Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

I am pleased to announce the release of the third installment in the Buckley School Books: Double Switched. It’s about Connor, who knows he will be a Major League Baseball star—if he can just get through sixth grade.

Connor’s dad says make straight A’s or no baseball—but that’s not so easy when Connor has been Double Switched. Switched ballparks, switched classes, switched baseball positions—the bases are loaded with problems for Connor. Can he live up to his dad’s high standards? Would his hero Jackie Robinson approve of the choices Connor makes?

Double Switched is loads of fun, with action and comic misadventure. There is also a serious side. When Connor’s dad talks about growing up in the desegregated South, he draws on stories my mom told me about life during the Civil Rights movement. In Double Switched, I honor my mom’s childhood heroes: Cheryl and Eloise, two brave girls who integrated her junior high school in Montgomery, Alabama.

Inspired by his heroes, Connor sets out to address an inequality staring him in the face—his younger sister Nisha’s experience with softball. For Nisha, everything is less-than: poorly maintained fields require endless fundraising to fix up, poorly attended games give her no opportunity to shine. Connor, Nisha and friends put on a Boys Against Girls exhibition game to bring awareness and needed funds to level the playing field.

I hope you enjoy Double Switched. Visit the official Double Switched website for fun activities and features created by the kids in the book. (My favorite is You are the Umpire, but I think you will also like Chris’s Southern Recipes and Baseball Superstitions.)

This year, try a New Orleans theme for your Halloween/Fall Festival party.  You can work in geography, history, culture, and Halloween fun.

I did this last year and I can tell you that both the kids and parents just loved it.  It was a nice modification of traditional Halloween-at-school activities.  Parents appreciated the educational angle and they learned something, too.

I grabbed everyone’s attention by showing them that the Disney Haunted Mansion is in New Orleans Square.  I told them that the Disney Haunted Mansion movie is set in New Orleans, too.

Once I had everyone’s attention, I showed them a New Orleans PowerPoint I created.  You can click to download & share it, too (large file: 3+ MB).  It shows pictures of New Orleans to help get everyone in the mood.  I downloaded the Disney “Grim Grinning Ghosts” Haunted Mansion song along with some classic New Orleans jazz to play while we looked at the pictures.

Everyone loved learning about the New Orleans jazz funeral.  I told the children how it evolved from African funeral customs.  A New Orleans jazz band plays a sad song or dirge on the way to the cemetery, and happy tunes for the procession out.  Click here to learn more about the New Orleans jazz funeral.  Here is a sample:

Eileen Southern in The Music of Black Americans: A History wrote, “On the way to the cemetery it was customary to play very slowly and mournfully a dirge, or an ‘old Negro spiritual’ such as ‘Nearer My God to Thee,’ but on the return from the cemetery, the band would strike up a rousing, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ or a ragtime song such as ‘Didn’t He Ramble.’  Sidney Bechet, the renowned New Orleans jazzman, after observing the celebrations of the jazz funeral, stated, “Music here is as much a part of death as it is of life.”

Because I teach third grade, I don’t explain how the New Orleans above-ground cemeteries are necessary so that the bodies don’t wash out on the streets during floods.  This would be very interesting to older students, though.  For third graders,  I  show  pictures of the beautiful New Orleans cemeteries, famous cultural landmarks of the city.

Make sure to teach the kids about New Orleans food, like jambalaya and po’boys.  Explain that po’boy sandwiches can be any simple filling in bread, but that most people think of a shrimp po’boy.   My mom said that when she lived near New Orleans, red beans and rice was everybody’s Monday dinner because Monday was laundry day and the mother was too busy to cook something difficult.  Practical details like that help history and culture come alive for students.

Parents and students alike are very interested in my story about the New Orleans streetcars.  I explained that if you ride the car to the end of the line, the driver will have everybody stand up so he can reverse the seat backs.  In that way, you always ride facing forward.  Click here to see the concept.  The picture is part of my New Orleans PowerPoint presentation.

For a literacy connection, I recommend reading the New Orleans Magic Tree House book A Good Night for Ghosts.  Your students will enjoy learning about New Orleans and Louis Armstrong.  The book touches very, very lightly on segregation.  You can expand on that or wait for another learning opportunity, your choice.   (If you like, teach your students that Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans.)  A Good Night for Ghosts shouldn’t be too scary for your class.  It has a mild ghost scene that turns out not to be ghosts after all, but Louis’s friends.

Happy Halloween!

I have a soft spot for stories about writers. When I discovered the TV series Castle, I was hooked at first sight. I really appreciate the high quality work of the writers of the show- and the constant challenge: can I solve the mystery before Richard Castle does?

Then there’s a fun twist: As a promotion for the show, “Richard Castle’s” book Heat Wave was released in hardcover by Hyperion and debuted at #26 on The New York Times Best Seller list, ultimately moving up to #6. The second novel Naked Heat debuted at #7 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

What’s not to love about a fictional fiction writer portrayed by Nathan Fillion?

There’s a lot more to love, actually.

Castle star Nathan Fillion co-founded Kids Need to Read, an organization dedicated to getting more books into underfunded libraries:

“Growing up, my parents managed to show me the importance of reading without cramming it down my throat. A difficult task, I’m sure. It breaks my heart to think that there are kids out there, ready to have their imaginations lit on fire, excited and wanting to read, and facing naked shelves in their school or local libraries.”

Now I have a soft spot for Kids Need to Read, and I hope you will, too. Kids Need to Read focuses on stressed populations, such as juvenile offenders, impoverished urban teenagers, and youth faced with learning challenges. KNTR assists educators who are devoted to helping such children overcome the odds and succeed through worthwhile literacy programs. You can request donations online.

I can tell you from experience that helping kids in these circumstances select a book to read is both personally and professionally satisfying. Even greater is finding out that your encouragement came at a time that made a difference in that young person’s life.

I’ll be donating and volunteering. Hope you will, too!

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!

Newly released: Best Multiplication Workbook EVER!
Order now!
Also available from Amazon.com.

I’m blowing my own horn: Best Multiplication Workbook EVER! is a great resource for teachers, parents, tutors and students.

This book is divided into levels, and everything is taught systematically.  The workbook pages are fun for kids to do, and the organizational system helps teachers, tutors and parents know how to guide kids.  If a child is having difficulty with a concept, the parent or teacher will know to go back a level and remediate before proceeding.

> Teachers can use the book for whole-class lessons or to teach small groups.  The scaffolded, leveled system makes it easy to manage many students working on different skills.
> Parents can buy the workbook for use at home.  Kids can do most of the work on their own.  The leveled system makes it easy for a parent or tutor to review a lesson—or teach the next step in acquiring new skills.
> Tutors can use the book to identify gaps in a child’s learning.  Simply proceed through the levels and slow down when a concept seems difficult.  The book lays out a great tutoring program for helping elementary school students.
> Home school parents will appreciate the comprehensive nature of the book, the word problems, and the scaffolded approach to learning.

The workbook contains 260 pages filled with worksheets for skill development, word problems, long multiplication mastery, standardized test practice questions and strategies — everything needed to succeed in learning to multiply. 

A student who masters multiplication is ready to take on all the other mathematics challenges in elementary school!

Today is an exciting day—it’s the US release of Maeve Binchy’s newest book: Minding Frankie!

Maeve Binchy is my favorite writer for grownups.  Her books about everyday Irish life immerse you in a world that feels utterly real.  Maeve’s style is very slice-of-life, but by the end of each book, you will be shocked at how much has happened.

Binchy’s most famous books are Circle of Friends and Tara Road, both of which were made into movies.  (Read the books first.)  Circle of Friends is about college students in 1950s Dublin, focusing on two girls from a small Irish town, each unaware of their own families’ secrets and tragedies.  Tara Road is about two heartbroken women, one Irish and one American, who trade houses for the summer.  In both books, you know the characters’ friends and family for over a decade.  Peeking through those Irish lace curtains reveals some interesting hidden motives that drive irresistable page-turning plots.

What does this have to do with education?  I believe that reading Maeve Binchy’s books can teach you more about human nature than you could ever learn in a lifetime of just living.  Because Maeve Binchy uses third person omniscient point of view, you can delve into the hearts and minds of people you’d like to meet in real life.  Read enough of her books and you’ll start to predict the actions of the people in your life quite accurately.  Very useful for a teacher!  (Or anyone, really.)

Minding Frankie, Maeve Binchy’s newest book, continues a saga of books about two neighborhoods in Dublin: Tara Road and St. Jarlath’s Crescent.  It’s so interesting to see characters who starred in their own books figure as background characters in a new story.  It’s like being part of a village—an almost unimaginable experience for this Air Force brat!

All of Maeve Binchy’s books are wonderful, but my favorites are her modern books with interlacing characters.

Tara Road: two women trade houses for the summer

Evening Class: lives of students and staff intertwine in an evening Italian language class

Scarlet Feather: two likeable young people start a catering company—and discover that the food is the easy part!

Quentins: while facing a huge scandal, Ella Brady creates a documentary about Quentins, a restaurant that embodies the spirit (and social lives) of modern Dublin

Nights of Rain and Stars: (set in Greece—but some characters appear in Heart and Soul)

Heart and Soul: the dramatic lives of patients and staff at a heart clinic

Minding Frankie: a neighborhood cares for a baby

For a complete list of Maeve Binchy’s works, visit her website or her Amazon page.

Muggie Maggie by Beverly Cleary
AR Reading level 4.5  1 point
Available at Amazon.com

Cursive may seem outdated compared to typing, texting and tweeting, but it is still an important skill for kids to learn.  If nothing else, they need to be able to read cursive—notes written by parents and teachers, or cursive written by our forefathers in the Declaration of Independence.

Kids are very excited to learn cursive, but sometimes their interest lags after the first few lessons.  You can keep them going by reading to them Muggie Maggie by Beverly Cleary.

In Muggie Maggie, third-grader Maggie absolutely refuses to learn cursive.  She’s a smart girl, but she gets herself into quite a predicament—with a lot of embarrassment, time spent out of class, and even trips to the principal’s office!

See, Maggie’s teacher has hatched a plan with other teachers and school staff.  She makes Maggie the messenger.  All the messages Maggie deliverers are written in cursive.  Maggie is pretty sure she recognizes her name in the messages.  Maggie has no choice but to learn cursive so she can read the secret messages.

Muggie Maggie is clearly intended for a third-grade audience, but AR (accelerated reader) classifies the reading level is 4.5.  (Many Beverly Cleary books have a reading level above the intended audience’s grade level, as I have described in a different post about this topic.)  Some third-graders will be able to read Muggie Maggie, but I recommend that third-grade teachers read it aloud because it is perfectly suited to their audience.

by Ann Cameron
AR book level 3.4  1 point
Available from Amazon.com

I first learned about The Stories Julian Tells because we have an excerpt in our Harcourt reading textbook.  Now, I am a big believer in Julian!  You will be so glad to know that there are many books about Julian.

In The Stories Julian Tells, author Ann Cameron creates a memorable family.  You will love Julian, a nine-year-old with a big imagination and a gift for telling stories.  His little brother Huey is cute as can be.  Julian’s dad is larger-than-life: a strict father who is even funnier and more imaginative than Julian.  Julian’s mom is a wonderful, warm character.

The Stories Julian Tells is an incredibly funny, warm and comforting book.  It makes a wonderful read aloud for the classroom.  However, I think a huge added educational value comes from the author’s rich description and imaginative use of figurative language.

For example, in the first chapter, Julian, Huey and their father make a lemon pudding for Mom: a lemon pudding that tastes like “a night on the sea” and “a whole raft of lemons.”  When dad wakes up from his nap to find that Julian and Huey ate the whole pudding, the boys are in for a whipping and a beating—Julian whips the pudding, and Huey beats the egg whites.  Mom tastes the new pudding—it’s just like a night on the sea and a whole raft of lemons!

My favorite story in the book is called “Because of Figs.”  When Julian was three, his dad gave him a fig tree that would grow up with him.  When the tree grew taller but Julian didn’t, Julian felt left behind.  Naturally, the solution was to eat the fig leaves to help him grow.  (They taste like spinach, so they must be good for you.)  Years later, Julian is bigger but the tree hasn’t grown at all.  Finally, Julian realizes that the leaves belong to the tree.  Now both tree and boy can grow up together.

My students absolutely love The Stories Julian Tells.  They are nuts about the companion books, like Julian, Secret Agent , More Stories Julian Tells, and Julian, Dream Doctor.  There are also great books about other characters in the series, like Gloria (who might be Julian’s best friend) and Huey, Julian’s little brother.

by Barbara Cohen
AR book level 3.0   0.5 points
Available at Amazon.com

Molly’s Pilgrim is a classic that deserves a place in your classroom library.  It can be read any time, but it is particularly poignant in November.

In November, we think of pilgrims as the Puritans landing on Plymouth Rock.  However, Molly’s Pilgrim reminds us that other pilgrims came to this country for religious freedom.

Molly is a young Russian-Jewish immigrant who feels out of place in America.  Molly’s school assignment is to make a Pilgrim doll.  Molly’s clothespin Pilgrim doll resembles her mother rather than a Puritan Pilgrim, teaching her classmates an important lesson about religious freedom in America.

Molly’s Pilgrim was made into an Academy award-winning short movie.  It is available on Amazon.com.

Molly’s Pilgrim is great as a read aloud, but if you wanted make it into a unit of study, you might consider buying A Guide for Using Molly’s Pilgrim in the Classroom, from Teacher Created Materials.

I have found a magical teaching tool: Spectrum Publishing’s Little Critter Reading.  It’s a workbook with the perfect format: an engaging story based on the Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer, followed by a worksheet covering comprehension, phonics, and study skills.  Students beg to use it and groan when we put it away.

In my experience, Little Critter Reading improves a reader’s skills by a whole grade level.

You can buy Little Critter Reading at two levels: grade 1 and grade 2.  Grade 2 is appropriate for students in second and third grade.  Grade 1 helps students make the remarkable transformation from reading three sentences on a page to reading several paragraphs—in the space of one workbook.  Grade 1 is great for English Language Learners.

I recommend Little Critter Reading books for the classroom and for the home.  At home, a parent or older sibling can tutor a struggling reader with Little Critter Reading books.

How to use Little Critter Reading:

1.  Read the story to your students.  Very important—think how much better they can read if they already know what it sounds like!
2.  Let the student(s) read aloud with you.  This way, you’re pulling the student along and helping her experience fluency.  For the whole class, choral read the passage.
3.  If time and patience allow, the student can read the story aloud without your help.
4.  Do the worksheet that goes with the story.  You might have to teach a mini lesson on topics such as root words, ABC order, verb tense, etc.  Kids quickly catch on and complete the lesson easily.
5.  Review the lesson.

One caveat: you are not supposed to photocopy Little Critter Reading workbooks.  I applied for a grant and bought a class set of the workbook.  I use it with my third graders at the beginning of the year.  We put a page protector over the worksheet page and write on the page protector with an Expo marker.  We erase with old socks.

Students who behave well get to draw on the page protector for two minutes!

Seriously, I can’t recommend Little Critter Reading highly enough.

by Bonnie P. Murray
Available from Amazon.com

I found this book after my first year of teaching.  Boy, do I wish I had it during my first year!

This book tells you how to set up your classroom, work with parents, set up a discipline plan—basically, how to manage your first year.  The book is easy to read all at once, or as a quick reference to help with specific issues.

The best part is a complete schedule for what to do on the first day of school.  The author gives a separate schedule for each grade K-4.  I adapted it for 5^th grade and it worked there, too.  I think any elementary teacher can use this book.

I can’t praise this book highly enough.  Beginning and experienced teachers will love it.

P.S. Next year, you can loan it to a new teacher! 

By Kathleen Krull
Illustrated by Yuyi Morales (pronounced Ju-ji)
AR Reading Level 3.9; 0.5 points
Available from Amazon.com

Summary: When Cesar Chavez was ten years old, his family had to move from their happy home in Arizona because of drought.  So begins the story of working as a migrant worker in California under increasingly deplorable conditions.  The historic 1965 strike against grape farmers, Cesar Chavez’s efforts to unionize migrant workers, and the dramatic 340 mile march for “La Causa” to California’s capital is the centerpiece of this dramatic and beautifully told story.

Activities: Harvesting Hope  is poetically written, but simple enough for children to understand.  Still, I would read this story aloud.  Students will get much more out of it with an adult to explain the history and classmates to share the experience.  Expect a long classroom discussion.  Students will be indignant to learn that after Cesar broke a school rule against speaking Spanish, the teacher hung a sign on him that read “I AM A CLOWN. I SPEAK SPANISH.” Many stores displayed “White Trade Only” signs.

Like Chavez himself did, children will make the natural connections to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi.

This book reminds us all to respect the dignity of every man.

by Holly Keller
AR Reading Level 2.3; 0.5 points
Available at Amazon.com

Summary: A twist on fables, this book is about a mouse who ends up stuck in a hole.  None of the animals can rescue Mouse, so they recommend asking Snake.   Mouse heard through the grapevine that his old friend Snake likes to eat mice, so Mouse won’t agree.   Ultimately, Snake ties a vine to his tail and pulls Mouse out.   Everyone learns a lesson.

Activities: This is good independent or group reading for grades 1-3.  I use it as a springboard for discussing friendship, or as a prediction lesson.  It’s also good for discussing relationships between characters and making connections to your life.  With older students, I use it as an example of a non-Aesop fable.

by Dav Pilkey
AR Reading Level 3.1; 0.5 points
Available at Amazon.com

Summary: The Dumb Bunnies are Papa, Mama, and Baby.  They prepare for Easter—but it’s really a mashup of holidays.  My favorite is when the Easter Bunny comes in a minivan—pulled by eight flying Pilgrims.  Then he drops Easter eggs down the chimney with a “Ho, ho, ho!  Look out below!”  This book is very short, but jam-packed with jokes.  The illustrations complement the text’s jokes—and add plenty of their own.

Activities:  Don’t look too hard for intellectual things you can read into the book—it’s pure fun.  You can’t predict the story.  You can laugh so hard you collapse into giggles.  You can let kids read it repeatedly, practicing their fluency and looking for more jokes.  You can let analytical kids count the jokes, then calculate a joke-to-page ratio, or a joke-to-word ratio.  I suspect Dav probably listed joke ideas, then wrote the book.  I can’t think of any other way to pack the jokes so densely!

by Janet Stevens
AR Reading Level 3.2; 0.5 points
Available at Amazon.com

When Spring is in the air, this is a great read!

Summary:  This book is about Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear.  Brer Rabbit lost a risky bet with a tortoise, so he is short of cash.  He needs to feed his huge rabbit family.  He hatches a plan to win vegetables off Brer Bear, who has farmland.  First, Brer Rabbit says he do all the planting and split it with Bear.  He gets tops, Bear gets bottoms.  Rabbit grows lettuce, and things where the tops are good.  Bear is mad, and says next time he wants tops.  So Rabbit grows carrots and root veggies, because the bottoms are the good part.  Bear says he wants tops and bottoms next time.  So Rabbit grows corn, where the middles are best.  The trickery is awesome, and I love how the book is rotated, so the pages are long—it’s like reading a picture book sideways, except the pictures are oriented for it.

Activities: This book is GREAT for predictions!  Kids love to predict, and there is a real quandary when Bear wants tops and bottoms.  How will rabbit solve that?  My favorite prediction ever was when an English Language Learner said of Brer Rabbit, “He’s going to jack the carrots!” 

I like to tie this book in with the tradition of Brer Rabbit stories: Brer Rabbit is a trickster.  I would say Brer Rabbit cuts across cultures, because I always thought of him as a Southern character, but a British author I love, Enid Blyton, also writes Brer Rabbit stories (Amazon Link).