidhardt has so many levels for students to connect and learn! For a simple greeting or response, ask students: How did you choose what to wear today? Or something you wore this past summer that was special for you? You can model with a hand me down or share something important to you. Students love hearing about their teachers’ lives. The representation and understanding of representation in this book are both so important.

No World Too Big: Young People Fighting Global Climate Change by Lindsay H. Metcalf, Jeanette Bradley, and Keila V. Dawson. With all the climate change related disasters and tragedies this summer, climate change might be on kids’ minds so this book could be a helpful conversation starter to get some of our feelings out as well. Also, students want and need to learn about kid activists.

Meet Yasmin by Saadia Faruqi, illustrated by Hatem Aly. One of Gabby’s current early reader faves and it belongs in every classroom! Short chapters, you could easily pass it on for early readers to finish the rest of it by themselves,  a glossary and discussion questions at the back! Yasmin is a treat--she’s a spunky 2nd grader, she’s Pakistani American (!!), and she goes through relatable ups and downs that are great classroom SEL convos (ie: how do I brainstorm an idea for a project? Why does everyone else have an idea and I don’t!?, comparing my work to others and what to do, making mistakes-- like ripping mamas kameez! etc..) She’d be a great BOY read aloud option. 

Happy reading!

Here are all of our back to school related posts from the past:

• Beginning of the School Year Fun

• Invaluable Beginning of the Year Tools & Tips

• Read Aloud Ideas for Back to School

• Back to School Night Tips

• Back to School Activities for Distance Learning

• Activities to Help Start the School Year Off Right

• Looking Back to Look Forward

• Preparing for the school year: Post #2: Things we are changing!

• Preparing for the school year Post #1: Things we are keeping!

Happy back to school!

Haitian Heritage Month

May is Haitian Heritage Month! There are many ways to celebrate Haitian Heritage Month, but why not start with asking students what they know about Haiti, finding Haiti on a map, and learning more about Haiti? 

After Gabby and I took a social justice educators’ tour to the Dominican Republic, we shared some of our experiences with our students and they were fascinated by the fact that Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island, but are two completely separate countries that speak different languages. This led to a great discussion about why certain languages are spoken where and how borders are created and are a social construct. Our trip encouraged me to learn more about Haiti as what little I knew came from books (I definitely recommend American Street by Ibi Zoboi) and a few friends of Haitian origin. I was embarrassed that I knew almost no Haitian history and had no idea that the US occupied Haiti for almost 20 years (from 1915-1934)!

Some picture books with Haitian or Haitian American characters that we’ve enjoyed (and that were a success with students) are below.

Malika's Costume by Nadia Hohn is now the start of a series of 3 books! I’ve only read the first one and used it with students. They made a lot of connections to wanting a specific costume for Halloween, missing parents, spending time with grandparents, and being creative. They also had a lot of questions about celebrating Carnival and why someone’s mother might be working in another country.

Mama's Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation by Edwidge Danticat

Our students had a lot of questions about refugee status after we read this book. We also talked about how a quick and successful resolution to immigration challenges is very unusual. You can find more ideas for relevant picture books here (I’m also a big fan of The Journey by Francesca Sanna). Students may have different levels of familiarity about immigration status and varied understanding (or lack thereof) of what the word “refugee” means, so be prepared to teach into this.

You can find more read aloud ideas here: Children's Picture Books: Stories about Characters of Haitian Ethnicity | Diverse BookFinder and here: Teaching About Haiti - Social Justice Books.
My students were also intrigued to learn more about Haitian Creole as it wasn’t a language they had heard of before and they had a lot of questions about its connections with French. I always love teaching students about food (and cooking and eating, if possible!), and music is a great connection to the language(s), history, and culture of a place. Of course, the best way to learn about a place is to actually speak to people who have connections there. We also love looking at photographs through Google Earth so students can dispel any misconceptions about what certain areas of the world have or do not have.

As I mentioned earlier, our trip to the Dominican Republic made me wish I had learned about the Haitian Revolution much earlier. Haiti was the first modern state to abolish slavery and the first state in the world to be formed from a successful revolt of enslaved black peoples. Why isn’t this history featured more (or at all) in (American) schools as an example of resistance and revolution? It is an important counter narrative to slavery in the United States (Thomas Jefferson, who was the US president at the time, was very aware of this). 'The Greatest Heist In History': How Haiti Was Forced To Pay Reparations For Freedom : Planet Money : NPR details what happened after Haiti became an independent state, in particular France and the USA’s attempts to delegitimize and destabilize the new nation. 

This story, Haiti faces disasters and chaos. Its people are most likely to be denied U.S. asylum, from 2021 could help students see how history affects the present and why and how past actions and policies continue to matter and leave their mark today. 

Teaching students about slavery is challenging for so many reasons, but learning about the Haitian Revolution could help students understand the many different systems at play and how slavery wasn’t an isolated event happening in the United States. Students could analyze economic, political, social, and geographic factors and ask questions and formulate theories about who was trying (and continues to try) to control narratives and perception and why we still only learn certain parts of history and hear certain perspectives. Looking at two timelines side by side (US slavery and the events in Haiti) or looking at primary sources like photographs would be an accessible and age appropriate way for elementary school students to start this rigorous and engaging work. 

We know it is May and you don’t have time for anything, let alone creating and teaching an in depth history and analysis unit, but maybe this is something to think about for next year or a future opportunity. Acknowledging Haitian Heritage Month and giving your students space to think about what they might want to learn could be a great morning activity and read alouds always help calm students down and dissipate some of that end of the school year energy. However you choose to recognize this month, we wish you a peaceful and calm May and happy Haitian Heritage Month!

Valentine's Day 2023

Valentine’s Day is next week and while it always feels a little commercial and sometimes a bit exhausting for me (so much red, pink, and glitter everywhere!), it is a fun moment to get us through gray February. Also, it’s an excuse to celebrate kindness, caring for others, your classroom community, and eat chocolate! Every year, my students would bring me dark chocolate as they know from my shares that is what I prefer, and it was always a sweet moment of being truly seen and appreciated.

We wrote about Valentine's Day  last year, specifically talking about our investigation of the holiday and what our students came up with as well as a few read alouds.

One new read aloud that I am very excited about is Your One and Only Heart by Rajani LaRocca, Illustrated by Lauren Paige Conrad (cover photo; from this list) - always love anything by Dr. Rajani LaRocca and it’s a great STEM connection. However, it won’t be out in time for this year’s Valentine’s Day, but it’s a good one to keep in mind for next year and just learning and reading in general.

Another book that is a perfect Valentine’s Day and everyday read aloud is How We Eat by by  Shuli de la Fuente-Lau (it’s book number 5 in the We Are Little Feminists series). My 3 year old loves this book and we read it all the time. Food is love, and as the book says, “eating is close to the heart.” so it’s a great Valentine’s Day connection and a way for students to think about different ways of eating and how we each have our own food that means love to us. This could be a lovely share and writing/reflection activity.

Another heart activity is to think about what is close to our heart(s) for writing inspiration. I often do this at the beginning of the school year as part of setting up our Writer’s Notebooks, but it’s a nice activity (or a nice re-do or refresh) for anytime. Students can create their own hearts, color and decorate them, and then write down things that are close to their heart that might help them find inspiration when thinking about what to write about.

Of course, it’s always nice to make cards for others on Valentine’s Day. One year, I made cards for nursing home residents with my class through the DC Public Library, but even if you don’t live in DC or they are not running the program this year, it would be relatively easy to organize something like this on your own too. Or think of adults in the building who don’t always get appreciation from others (librarians, custodians, receptionists, IT, cafeteria staff, and more).

With so much tragic news occuring lately, I was remembering when we tried to send some love and support to a community that was having a hard time. You can read about it and see examples with this post: Writing Postcards for Charlottesville with 3rd Graders). Thinking of so many communities who might appreciate a little lift today.

However you celebrate Valentine's Day (or choose not to), remember that we are halfway through February and that much closer to spring. Happy Valentine’s Day to all of the teachers!

Martin Luther King Day in 2023

When Barbara Walters died at the end of December, I saw a tweet noting that she and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were born the same year (1929) and that is how much (potential) life was stolen from him. It was a stark reminder for me. This year marks 55 years since Dr. King was assassinated. 

How to best address Martin Luther King Day in the classroom is a constant question for us. We’ve written about it before and always wonder what the best approach is. Doing or saying nothing doesn’t feel right, but neither does a quick one day activity. You can read about our approach last year here: MLK Day 2022: Reminders & Ideas and our approach with 5th graders here: Observing MLK Day in the Classroom. Teaching the History of Voting Rights in the USA is also always a timely reminder and important lesson.

There are so many book lists out there already, so we will just share a few books for read aloud ideas below. I keep coming back to thinking about his larger legacy and the legacy of his family members (especially Coretta Scott King) as well. Even if you don’t end up reading the books to your entire class, you can have them available for students who would like to learn more.  (Thanks to Diverse Book Finder for inspiration in my search for read alouds).

Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange and Kadir Nelson (pictured above).

I have a dream by Martin Luther King and Kadir Nelson

Love will see you through by Angela Farris Watkins and Sally Wern Comport (written by Dr. King’s niece),

Someday is now by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Jade Johnson (I definitely need to learn more about Clara Luper!).

One last note - many schools and communities have a day of service in honor of Dr. King. Make sure your students know why this is taking place and answer their questions (they will have questions!).

Leading Up to Winter Break

We are so close to having a break! Also, I always find that once we make it to winter break, the rest of the school year flies by somehow. This first chunk of the year is often the hardest in so many ways. Once the routines are established and community is built, the rest of the school year can feel more manageable. But every year and every class is different.

The lead up to winter break can be so exciting and often coincides with snow days, winter concert or assembly practices, lots of illnesses/sharing germs, and other disruptions, so your students will definitely react to everything that is going on. Keep in mind that some kids do not like breaks as they miss school and really thrive on routine, or might not have secure access to food at home or a stable environment for so many reasons. I always openly acknowledge to my students that I have mixed feelings about whatever my plans will be, letting them know I’ll miss our wonderful daily routine together, I might be nervous about traveling (especially during the pandemic) or my baby not sleeping in a new place, but I’m also looking forward to seeing family. Modeling processing and acknowledging mixed feelings can be very helpful if any of your students are anxious or similarly conflicted.

I’m sure this goes without saying, but remember that not everyone celebrates holidays, be it Christmas or any holiday. I’ve always provided family surveys at the beginning of the year so families can share any traditions that are important to them, and I will ask my students about family traditions, but try not to assume that they are centered around Christmas or winter. Snowflakes or festivity around snow (this is the season of hoping for snow days after all) is a great way to bring some seasonal festivity into your class without using religious symbols. Holidays can be hard for some families, especially anyone who has recently suffered a loss or a big change. And again, some families don’t celebrate, so assuming that everyone does might make students feel left out or alienated. 

Some festive activities that I’ve used in the past to get through December and channel some of my students’ excitement/restlessness/general energy are below.

• Making snowflakes to decorate the classroom. You can make this as academic or artistic as you like - we’ve written adjectives on snowflakes, used them for a Math lesson, written poems on them, or used art supplies to embellish them!

• Coming up with “gifts” for people in the building. While cards are great, what else can we do for others? Students are very creative and will think of acts of kindness and appreciation that will surprise and amuse you.

• Share family winter traditions! If possible, invite family members to join. I’ve done this in person or over Zoom and both ways were lovely. 

• Have a hot cocoa and reading party! We’ve let students bring in stuffed animals or pillows and spent the morning before the school winter concert reading. It’s such a nice calm way to head into the break and gives you an opportunity to catch your breath and make sure every student has something to read at home over the break.

• Read Elijah’s Angel: a Story for Chanukah and Christmas by Michael J. Rosen (again, you know your students, so if you do have students who don’t celebrate who might feel alienated by this book, find something else to read!). I love that this book models sharing what feels comfortable for you and your family and navigating this while caring for friends. 

• Clean and organize to get ready for the break/new year! I’ve found that students LOVE cleaning up the classroom especially if you allow them to use cleaning supplies. They can work in teams and each be responsible for one part of the room, or have the reward of using a duster somewhere in the classroom once their desk or personal area is clean and organized.

• Learn about Winter Solstice Traditions around the world. 

• Learn about Human Rights Day. This is also a nice counterbalance to a focus on presents or possessions.

• Do some prep work to make coming back in January easier for all of you. This might include laying the groundwork for some good activities by talking through some ideas with your students and physically getting some things ready to make it easier on yourself. 

  • I often have students write New Year’s Resolutions in January and I always make those copies in December so I have at least one activity ready to go when I come back. 

  • Another fun activity for coming back to school after a break is writing book reviews or book recommendations. I tell students we will do this when we return and then they have an extra incentive to read over the break!

Happy December and almost winter break to all the teachers (and students)! Hope you have some time to rest and take a deep breath as well as moments with loved ones and delicious food. 2022 has been quite the year.

Earth Day Read Alouds

April is flying by, which means it is almost Earth Day! I’m a proponent of including conservation and environmental responsibility in our learning as naturally as possible (shout out to the Science teachers at my school who do some amazing work with students covering water testing, erosion, soil analysis, invasive plants, and more). However, it’s always worth acknowledging Earth Day and joining in the celebration. We wrote a post last year with some  Earth Day picture book favorites, and here are a few more options for this year.

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney: I’ve had this book since I was a child and now have a t-shirt to match! It’s worth a read for the gorgeous illustrations alone and is also a great goal setting/resolutions read too. However, make sure you address the “Indians” her grandfather was carving to put in front of cigar shops. It’s a stereotypical image of American Indians. There is such little representation of American Indians in children’s literature so we don’t want to reinforce a stereotype with one of the few images students might see. You can read more from Debbie Reese on her invaluable blog, American Indians in Children’s Literature, here.

The Curious Garden by Peter Brown: I met Peter Brown at an author visit at Books Are Magic and have visited the High Line (in NYC) which is the inspiration for the book. Those are both fun anecdotes to share with students, but really this book is such a great read for so many reasons! It appeals to city kids in particular as many Earth Day books do not take place in urban settings. I’ve used it for so many purposes and students love finding Liam, the gardener and main character, on each page. 

Ada's Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay by Susan Hood and Sally Wern Comport: this is a true story! While this book is on my “to read” list, I love the opportunity to learn about Paraguay and find it on a map, as well as think about socio-economic concerns and how not everyone can afford to take music lessons on top of the clear environmental message of recycling and turning trash into treasures.

One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia by Miranda Paul and Elizabeth Zunon. Another true story that is still on my “to read” list, this book shares the story of Isatou Ceesay in Njau, Gambia. She fought against the idea that young women can’t be leaders and created an amazing movement focused around reusing plastic bags to benefit her community. 

Rebel Girls Climate Warriors: 25 Tales of Women Who Protect the Earth by Rebel Girls. Another Rebel Girls series, this one focuses on sharing stories of women all over the world fighting for climate justice.

The Last Straw: Kids vs. Plastics by Susan Hood is yet another book I still want to read, but the excerpts I’ve seen include lovely nonfiction poems about kid activists fighting to protect the environment. Plus, the book includes a timeline, author’s note, further resources, and more to encourage students to keep learning. (I included this as well as the next book in our National Poetry Month post as they work on both fronts!)

Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This Is How I Know by Brittany Luby and illustrated by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley is a bilingual Anishinaabemowin and English book showing how a young girl and her grandmother know when a new season is starting. This book is also on my “to read” list, but seems like it has potential to be a wonderful mentor text. The sense of being aware of the earth as well as grateful for the changes each season bring make this a lovely Earth Day read aloud. The author is of  Anishinaabe descent and the illustrator is of Ojibwe descent.

A New Green Day by Antoinette Portis is a book full of nature riddles! Gabby recommended it as something fun and a great potential mentor text.

If You Come to Earth by Sophie Blackall is a gorgeous book celebrating our planet and our shared humanity. Perfect for Earth Day and for little ones, it reminds us to take care of each other and our planet.

Happy Earth Day!

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April is National Poetry Month

Happy April or National Poetry Month! Poetry is something to infuse into your classroom (and life) everyday, but if you don’t have time to teach a standalone poetry unit, you can use it as a morning greeting, introduction to a topic or subject, or a way to share information. There are so many different types of poems. We don’t have a poetry unit as part of our 3rd grade curriculum, but we make sure to have plenty of poetry books in our classroom. I’ve learned that students who read one novel in verse often want to try others, so I always include them on my “teacher recommendations” shelf. Novels in verse also make wonderful read alouds, too. They sound beautiful when read aloud and are relatively quick reads.

Here are some ideas for teaching poetry that we shared in 2019. Many of these could be standalone lessons or part of a larger poetry unit.

In the past, Gabby read This is a Poem That Heals Fish by Jean-Pierre Siméon (translated from French) to our 3rd graders and asked them to write their own poem starting with, “A poem is..” as many characters in the book do. She played music while they were writing, and when the music stopped, students rotated to a different desk and continued that poem. The results were lovely, hilarious, and sometimes surprisingly dark (see the cover photo for an example). It was a fun activity that would work for an introduction to a poetry unit, National Poetry Month, and building collaboration or thinking about different writing voices. You can read more about the book and see some of the beautiful illustrations here.

Here are some other new (ish) books for National Poetry Month:

Kiyoshi's Walk by Mark Karlins is another beautiful resource for introducing poetry or thinking about where to find writing inspiration. A child asks his grandfather where poems come from, and his grandfather helps him find out by taking him on a walk around the city!

Unsettled by Reem Faruqi (yes, I can’t stop recommending books by Reem Faruqi!) is a must for the classroom. Nurah moves to Georgia, USA with her family from Pakistan and the novel follows the ups and downs of their big move. Nurah loves her family, swimming, and art. She’s thoughtful, determined, and brave, an excellent MC. Through her eyes we see the ups and downs of other characters’ lives too from colorism/xenophobia/racism, relationship physical abuse/ bullying, miscarriages, and mental health( depression, Alzheimer’s). All of these pieces are included in a way that felt both real enough, but still light enough for middle grade— which is a true feat in itself. (I’m quoting from Gabby’s Goodreads review as this book is still on my “to read” list!).

My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness by Georgia Heard is another book on my “to read” list, but it looks beautiful and very helpful for everything we are all managing in the classroom right now! 

Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This Is How I Know by Brittany Luby and illustrated by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley is a bilingual Anishinaabemowin and English book showing how a young girl and her grandmother know when a new season is starting. This book is also on my “to read” list, but seems like it has potential to be a wonderful mentor text. The author is of  Anishinaabe descent and the illustrator is of Ojibwe descent.

Samira Surfs by Rukhsanna Guidroz is another middle grade novel in verse on my “to read” list. Samira is a twelve-year-old girl who is a Rohingya refugee. She and her family had to flee their home and are now living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Samira starts learning to surf, but has to overcome many obstacles to do so. The book includes an author’s note explaining the situation in Myanmar. I want to read it myself as it sounds like it has so much potential for a read aloud and something to recommend to my students. 

The Last Straw: Kids vs. Plastics by Susan Hood is yet another book I still want to read, but the excerpts I’ve seen include lovely nonfiction poems about kid activists fighting to protect the environment. Plus, the book includes a timeline, author’s note, further resources, and more to encourage students to keep learning. Seems like a great book for Earth Day or everyday.

Happy reading and writing!

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MLK Day 2022: Reminders & Ideas

Photo credit: https://www.childrensbookworld.com/book/9781629799391 

Another 3rd grade teacher I know had a colleague forward her a link to an Art of Teaching post I wrote 4 years ago (a slightly modified version of this post on our blog) about teaching MLK day! It was a nice surprise and funny coincidence, as well as a welcome reminder to use primary sources with my 3rd graders.

This year, however, we went with a different approach as my co-teacher (who is new to me this school year!) had the brilliant idea of widening our focus to Dr. King’s legacy and movement and thinking about the people who came before and after him.

I also always remind educators to tie Dr. King’s work back to today and future work. This is not a one lesson or one day reminder, it is something you should think about all year. Two obvious examples of this work continuing are Black Lives Matter at School Week and Black History Month, but you don’t have to stop there.

My co-teacher helped my students (and me) learn about other people who contributed to the movement. The examples are endless, but here are a few with links to related pictures books:

• Lizzie Jennings: I had never heard of Lizzie Jennings, but she fought for her right to ride a streetcar in New York City in 1854 (100 years before Rosa Parks!). This is a wonderful story for so many reasons, but might help students conceptualize that the fight for equal rights on public transport was not limited to the South.

• Claudette Colvin: she was a 15 year old who was arrested and dragged off the bus in Montgomery for refusing to give up her seat nine months before Rosa Parks triggered the bus boycott.

• Georgia Gilmore: she sustained the Montgomery bus boycott by selling food and collecting donations. She also protected the members of her organization from employer retaliation. We read this book last year as part of work we did during Black Lives Matter at School week

Picture books are a wonderful medium for students of any age, but they are not the only option! Even if a picture book about something doesn’t exist, you can use photos, video clips, Newsela articles (or write your own!). You can always adapt materials that aren’t accessible for your students and explain to them how you did so. 

As always, we would love to hear how other educators (or families) addressed this topic or commemorated the holiday. If you didn’t have a chance due to so many factors complicating our day to day lives, remember it is never too late!

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Thanksgiving & Native American Heritage Month Resources & Reminders

Resources & Great Place to Start

American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) 

Teaching for Change 2021 Indigenous Peoples’ Day Curriculum Teach-In (especially the section about Native Voices in Children’s Literature by Dr. Debbie Reese, the creator of AICL)

Native American Heritage Month Resources For Teachers

Our ideas for addressing Thanksgiving in 3rd grade this year

(on top of expressing gratitude to all the people who take care of us at school):

• The word Indigenous - explained l CBC Kids News

• Newsela article: A Native American poet reimagines Thanksgiving and the poem referenced in the article: America, I Sing You Back by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

•  Read aloud: We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell

• We also just bought two new books that we are VERY excited about:

  • Classified, The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell

  • JoJo Makoons by Dawn Quigley (an early middle grade series with a Native American main character!)

General Tips for Choosing Resources about Native Americans

1. Look at publication dates.  In general, older (sometimes “classic”) books tend to have stereotypical portrayals of Native American peoples or kids dressing up as “Indians” or playing “Indian” games.  

   1. Some examples: Little House on the Prairie, George and Martha (George dresses up as an “Indian”).  We are not saying you cannot use these books, but be prepared to address the problematic images, language, or events.

2. Avoid anything stereotypical, overly simplistic, or cartoonish (think of the Cleveland Indians logo).

3. Look at IMAGES of Native peoples depicted in the books. Does every Indigenous person look exactly the same? Are the characters displayed as 'savage' 'non-human' in some way? Avoid the “how” hand gesture, tomahawks, gratuitous headdresses, dancing around a fire, taking hostages, etc.

4. Ask yourself these questions:

   1. Who wrote this piece? (Even Encyclopedia Britannica articles can be used as examples of problematic language/bias). Use the resources list and look FIRST for Indigenous voices on the topic. 

   2. Does the author/illustrator specify a tribal nation?

   3. What is the time period? 

   4. Is the history accurate? How do I know? 

   5. How does the author/illustrator present gender?

   6. Does the author's word choice indicate bias against Native peoples?

   7. (Some of these questions are from Tips for Choosing Culturally Appropriate Books & Resources About Native Americans).

5. Be mindful of the language used (by the resource and by you): avoid the words chief, squaw, savage, natives, and remember that “Native Americans” refers to thousands of diverse tribes (which means thousands of different cultures and histories) and not just one group of people. 

6. Make sure to proactively balance historical representation of Native American peoples with contemporary voices so as not to perpetuate the idea that American Indians only existed in the past. If a piece speaks of Indigenous peoples only in the past tense-- double triple check why it does that and why you are using it! 

7. Remember that many Indigenous peoples are Americans and were the first Americans.

8. Avoid resources (or saying yourself) that say "We are all immigrants". Not all of us are. Utilizing that immigrant 'melting pot' rhetoric as the foundational metaphor of the US erases the (long) history of Indigenous Americans. 

For more details and tips, please see Tips for Choosing Culturally Appropriate Books & Resources About Native Americans andUnderstanding Prejudice: Teaching About Native American Issues

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Read Aloud Ideas for Back to School

While “teacher new year,” as I call the beginning of the school year, is normally my favorite time of year, I am having a hard time with the uncertainty surrounding the beginning of the school year and am still processing everything that happened last year. I’m sure many others are feeling the same way (including lots of our students!). However, it is August already, so back to school is around the corner. So I am thinking about books I want to read to my students at the beginning of the year or have read in years past as sharing books with kids is always something I enjoy, whether it’s done at a distance, virtually, or side by side! 

These are books that came to mind or that I’ve used in the past, but obviously the possibilities are endless. Hopefully this list will help you with some back to school planning (more beginning of the school year ideas here and some that are specific to distance learning here) and introduce you to or remind you of some wonderful books! I find reading a book to students is always a good place to begin and choosing excellent literature to share is one thing we can control right now.

Chapter Books (You can use these as a longer read aloud or read an excerpt.)

• Save Me a Seat by Gita Varadarajan and Sarah Weeks: love this book! We started the year with this read aloud and students were hooked. You can read more about how we used it in our class here.

• The Top Ten Ways to Ruin the First Day of School by Ken Derby: we read the first chapter of this book on the first day of school and had students make top ten lists (the top ten things to know about me are..). We had examples about ourselves to share, it was a fun community builder! 

• 100 Dresses by Eleanor Estes: great read aloud and a relatively quick one for a chapter book. It’s also an amazing book club book! This story really sets the tone for respect and inclusion.

• House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros: in the past, I’ve used an excerpt from this book as a mentor text when students write their name stories.

• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson: I’ve found you can use individual poems for almost anything! Also a great whole class read aloud, you can read a poem or two whenever you have a minute.

• My Name is Maria Isabel by Alma Flor Ada: also a relatively quick read aloud for a chapter book, but so much potential for community building and respect. Also a great names tie in.

Picture Books for Welcome to School/Names/Get to Know You

• First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg: great for the first day, reminder that everyone can feel nervous!

• My Name is Yoon by Helen Recorvits: use for name stories or a create or share your name activity

• Becoming Vanessa by Vanessa Brantley-Newton: covers start of school jitters, introducing our names, best for K-1st age range

• Thunderboy Jr. by Sherman Alexie: we read this and then “created” our names to be displayed on the bulletin board

• Milo Imagines the World by Matt de la Peña: reminder not to make assumptions about people, but get to know them!

Picture Books for Hopes & Dreams/Goal Setting

• Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall: this is a great book for all ages, but especially little ones! I’ve used it before having students write their hopes and dreams for the school year with this framing: Jabari accomplishes his goal with a plan and some support and love. What goals do you want to work towards this school year? Also, now there is a sequel called Jabari Tries which is on my want to read list!

• Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney: I had this book as a child and it still resonates with me. It’s also a great way to start thinking about goal setting and hopes and dreams for the upcoming year.

• The Curious Garden by Peter Brown: A gorgeous book with an environmental message, Liam, the main character, sets a goal of taking care of a struggling garden and is wildly successful. I’ve never used it for goal setting, but have always had it as an option.

Picture Books for Creating Class Contract (Rules)/Setting Expectations

• The Day You Begin by Jaqueline Woodson: we used this before we brainstormed what to include in our class contract and asked how we could create a class community where everyone felt comfortable sharing their stories

• What If Everybody Did That? By Ellen Javernick: helps to get to the purpose of rules and working/living together as a community.

• No David! By David Shannon: great for younger kids, helps them focus on what we should do instead of what we should not do.

• Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein: funny story that is a real hit with students - use for introducing participation norms, being a good listener, dealing with frustration - oh so many applications!

• Each Kindness by Jaqueline Woodson: I could really only read Jaqueline Woodson books all day, every day, but limited myself to 3 for this post! The title of this book says it all, great for beginning of the year or anytime as a reminder.

• The Wedding Portrait by Innosanto Nagaro: talk about when is it okay to break rules? Also great to tie in to protests and the purpose of our class contract.

• The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett and Gary Rubinstein: taking risks, being kind to yourself

Picture Books related to Managing Emotions/Uncertainty 

• Saturday by Oge Mora: used this to talk about managing our disappointment during the pandemic

• The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Dawalt: we’ve used this before creating our emotions continuum and to introduce letter writing (if you have students write a letter to you or to themselves the first day or week of school)

• What Do You Do With a Problem? By Kobi Yamada: how could some of the restrictions we might still experience this year be a proble-tunity? Or just challenges in general. (Also, by the same author, What Do You Do With an Idea?)

What are your favorite back to school read alouds?

Ideas for Black History Month and Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action

Happy snow day all! Not teaching today means I have time to reflect on and write about some activities we tried out this month related to the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action (which we also participated in last year), and Black History Month.

While it happens that our biographical essays unit (which ties in with our non-fiction reading unit) falls during this month, we of course try to teach with an anti-bias framework every day (and all day!). Our curriculum, language, literature, and so much more should reflect the diversity of our world (as we the teachers do!) and we work hard to make this a reality everyday. So we are very purposeful about what we teach during Black History Month/Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action in hopes of avoiding the pitfall of teaching Black history only one month out of the year.

This month, we used a number of wonderful read alouds to enlighten our third graders. On February 1st, we joined millions of educators and participated in the National African American Read-In with a read aloud of Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson. This book connected with so many things we were learning about including our year long study of geography, biographies, and of course, Black History and the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action. We also read a Newsela article about Jacqueline Woodson being named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Finally, we read Each Kindness and continued working on thinking about author’s purpose by asking ourselves a series of questions leading up to conceptualizing why the author chose to write this book and what the author might want us to learn.

Student responses to Granddaddy’s Turn

Another powerful read aloud was Granddaddy's Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box by Michael S Bandy, Eric Stein, and illustrated by James E. Ransome (pictured above). We read this book right after we read a Newsela article about poll taxes and present day voter ID laws. Students made the connection right away and had so many questions about literacy tests at the polls, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and more.

My students were also enthralled when we read Libba by Laura Veirs, illustrated by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh as part of our biography study. They loved seeing and hearing about the statue of her and had so many questions about playing the guitar upside down! They are often amazed that they haven’t heard of someone who is so talented and this feeling leads into discussions about whose stories are highlighted (or omitted) in our homes, schools, and in the media.

This post would not be complete without including Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliott. Third graders usually know and can describe what being excluded feels like, so they relate to Milo even though she is reflecting on institutional exclusion. There is so much to love about this book and we used our framework for inferring author’s purpose to think about how it feels to be excluded and what you might want others to learn from hearing your story about it.

February (and the school year) is not over yet, and of course there are always more wonderful books to share and enjoy! Please share activities or ideas that worked well in your classroom - book recommendations especially are always welcome.

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Ideas for Teaching Poetry

Happy Snow Day to any other teachers who are at home like me today! Since I actually had time to read books that were not for school today, I was reminded of a poetry unit we taught with our fifth graders. There were so many great sessions, examples, ideas, and books for teaching poetry at NCTE (which I attended in November) that it made me miss teaching a full poetry unit!

For those of you who have a poetry unit or are just looking for new ways to teach, introduce, or incorporate poetry, here are some of my favorite lesson ideas:

• Start by asking students what is poetry? How can you tell if something is a poem? What makes something a poem? We asked our students to think about these questions and then looked at a lot of different poems together. This is a great way of dispelling misconception (poems must rhyme, anything can be a poem, etc). Our students would usually end up with some variation of the idea that poems must have some kind of meaning.

• We wrote “breathless” poems (do not search this term on the internet, especially on your work computer!). The way you write a breathless poem is to write about an experience. Then, cross out the parts you would eliminate if you were out of breath and couldn’t say every word. We went caving with our 5th graders, so we started with that (shared) experience and modeled choosing what words were non-essential and physically crossing them out. Finally, we wrote (or copied and pasted) the final version with just the words that were left! The students loved this structure and came up with some great poems.

• Mentor texts are huge in poetry, but students don’t always know where to find the line between inspiration and imitation (which is understandable!). We solved this problem by finding a mentor text that models using a mentor text, written by the one and only Jacqueline Woodson! Her poem Learning from Langston (from her book Brown Girl Dreaming) has her mentor text within her poem. We compared and contrasted the mentor text and poem and asked our students: How did JW make the structure her own?  What did she learn from Langston? Then, it was their turn to try it out.

• Now that your students have a better idea of how to use mentor texts, write some food inspired poetry using Gary Soto as a mentor author! This is a great way to introduce the idea of metaphors and similes (or review them if your students are already familiar with them.) It’s also an excellent hook as almost everyone has a favorite or despised food they can write about. (We used some of his poems with food metaphors from his book, A Fire in My Hands, but of course, you could use any of his poems as mentor texts).

• Another mentor author we love is Neil Gaiman and his book Crazy Hair. You can read more about how we used this book here, but it was a wonderful social emotional learning moment as well a poetry one!

Image from: https://literaryfusions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/calamity.png

• And of course, we could not teach poetry without including a mentor text from Kwame Alexander. His books have some many great formats, structures, and ideas, but we tried what we called “definition” poems with our students (photo above). The basic structure is the word is the title, the pronunciation and part of speech are listed, and then the word is defined. Next, there are three examples of how to use the word. We gave our students dictionaries and they wrote their own definition poems. This was a wonderful lesson in how to use a dictionary, vocabulary, and poetry.

We’d love to hear more ideas for teaching poetry (especially ideas for mentor texts! There are so many wonderful texts out there).

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New Fall 2018 Books to Snag!

Hi everyone-- Gabby here writing to you from Oregon! 

While one of us gearing up for another great year leading the classroom, the other one of us is actually getting ready to be a student again... (cue the student-esque excitement annnd cue the whining about homework... well, hopefully I’ve outgrown that!). When I wasn’t packing or convincing cats that it’s fun to fly on planes to their new home, I have been doing my best read some soon to be released middle grade and YA lit. I have been loving the ARC (advanced reader copy) life. 

Here are a few of the recently released or soon to be released (!!) notable reads from the summer. Hopefully, you haven’t spent your whole classroom budget (like we did last year!) and you’ve got room to add a few of these to your shiny classroom library to kick off the year right!

Picture books-

This cover is so fabulous we won't even try to make it smaller! 

• Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love (cover photo from this beautiful book, too), is hands down my favorite picture book of the summer, likely the year. If you cry reading this too, we should probably be friends? This book is absolute perfection. Buy it for every room, gift it to every friend!

• Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton, is a new addition to the Splat collection. This one is fun and back to school relevant for home reading or in the classroom. Yes, sometimes even we can get behind an animal book (then we can all relate to them and they often don't get too gendered!). 

• Love, by Matt de la Pena. This one isn’t all that new, but it is new enough and we continue to adore it!

 

Middle grade picks- 

• Sheets by Brenna Thummler was a fantastic surprise and our recent favorite kid-appropriate graphic novel. The art is gorgeous, you are totally pulled in, the characters are so very human (doing the best they can), Socio-economic status is part of the story (so great to see a white characters struggling with class), OH, and there are supernatural ghosts ... I mean, how cool and different is that ? This one is unique and melancholy and good.

• Front Desk by Kelly Yang is one of our current favorites for the year. Don’t miss this one! We waited patiently for it to come out, and it was worth the wait!

• Love Like Sky by Leslie C. Youngblood (if this cover alone doesn’t make you swoon I don’t know what will!) This is the book to have ready in your classroom library. This one takes you on a real emotional rollercoaster from blended family dynamics to friendships to just growing up. It’s very well done and would be an easy win recommendation for many students— with its charming, relatable characters and loving family. There’s some sadness and nerve wracking moments that will definitely provide drama and keep readers hooked. I wish I had this one last year to pass to my kids, but now you can!

• Merci Suarez Changes Gears by Meg Medina. Ah, I just loved this one. This one has so many great pieces and it is done so naturally. A thoughtful feisty 6th grader (Merci) figuring out life and getting a scholarship to a private school, all the while a multi-generational family going through the changes as everyone gets older. Merci has to be a buddy to a new kid she doesn’t like and figure out friendships at her new school-- an excellent coming of age story. This is my vote for classroom read alouds this year.

• The Magic of Melwick Orchard by Rebecca Caprara. This one was just lovely. This one has beautiful nature, a super loving family, and an awesome main character (11 year old) who is trying to keep her family afloat when her baby sister gets deathly ill. A great book for those readers who love one of those good, sad-feels ones. This was done so well, we’re amazed this is Caprara’s first MG novel.

• All Summer Long by Hope Larson (graphic novel). This one would be especially solid for late 4th, but even more so 5th for relatability about navigating friendships (and shifts), and finding your ‘thing’. The main character is an artsy rocker girl so this would be an extra win for any super musically inspired young people who might ‘get’ her.

• The much anticipated Rick Riordan presents, Storm Runner by J.C. Cervantes has its strong points. It wasn’t quite as beautifully written as we would’ve hoped, BUT the Mayan mythology and story turns were super fun.There were also some great female characters. We would definitely pass this one on to Percy Jackson lovers and see what they thought! We are moving on to read the next Rick Riordan published author, Yoon Ha Lee’s ARC of Dragon Pearl next!

Middle/high school teachers here are a few we would love to teach-

• “Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands”, the first short story from How to Love A Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs is a must-use this year (and for years to come). This piece would be incredible for the discussions students would have on this layered identity piece.. let’s just say if you teach this one please invite us to be flies on the wall! Discussions would be brilliant. BRILLIANT.

• Autoboyagraphy by Christina Lauren. This super cute, super gay book packs a punch with its look into navigating relationships, differences, and identity. It was even better than we thought it would be! Nuance and conflict and love and getting to know yourself and others..it was so good.

• Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. So full disclosure this one isn’t new (2011), but I’m late to the party and I want to plug it here. I’m thinking early middle school for this one, but it had spectacular world-building, fun characters, and some great features. It’s especially great to enjoy Sunny, the go-getter main character as she analyzes her identity (both the fantasy one and the one where she was born in NY but now lives in Nigeria), and to enjoy her new ‘schooling’ as she learns more about her more magical self...

• Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi. The texting is done so well in this one, and speaking of another beautiful cover! This one is for the older end of middle school, it’s pacing and (hipster?) style is just for older teens, but its characters are moody and lovable and doing their best.

• A Darker Shade of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. A well-written sci-fi / fantasy to rehook that crew who thinks they’ve read everything good. It’s got some blood but not in a gory kind of way, and for once, we don’t have vampires or a bunch of kids who have to kill each other. This one has great worldbuilding and the best (cross-dressing!?) female character we have read in sci-fi in a while.

• Not new, but could someone please let us know if you teach any Shaun Tan? We would choose The Arrival. We LOVE his work, but it is over younger student’s heads. Older kid teachers should definitely try using his thoughtful, relevant, provocative, and beautiful work! His work makes me want to teach middle school, I can only imagine the beauty middle schoolers would create in an integrated art unit using some of his pieces as inspiration!

For high school specifically -

• Circe by Madeline Miller. Why teach the Odyssey when you can teach Circe?! (I loved reading the odyssey for the first time so I don’t entirely mean that but I do!). I imagine this as an incredible journey and there are so many incredible ways i could see high schoolers discussing feminism and what it  means through this one.. There are some tough scenes/ pain and it really is an epic, which is why it’d be for a high school seminar class... or something! I can’t wait to see educators using this one.

Up next! -

Of course there’s so many we haven’t gotten to yet (Children of Blood and Bone!? new Jackie Woodson ?! Oh, the list is always long). I recently learned a new word, “Tsundoku”, which is Japanese and is loosely and modernly translated to someone who has/buys a bunch of that they don’t read and can’t get to, or a great big book pile. That might be me.

Alas! What are some books you’re already excited to reccommend this school year? Any upcoming releases you cannot wait for ?? Ask us about any of these in more detail if you’d like (or other books:), and be sure to check out some of our favorite all class read alouds for other ideas on what to bring into your classroom this year! Happy reading and sharing love of reading with your new crews. Or if you are in my boat, happy school reading and may we make time for fun reading, too! 

We are now reading and reviewing ARC's !

We feel so hip, so cutting edge! It is no surprise to any of you who follow us here (or on Twitter) how much we love literature. We have seen on a daily basis how transformative it can be for us personally, but also for our students. As a result, we are now reading ARC's ( Advanced Reader's Copies) to continue our ongoing quest of excellent, thoughtful, diverse literature. If you are someone who is looking for a reader (or two! ) feel free to reach out to us! 

We have loved reading the ones we have received so far. We especially loved How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs. The very first piece (Light Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands) in her short story collection blew our minds from the get go with its nuance, humanity, and the way it got at the depths of the many layers in our identities. Beautifully done-- we hope you can snag a copy this summer (It is officially out July 24th, 2018)! We would definitely use it with high schoolers!! 

What books are you loving this summer? What book are you desperate to get your hands on-- tell us, tell us! 

We're official! ;) 

Setting Students Up for Summer Reading

It’s so close to the end of the year (and summer!) that we have started getting questions about summer work and summer reading. We absolutely want to encourage students to read over the summer in order to maintain their good reading habits (which are important life skills) and avoid the dreaded summer slide. In our class (and at our school), we’ve found our students tend to have consistent access to books and reading options all summer, so for the population we work with, the most important way to encourage summer reading is to promote reading all year long!

All year, we have read alouds in our 3rd grade class. While we know this takes up a lot of instructional time, we have found that reading chapter books out loud to our 3rd graders has improved their comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, and engagement as readers (and more!). They have developed (or maintained) an incredibly high level of appreciation for wonderful books, reading, read alouds, authors, sequels, new vocabulary, cliffhangers, and more!

Apart from read alouds, we also encourage solid independent reading habits. We gave up on reading logs early this year as they felt like a drag and a chore and instead added a section on homework grids (they receive a new one every week with homework choices that are due Friday) that says, “What is one book you enjoyed this week?” Some students write as many as three or four books they enjoyed that week, and some add comments about the books too! We also have students share out periodically about books they are enjoying and encourage them to recommend books to each other. This genuine sharing of books and authentic pleasure in reading is gold.

Another amazing tool to prep students to be readers all summer long (and beyond) are book clubs! We are just wrapping up a book clubs unit that has been so powerful. Again, talking to each other about books you enjoy is a life skill and a genuine, authentic way to communicate about books. We also tried to tap into books that were the first in a series so some of our more reluctant readers would be really into the first book because they read it with their book club, and now have many more books with the same beloved characters to read all summer.

Finally, (and we can’t emphasize this enough), encourage library use! We are so lucky to be in DC where we have an amazing public library system that runs a phenomenal summer reading program for kids. However, just reminding students that libraries exist is important. For all of our research projects this year, we’ve brought in books from the DC public library (and reminded our students to take extra good care of them since they are “our personal library books.”) Modeling library use (and of course, active reading as adults/teachers) can motivate students to use the public library themselves (and of course, provide them with books all summer). Librarians are our priceless and valuable partners in our quest to get kids reading. If your students may not have consistent access to books this summer, ask a librarian for help! Depending on your flexibility with taking students out of the building or inviting people in as guest speakers, there are multiple ways to set students up to be public library users.

A student's summer reading goals: "read as many books as possible!"

We don’t assign a list of required reading over the summer (and are fortunate to have this flexibility at our school), but we do have students set summer reading goals and create lists of books they might like to read over the summer (and we share our own). This “Summer Reading Bingo” from the Curriculum Corner looks fun. How does summer reading work in your classroom (or school or household)?  We’d love to hear more ideas!

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Womyn's/ Womxn's/ Women's Herstory Month!

It's Womyn's Herstory Month! Every day is women's day etc etc.. and yet, we are also loved celebrating women and putting women (besides ourselves!) even more at the forefront this month. Full disclosure we are both huge book people so the list of books could go on for a while. Below are a few fantastic anthologies that we turn to often in our classroom and have used for many different projects throughout the year. We put these in the front of our room and hype them up extra for this month (along with books from March Book Madness especially Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, I Dissent, The Water Princess, and Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean's Most Fearless Scientist).

Through these read alouds (which the student's have been loving and asking for more of!), we've enjoyed the way we can tie this into conversations about maps in Social Studies!

In Reading, we've been working on "thick" and "thin" questions (thin questions you can look at text and simply identify the answer, whereas thick ones require some thinking and we especially loved some of their questions about Annette Kellerman (1886-1975) from Shaking Things Up, and why bathing suits even needed to be designed for women, or why women would be told wear corsets in the first place (this conversation became very fixated on corsets at one point)...

We love this multiple perspective narrative-- a lovable cast of characters and so much suspense! 

We also started a new read aloud, Hello, Universe! We got to a scene where the main character's dad scolds him and says, "Boys don't play piano!" and our room erupted in silent signals meaning "agree" or "disagree". Our students had a lot of opinions about this (especially a few of our boys who play piano!), and we had passionate reflections after that read aloud block as to how gender should never dictate what any human has access to.

In Writing, we have been wrapping up writing about people from history (most of them are women, although not all) and we are now writing about someone we love (many of which are women!), which has been such a great way for our students to see mirrors of themselves, or windows into someone else's life experiences.

On International Women’s Day, we started our day by writing letters to amazing women in our life and telling them why we appreciate them. Students wrote to teachers, babysitters, moms, aunts, grandmas, and even women we had read about (Dominique Dawes reppin' Silver Spring, Maryland got quite a detailed letter from one of our students! It included a very self-aware: "I know you are busy but please please reply! K, thanks!").

We also went to one of our favorite bookstores  (and places!) in DC, Politics and Prose! We loved getting to see Patricia Valdez, who is an amazing scientist and author (AND is also a woman!) who wrote the fantastic book, Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor: The Woman Who Loved Reptiles. We were all enraptured learning about Joan Procter (1897-1931), and the way in which she took such thoughtful care of reptiles, learned so much outside of college, and designed such intentional spaces for them to live. Her design of the London Zoo reptile house is something we all decided we must see! (and it is in a Harry Potter movie so of course we found that oh, so exciting).

All in all, it has been a blast to put an extra spotlight on womyn and we could go on forever, of course, with all of the endless ways a human could be an inspirational woman. As we wrap up this month, we take the energy that our students have about finding new role models and guideposts in their lives, and carry it with us as we strive to be the best we can be, too!

We feel so wonderfully saturated with inspirational women this month-- maybe we'll go to bed listening to Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls new podcast! And one more book we love below (we warned you)! 

Book Review: Save Me a Seat

Our first chapter book read aloud this year was Save Me a Seat by Gita Varadarajan and Sarah Weeks. It’s an amazing book for so many reasons, and was the perfect first read aloud for our class. While we felt it allowed for natural segues into many of the beginning of the school year discussions and activities, it’s a perfect book for anytime of the year.

There are two narrators which leads to two vastly different perspectives (often on the same event). Our students reflected often on how two people can experience the same events very differently. This helped them brainstorm ways to be understanding and empathic. One of our students referenced part of the book as an explanation of how misunderstandings happen and why assumptions are dangerous.

One of the main characters, Ravi, is a new student (and recent immigrant). His experiences helped us talk about how we want people to feel in our classroom. Joe, the other main character, feels like a target at school, and before we brainstormed agreements (rules) for our class contract, we discussed what we can do to make sure no one has to feel like Joe did  in our community. Students also really identified with Ravi’s frustration when his name was mispronounced and talked seriously about the importance of using names carefully and respectfully. The other day, when a substitute teacher was in our class, the students took it upon themselves to carefully learn her name even after she said it was a hard name and they were welcome to call her Mrs. K instead.

Save Me a Seat also teaches students about the significance of an apology. Sometimes (for kids) it can feel like saying sorry is simply a stepping stone towards moving on or getting out of trouble. But in Save Me a Seat, Joe’s father writes him a moving and heartfelt letter accepting responsibility for how he made Joe feel (instead of saying I didn’t mean to or focusing only on his intent) and acknowledging that it is okay for men (and boys) to have feelings after all. Especially with third graders who can have difficulty genuinely connecting abstract concepts, reading and discussing this part of the book was such an important lesson in apologizing, accepting responsibility, and discounting messages of how you are “supposed to” feel, act, or behave (because of gender, coolness, or something else).

Our students also learned so much and wanted to learn so much from reading this book. They asked questions (and we investigated) about Bangalore, South Indian food, Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), and more. They repeatedly asked us to share the recipes found in the book and poured over the glossaries for each main character in the back. We (teachers) also loved that there was a glossary for each main character as opposed to only one for Ravi.

Including two glossaries makes them a tool for each character to be understood more fully instead of an indication of Ravi’s foreign state. It also made me (as an Indian-American), happy because it means that readers were less likely to ask me (or other South Asian people) to explain or translate words or references in the book. The South Indian food in the book was not portrayed as foreign or weird or (my personal pet peeve) something only “adventurous” people eat. It was simply food, just like the food Joe ate.

Save Me a Seat is also a great mentor text. We will keep coming back to it all year as an example of how to develop characters, use descriptive language, write dialogue and more. The fact that each chapter ends in a cliff hanger makes it an exceptional read aloud.

Our students were so enthralled with the book that we decided to have a mini-celebration at the end complete with South Indian food. We ordered idli and sambar from Pansaari, a local restaurant, and the students were so excited to eat one of Ravi’s favorite foods. We had talked about respecting other people’s likes and dislikes and the students were quick to point out that this applies to food as well. Even students who said they don’t like spicy food or who are very picky about what they eat for lunch were excited to try the idli, sambar, and coconut chutney. While they ate, we (teachers) read aloud and finished the book. We also talked about our favorite parts of the book and looked at different locations from the book on a map.

Since we finished our read aloud, six of our students have eagerly reread Save Me a Seat independently (which works well for their development of comprehension and decoding skills in third grade). Many other students have asked if they can have the book next. They also trust our recommendations so much more! We love all of the enthusiasm around reading (and incorporating food, geography, kindness, and more). We truly couldn’t recommend this book more highly!

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Book Review (and read-aloud plug): Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech is our read aloud for the last few months of the school year. Aside from being an incredibly captivating story with beautiful writing, it also fits perfectly with our curriculum as we are studying storytelling (and Sal, the main character, is telling a story) and American Indian studies (Sal has Indigenous ancestors and visits sacred Native sites). We also study Health & Wellness so the budding young romance is perfect for our class to experience as well. There are also many other relevant and significant issues skillfully woven into this story (mental illness and the related stigma, family dynamics, and gender equality, to name a few).

We have a bin full of books by Sharon Creech that we only bring out of the closet (with a lot of fanfare) when we start reading Walk Two Moons. Soon, the books are fought over (especially Absolutely Normal Chaos as it features a character from Walk Two Moons) and students are excitedly announcing book “shout outs” with lots of reminders from their classmates that spoilers are not allowed!

We use Walk Two Moons as a mentor text during Writing instruction, finding examples of how Sharon Creech communicates context without explicitly saying where, when something is taking place. We also find a lot of meaning, action, and character development and dialogue.

It is also a wonderful read aloud with lots of emotions! We felt happy, sad, cried, laughed, and more as we read it together. Many chapters end in cliff hangers, and students have ample opportunities to make predictions, connections, find meaning and theme and more. It’s also a reminder that not all stories have happy endings and events don’t always work out perfectly, and that’s life. But life is also beautiful, unexpected, and hilarious as well.

We always say we don’t have time to do a chapter book read aloud, but somehow we always find the time because reading aloud and experiencing a book together is so powerful. Even our reluctant readers would get excited when it was time for read aloud, and beg us to keep reading even if we were running out of time. We finished the book on the last day of school, which felt appropriately final and anticipatory. Many of us were teary after a sad part (teachers included, to the delight and amazement of our students), and some students had questions about what happened next (to which we replied, what do you think?), but it was best described by one of our students, who said (with a huge smile), “That was so good! And sad. But so good!”

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Ideas and Resources to Address the Muslim and Refugee Ban in the Classroom

Coming off a weekend of protesting, I find myself thinking hard about what to say to my students tomorrow when they ask me about the news. We saw some of our students at the rally at the White House today. They will want to share observations from their experience tomorrow. Students will also have questions about checks and balances since we recently concluded a unit on US Government. They will have overheard conversations between adults and understood only snippets of what was going on in the media. Where do we start?

Our planned read aloud for tomorrow!

Start with a read aloud. Ask students what connections they can make to the story. Can they make text to self connections? Model by thinking of a time you yourself were homesick or scared or missed someone. What about text to world connections? How does the story connect to events happening in the world today?

The Journey by Francesca Sanna is about a family who must leave their home and country to escape war and hopefully find safety. After you read it, talk about what the word “refugee” means. This is the book we will read aloud tomorrow. You can find more ideas for relevant picture books here. Naturally, there are many more out there- please comment below with your suggestions!

Discussion Ideas

Talk about the news. I like to start with an image (works well with my concrete 5th graders) for sign in and a table for responses with two columns: "I think" and "I wonder." You can do this on a large whiteboard or piece of chart paper, or individually (or in small groups) with handouts. It helps less confident students feel ready to share their thoughts and provides you with a way to find out what misconceptions versus accurate information students have and understand. The "I wonder" column also gives you a better sense of where to go to answer all of their questions and prompts them to ASK questions, which is always an excellent place to begin.

You can find images of the protests at airports here. You could also talk about the executive order and find the affected countries (and cities protesting) on a map. Here is an article describing the current situation in the seven affected countries (with a map highlighting their locations).

Here is a New York Times article with stories of some of the humans banned from the U.S. The article also includes a short video of protests at JFK airport. My students usually like to hear stories of individual people or families as it aids their comprehension by making the situation less abstract.

Other Useful Resources

UNHCR Teaching Resources and Toolkit for Teaching About Refugees

Brainpop video about religion (requires a Brainpop login; Brainpop also has informational videos about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Citizenship).

A People’s History of Muslims in the United States (from Zinn Ed Project)

The First Amendment and Freedom of Religion lesson from Teaching Tolerance

8 educational resources to better understand the refugee crisis from Amnesty International

Naturally, there are SO many directions you could go and topics to cover. These are only some suggestions for ways to get started. You know your students (and school, and families, and administration) best. If you do try out one of these ideas or have other suggestions, please comment below! We’d love to hear how tomorrow goes in your classroom.

 

 

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