Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

Read the Most from Coast to Coast!

Here is a neat idea for celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March 2.  Help set a record for Accelerated Reader quiz taking!

Renaissance Learning is sponsoring the program and offering free kits for teachers.  Click here to register your class and claim your planning kit which includes a poster, student bookmarks, and downloadable support materials.  Register by February 14th to ensure that you receive your materials on time. Get event information here.

For extra fun, all participants will be registered for daylong prize drawings.  You could win an iPad, a signed copy of a book from the popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book series by Jeff Kinney, and more.

Teaching Tips

Get ready!  Have students set goals or make book recommendations to each other.  Check out stacks of books from the school library so kids have plenty to read.  If you teach at a school where students have home libraries, ask kids to bring in books to share.

Prepare for state testing!  If March 2 is near your state testing window, you might want to challenge your students to read NONFICTION on March 2^nd.  It’s excellent preparation for the test and corrects an imbalance since most students tend to read much more fiction than nonfiction.  If all day of nonfiction is too much for your gang, set a timeframe during which your class reads only nonfiction.  The students will get into it.

Make a day of it!  Set up blankets, have snacks, make forts, and read as much as you can!   It doesn’t all have to be silent reading.  The kids can read in pairs.  Parents can read to the class.  You can read to the class.

Fun data analysis!  Use AR’s reports to show your kids how much they accomplished.

> Print up a word count for your students the day before the event and compare it to their word count after the event.
> Compare class points earned before and after the event.
> See how much fiction versus nonfiction you read during the event.
> Break your class into teams on AR and see which team can read the most.
> Use the quizzes taken report to see which books were most popular that day.

January 18 is A.A. Milne’s birthday.  Celebrate with Winnie the Pooh Day!  You can adjust your activities to suit your students’ interests and reading levels.  Pooh is not just for little kids!  The books are actually quite challenging—AR levels Winnie-the-Pooh at 4.6. 

Disney has a great Winnie the Pooh site where your class can play games, watch episodes, and print pictures to color.  (Veteran teachers know to NEVER let students print without permission!  Print the pictures yourself ahead of time.)

Print Disney’s downloadable Winnie the Pooh activity book.  It’s excellent for students up to grade 3.

Extend your students’ learning by going beyond Disney’s Winnie the Pooh.  Visit the charming UK site for A.A. Milne.  You can teach your students about the author and delve more deeply into his life and books.  He wrote much more than Winnie the Pooh!  He wrote really charming poems, for instance.  They are excellent for your students to study.

I love “Halfway Down,” Milne’s poem about a place of one’s own.  It comes from his book When We Were Very Young.  http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/miscellaneous/mmilne-halfwaydown.htm   Check out this awesome Muppets video of Kermit’s nephew Robin singing the poem as a song.

Click here for the text of several of A.A. Milne’s poems.  You can use them for reading comprehension, reader’s theater, fluency practice, or just to color and decorate.  Whatever suits your class!

Your students would enjoy listening to you read aloud from the original Winnie-the-Pooh book.  Have fun comparing it to Disney’s movie and TV versions of the story.  Just-Pooh.com has a nice gallery that lets you compare original illustrator Ernest Shephard’s illustrations to the Disneyfied Pooh. 

 Happy Winnie the Pooh Day!

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home. So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do the Kindle justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part two: how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading

For a full lesson on speed reading, read my blog entry on the topic.  Here are the Cliffs Notes:

1.  Speed read by tracking with your finger.  Yes, just like you did back in first grade.  Build up speed by sliding your finger more quickly under the text and challenging your eyes and mind to keep up.
2. This helps because it focuses your eye.  Without imposing focus, your eyes will just wander over the page, re-reading, skipping along, and generally wasting time.
3. It also teaches you not to read in your head.  You know how little kids read aloud?  Well, us older folks enunciate the words in our heads.  As you learn to track your finger faster and read faster, you will read much faster than you could talk.  Once you break the reading-aloud-in-your-head habit, you read much faster.

How does Kindle help kids with speed reading?

1.  It focuses the mind.  With the Kindle, you are looking at a single page at a time, not a double-page spread.  It feels like you are cutting your distractions in half.
2. The eye doesn’t have to slide so far.  With a traditional Kindle—the ones that are about 6” wide, the text is a little narrower than in many books.  Your eye doesn’t have to slide so far, and you take in many words at once, naturally scooping them into phrases.  This makes a huge difference in how quickly you read.  Think about a newspaper, and how those 3” columns are built for speed reading.  Your eye takes in several words at once.
3. Kids get a feeling of accomplishment as they click through the pages.  You know how kids who are just learning to read chapter books stop constantly to brag about how many pages they have read or what chapter they’re on?  Kindle brings back that exhilarating feeling of accomplishment.  For some reason, it really is fun to click through pages.  This encourages kids to read faster—faster—faster!  (My advice to you: allow some time for goof-off clicking through pages to let kids get it out of their systems.)
4. You can enlarge the font size.  This addresses many problems facing kids.  For example, a poor child might wait forever for new glasses while you and the school nurse try to secure a pair.  With a Kindle, you can enlarge the font size so the child can read without headaches.  Enlarging the font size also makes any book seem easier.  This can decrease the intimidation factor for struggling readers.  Click here to read comments about Kindle and kids on Amazon—there are some persuasive testimonials.
5. Kindle is new.  Like any skill, you get better at reading—and speed reading—through practice.  Although it’s been around a while, Kindle is still a novelty.  Kids who don’t like to read will want to use the Kindle.  They’ll practice more than they would have otherwise.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.  Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

Kids and Kindles, an occasional series at the Class Antics blog.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle can be a wonderful classroom tool.  So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do it justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part one: harnessing the text-to-speech feature

The short version: the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.

The long version:

Kindle parents taught me this tip.  Over and over, parents say that Kindle has not only encouraged children with learning disabilities to read, it has practically taught them to read.  Click to read about how the text-to-speech feature has helped many Kindle users who have learning disabilities!

Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

The text-to-speech feature will read any English language content to you.  This is extremely helpful for kids with dyslexia or a learning disability.  The kids can follow along as Kindle reads aloud—or not.  Either way, they are building their vocabulary though exposure to the richer variety of words found on the printed page compared to everyday conversation.

I think the read-along-while-I-read-aloud aspect of the Kindle is really valuable.  It hearkens back to Teddy Ruxpin and his books on tape I loved as a child.

Audiobooks, while higher quality than Kindle’s text-to-speech because they’re read by actors and not machines, are expensive.  If you want to follow along with an audiobook, you have to own the actual book, too.  That can get really expensive.

With Kindle, you can listen to any book read aloud.  The deal is especially great when you consider how many free books are available.  Kindle has an extensive collection of public domain books you can download for free.  Many classics are written at quite a high reading level, so even kids without learning disabilities might like the text-to-speech feature.  How nice for new technology to expose kids to classics like the Oz books, Beatrix Potter’s collection, or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!

I always thought I was a fast reader—until I met my mentor teacher.  She puts me to shame!   I thought it must be some natural talent of hers, not something that I could learn.  True teacher that she is, my mentor wouldn’t let me off so easily.  Speed reading is a skill you can acquire.  My mentor learned it as a child from a teacher who had a speed reading machine.

It was years before I figured out what a speed reading machine was—more on that later.  But that summer, I took a course in speed reading through my local university.  On the first night, we learned to track our reading with our fingers, just like a first grader.  Then we practiced all summer.

And I consider it $350 well spent.

Yes, sliding your finger under the words like a first grader really will make you a faster reader.  Our eyes wander all over the page, slowing down our reading.  We reread sections and don’t even realize it.  Tracking with your finger combats this human frailty.

People tend to vocalize the words we read.  Little kids actually read everything out loud.  Most older kids (and adults) tend to read silently, but we pronounce the words in our heads.  By tracking with your finger, you can move faster than your mind can pronounce the words.  With a little practice, you’ll get to the point where you feel like you’re reading with lightning speed—because you’re flashing past the words, absorbing their meaning but not pronouncing every phoneme.

In addition to just getting faster, there are unexpected uses for speed reading:

• It keeps you focused (and awake).  Speed reading will help you pull an all-nighter.
• It gets you through boring text.  Focus on the skill of speed reading, not the dull text you are required to read.  College kids and those working on master’s programs, take note!

I found an online speed reading machine that teaches you how to focus your eyes.  You can let your students use it individually in the computer lab.  I like to project the online speed reading machine using our classroom computer-projector hookup.  Then the whole class can practice together.  The strong readers pull everyone else along.

You have to input your own text into the online speed reading machine.  Use free books from Project Gutenberg or just pull text from online encyclopedias and articles for kids.  My class and I had the best time doing that.  I let the kids suggest topics for study.  In this manner, we learned about everything from sea turtles to Justin Bieber.  The kids had so much fun learning about a variety of topics that they forgot they were improving their reading fluency.

Want to learn more about speed reading?  Click here for an article about speed reading from the Four Hour Workweek Guy.

How is your child at reading aloud? Did you know that this one skill is the main reading diagnostic test for many schools?*

As you prepare for back to school, I strongly suggest that you have your child practice reading aloud. This skill often takes a big hit during summer slide; nevertheless, students usually are evaluated on reading aloud within the first week of school. Have your child practice with appropriate grade-level books if you can, but use easier books if your child is not a strong reader. Check for fluency: a natural cadence, automatic word decoding, good pronunciation and accuracy.

Ten minutes a day is plenty for a child who already reads at grade level (or did at the end of last school year.) If your child was just barely making it last school year, this summer practice is essential and should be longer. You’ll probably want to break it into two fifteen minute chunks a day, more if the child is motivated. For struggling readers, you might want to read the material aloud before the child reads it. Another trick is to read aloud with your child, pulling him along. This is better than having the child stumble through the text.

*One common test is DIBELS, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. It measures how many words your child accurately reads from a grade-level passage in a minute. Schools use this test to quickly identify struggling readers. Teachers often use it to form reading groups.

Note: I don’t want to cause stress to you and your child about these back-to-school assessments. I merely want to show you how to help your child brush up skills so her work reflects actual ability, not the effects of summer slide.

Many students have nervous jitters at back to school time. It helps to brush up on skills before returning to the classroom.

Ideally, you encouraged your child to read all summer. Regardless, reading a chapter book the week before school starts can make a difference. Besides the obvious benefits of improving skills, reading a chapter book puts your child back in an academic frame of mind. The experience of reading reawakens the child’s vocabulary, important for tests like Star Reading.

I think the most important benefit of reading a chapter book before school starts is extending the child’s attention span. Reading a chapter book (or listening to a parent read aloud) helps avoid this problem for your child.

I know a teacher who distributes a short chapter book to each entering sixth grader at Meet the Teacher Night, two days before school starts. Each child is given homework: finish the book and be ready to take an AR (Accelerated Reader) test on the first day of school. This exercise shows the students and families that sixth grade is serious and provides all the benefits I just described.

Note: I don’t want to cause stress to you and your child about these back-to-school assessments. I merely want to show you how to help your child brush up skills so her work reflects actual ability, not the effects of summer slide.

Going to the library is like shopping without the buyer’s remorse. Wait, scratch that. The library can still offer buyer’s remorse if you check out too many books, the wrong books, or just plain lose stuff.

Here are my tips on organizing your library haul.

1. Keep a dedicated library basket (or bag) in the car and at home. The basket at home is so you don’t lose books. When you’re not reading the book, it goes in the basket. When you’re checking out dozens of books at a time, this becomes important. Keep a basket in the car for already-read books so you can drop them off whenever you’re nearby. If you wait for a scheduled trip to the library, you might end up with overdue books.
2. Teach your child how to select books. Librarians and teachers try, but it might mean more coming from you. Kids pick the strangest books. My third graders will show me their latest library picks and I’ll say things like,“Have you read the first five books in this series that is two grade levels above yours? No? So why did you pick this?” “This book is about the Russian Revolution. Do you have any interest in that? Then why did you pick it?”“This is a tender coming-of-age story about a girl and her horse. You like Transformers and anything about war. Why did you pick it?”Teach your child to really think about whether there is anything he can relate to—the cover, the title, the author, or the first page. If not, pass. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s for you.
3. Use the five-finger method. At school, books are labeled with their AR levels. Not true at most public libraries. You can check on ARBookfind.com, or you can just use the five finger method. Encourage your child to read the first page aloud and hold up a finger for each word that’s too hard. If your child finds five too-hard words on the first page, the book is too hard. Put it down.
4. Ask the librarian for advice. Librarians read more than anyone and they know what kids like. You can trust them to help you choose. Just make sure your child understands that while he doesn’t have to read everything the librarian recommends, he has to read enough so as not to annoy her and make her not want to help him next time.
5. Feel free to take and check out the display books. Librarians set books out on display, like at a bookstore. You’re allowed to borrow these books. The librarian can always find something new to set out. (Hint: for picture books, sometimes it’s random. I’ve found some cool books by reading the random picture books librarians set out.)

The key to summer reading is access to books!  Not just any books.  My experience is that many kids self-select books that are too difficult for them, so my best advice to parents is to use AR levels to suggest books for your child. 

You can find the AR levels at ARbookfind.com.  You can build a virtual bookbag and take this list with you to the public library.  Alternatively, while you’re at the library, you could use a computer to log on to ARbookfind.com and check right then and there.

Other ways to help your child at the library this summer:
* Plan a reading list and get books from your library
* Schedule regular trips to the library
* Check out books to read aloud, too!

You might like to buy books at garage sales and thrift stores or organize a PTA book swap for summer reading.  Audio books are a great resource. 

Have older kids read aloud to younger siblings and friends.  Then turn the tables and let those younger siblings read the same story to Big Bro and Big Sis. (That’s a teaching strategy that really works!)

Don’t expect your child’s online reading to keep his skills honed.  Online reading usually is skimming—kids need to read deeper to develop and maintain skill levels for learning. 

Set a time each day for reading. When I was young, we had a “no electronics” rule every afternoon in the summer.  That worked, because we lived in Tampa, Florida—the lightning capital of the world where it rained every afternoon.  The “no electronics” rule applied to all our friends, too: we all hung out reading books together for a couple of hours (often determined by how long the rainstorm lasted).  It was a really popular daily event in our neighborhood!

If your child likes one book in a series, encourage him to read all the books in the series.  Your child will feel more like he chose the book and he will be more vested in reading.  Teachers, librarians or booksellers can advise you on a series at the right age and reading level. 

My high readers in third grade loved the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, Children’s Choice Book Award Winner: Author of the Year. Their  enjoyment inspired other students in the class to raise their own reading levels so they could read the five books in the series about Greek mythology set in modern-day America.  More than 20 million copies of the books have been sold in more than 35 countries.

Available at Amazon.com:
The Lightning Thief (Book 1)
The Sea of Monsters (Book 2)
The Titan’s Curse (Book 3)
The Battle of the Labyrinth (Book 4)
The Last Olympian (Book 5)

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney started on Funbrain.com in 2004, appearing  as blog posts.  Now, the series tops the New York Times best seller lists.  My students love Poptropica, the online game that Jeff Kinney produces during his day job at an Internet company.  There are popular movies out for the first two books.  Share them with your kids!

Available at Amazon.com:
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Rodrick Rules (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2)
The Last Straw (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #3)
Dog Days (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #4)
The Ugly Truth (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5)

And of course, the Harry Potter series and movies are magnificent (available at Amazon.com).  I have read that series countless times, and before each new movie is released, my family watches all the old movies again so we don’t miss anything. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will be released on July 15, 2011.  I’ll be there! 

A bit of self promotion: my Buckley School Books series has 2 volumes available now.  I plan to write one book for each kid in Mr. Hoker’s class!

Zapped! (Buckley School Books #1)
Brainstorm (Buckley School Books #2)
Double Switched (Buckley School Books #3 coming soon)

Part of the fun of blogging is that you get to meet other bloggers—and their students.  Mr. Reifman’s class in Santa Monica asked me if the boy on the cover of Best Multiplication Songs EVER! is supposed to look like an “x” for multiplication.  I was impressed with their question and told them more than they ever wanted to know about symbolism in my books and marketing messages.  (I went to business school to learn how to be a civilian—I grew up as an Air Force brat with no idea how the other half lived.)

So here it is…Fun with Symbolism.

Dear Mr. Reifman’s class,

You are very clever! There are indeed hidden symbols and layers of meaning on the cover for Best Multiplication Songs EVER!

The jumping boy on the cover is indeed intended to make you think of the “X” for multiplication. The jumping-for-joy-look indicates that the album has a lot of energy. Also notice that the red letters and a boy flying against the blue sky evoke Superman images, suggesting that you can become a multiplication superhero if you listen to the album.

Managing Stan (aka Zapped!) has hidden symbols, too. You’ll notice that fire or the color red appear when the kids are up to no good and are being untrue to themselves. That’s when things tend to get zapped, too. I used trees (and leaves) to symbolize honesty and being true to yourself. For example, Kyle wears a gilded leaf necklace that belonged to his mother. Brian, his best friend, is the one who keys in on its importance. The scenes at the Secret Tree show the kids becoming friends, not just classmates. Even the plaque on the bench under the tree has a tree theme: In Memory of Eldon Bower. “Bower” is a tree-related word meaning a leafy shelter.

In my newest book, Brainstorm, I wrote some cool metaphors. See, Brian is very clever, and his ideas come to him out of the blue, like brainstorms. (Some brainstorms are good; others lead to  funny problems.) Whenever Brian has a brainstorm, I create a metaphor and compare it to a real storm. For example, “Snowflakes swirled in Brian’s mind as a wintry brainstorm grew into a blizzard.” In some cases, the type of storm has something to do with the idea, like when Brian’s brainstorm starts raining cats and dogs as he thinks of an idea related to Barkley, weirdest dog ever.

Until my last year of high school, I could find symbols in stories, but honestly thought that the authors didn’t really intend them. I thought my teachers just made me search for them as some sort of scavenger hunt activity combined with an assignment to write a two page essay about the importance of the color red on page 184. Education is about helping each generation build on the learning of others; I can save you some time and say that yes, authors absolutely really do put symbols in their books.

Try putting symbols in your own stories! Just think of the symbol you want to use and what it will mean, and slip it in here and there. Not too much, or it will get tacky. For example, Brainstorm is 180 pages long, and I only used 9 brainstorms.

Sincerely,
Corey Green

Rick Riordan won the Author of the Year Award for The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, Book 1)

The Children’s Choice Book Awards lets young readers voice their opinions by voting for the books they like.  Of course, the hope behind this program is that kids will make their own reading lists and develop a love of reading.  Kids cast more than 500,000 votes online this year.

My students love Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series.  The students who can read at that level are very proud of their accomplishments, and their success motivates others. 

My class formed a Percy Jackson fan club that celebrated all things about Greek mythology.  They were especially democratic by not demanding that club members had to have read the Percy Jackson books to join the club.  The result was a lot of fun and sharing on their own time—things that make a teacher’s heart soar.

Thank you, Rick Riordan, for your contributions to KidLit!

It’s really magic when a low reader masters reading aloud.  In the first days of school, after all the assessments are done, I work with low readers by reading aloud to the student, and then I have the student read the same material back to me.  We repeat the pulling along process after every school break.  Yes, young readers can lose fluency that fast! 

Some tips to pull reading fluency along at any time of the year:

1.  Use fun material!  If a child is struggling, dull and dry won’t inspire.  I like to use picture books, nursery rhymes, poems or lyrics because the low reader can use the rhythm of the words to pull herself to a higher level.

2.  Have the student underline the sentences with her finger as she reads.  This is a physical way to pull the student’s eyes ahead, especially if she falters on a word or phrase.

3.   Read aloud with the student, pulling her along.  Then go back and work on problem words or phrases.  Does the student understand what she just read?  If not, discuss the context and content of the material.

4.  Do it again.  Advance to materials with a higher reading level only when the student feels confident about her mastery of the lower level material.

One of the ways we celebrate reading achievement in my classroom is by listening to our low readers when they triumphantly can read aloud to the class.  As my low readers advance, I urge them to take home books from my class library and read them aloud to younger siblings.

Lucky me…I get their younger sibs in my class a few years later!

I am posting a few days before the event, so my teacher-readers have an opportunity to create lesson plans.

What do Henry Huggins, Ellen Tebbits, Beezus and Ramona Quimby, Otis Spofford, Ribsy, Socks, and Ralph S. Mouse have in common?  They’re celebrating Beverly Cleary’s 95th birthday on April 12th.    

 April 12th also is National Drop Everything and Read (D.E.A.R.) Day.  D.E.A.R. is a reading celebration that encourages families to make reading together on a daily basis a family priority.

 Beverly Cleary’s beloved character, Ramona Quimby, is the program’s official spokesperson. Ramona is responsible for spreading the word and the love of reading.  All this came about because Beverly Cleary received many letters from readers who participated in D.E.A.R. at their schools, so she gave the same experience to Ramona in Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (link to amazon, book and movie). 

 The goal of National D.E.A.R. Day is to show families how to make time to drop everything and read.  It’s easy to set up and host your own celebration.   The D.E.A.R. website features information and tools to promote your celebration. There’s also a list of Favorite Read-Aloud Titles for Families of D.E.A.R. Readers

 Students get really excited about D.E.A.R. in the classroom: have them read any and all books by Beverly Cleary.  My parents read her books when they were in elementary school, and now Beverly Cleary’s books are published in twenty countries in fourteen languages.  Beverly Cleary’s autobiographies, A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet
, fueled my dreams of writing children’s books. 

Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!  Now, I’m off to read!

My students are always playing games.  Some are more fun than others…

So You Think You Rock?  is a game I invented to complement the Accelerated Reader program.  Actually, my sister invented it one day when she was volunteering in my class.  Here I was, trying to have AR conferences with the kids, which took forever—mostly because they were so slow in coming to talk to me.  Also, the constant coming and going was disruptive.

Then my sister printed up the class progress report and just started calling their scores out.  We jazzed it up by stating whether or not the student rocks.

Example: say it is the second week of the grading period.  You estimate that the student should be at 20% of their goal.  You have a class goal of scoring an average of 85% correct.  Announce it just like this:

John: rocks.  He scored 30% of his goal (students cheer) and has an 89% correct average.  Keep up the good work, John!  (John beams)

Paul: sort of rocks.  Paul, we are very proud of you for earning 45% of your goal.  You must be reading a lot at home!  (students cheer)  However, your average percent correct is 80%.  Could you work on that, please?  We know you can do it!  (students cheer)

George:  Rocks hard!  He has made his Goooooooal!  (Students raise their arms in a triumphant soccer cheer.)  Seriously, George rocked so hard!  Not only did he meet his goal in the first two weeks of the quarter, he has a 98% correct average!  (students cheer)  Have an ARHead, George!  (Airheads candy that I renamed.  Buy about 80 for less than $10 at Sam’s Club.)

Ringo: doesn’t rock.  He has 0% of his goal.  (Students groan)  What have you been doing, Ringo?  You are a Recess Reader until you fix this!  I recommend a Magic Tree House book.  (Grudgingly, Ringo looks for a Magic Tree House book in the class library.)  Ringo, put it in your backpack right now!  You are reading it this weekend!

In about three minutes, you have motivated students, nudged slowpokes to read, and reminded everyone of the existence of the AR program.

My students BEG to play So You Think You Rock!