Literature Is Where Empathy Is Strengthened

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Hi Everyone,
Wow, I cannot believe it is July!  I just wanted to write a quick post about some thoughts I had as I was reflecting on the book, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.  I finished the story last week, and I am constantly thinking about the characters--Starr, Kahlil, Mav, Seven and Momma.  Their experiences pop into my thoughts at various times during the day.  I think about them when I listen to the news, I think about them when I'm reading an article about anti-racism and white privilege, and I think about them as I write new lessons for the upcoming school year.  Those characters touched my heart.  They have a way of constantly reminding me to reflect on my own implicit bias's.  They remind me about my white privilege.  Those characters are the ones who remind me to keep improving myself as a human being and the need to do my part in healing humanity.

My reflections remind me of why I love children's literature and realist fiction in general.  When a story is well-written with believable characters, readers cannot help but become invested in them.  Readers begin to feel connected to those characters.  They root for those characters and want the best for those characters.  If students are taught to pay attention to their thoughts as they read and are guided to read between the lines and infer the character's thoughts and feeling--they may just start to reflect on their own lives.  Readers may start to remember the traits of good characters and want to emanate them.  They may remember the obstacles and struggles their beloved character went through, inspiring students to be more aware of their actions and behaviors.  Students may be able to see another side to situations.  They may be able to step in someone else's shoes for a moment to see the world from that person's point of view.

I'm almost done writing this learning path!  I'll share it soon.

That is what Starr, the protagonist in The Hate U Give has done for me.  Among other things, she has inspired me to become aware of my thoughts, feelings, actions, and privilege.  She has inspired me to be brave, more compassionate, and to keep myself open to new perspectives.  I've come to love that girl and her family.  Her story, getting a look at some of her daily experiences and interactions in the world, has created a feeling inside of me that a news story or a nonfiction article could ever do.

Still my favorite book ever!

Another book I read last summer, that awakened my awareness of the connectedness of all living things on earth, is Tree of Dreams by Laura Resau.  I still think of that story and the characters Coco, Leo, and Gali. Tree of Dreams is beautifully written to show how our actions, both selfish and altruistic, affect others and our environment.  It was this story that immediately appeared in my thoughts at the start of our world-wide pandemic.  As I recalled the events of that story and the far reaching affects Gali's actions had on others, I was reminded that we are all connected...what we do or do not do will affect us all.  No one is beyond it's reach.  As I see the kindness and consideration of others in this very scary time, I am comforted to know those actions will have powerful, lasting effects on us all. They certainly did for the amazon rainforest, the Huaorani people who live there, and all the other main players in Tree of Dreams.

Gone Crazy in Alabama

There are countless children's books, young adult books, as well as adult literature that I could include in this post, but I won't.  My main point is,  developing greater empathy and compassion for others, as well as developing more awareness about humanity, the earth, and ourselves is why I believe literature is vital in helping to heal our world.  I cannot wait to share new stories, and the experiences of characters from all walks of life, with my class in the upcoming school year.

Here are some new titles I want to read.  Some of these books are just for my own reading, while others I intend to use with my class.

Last Stop on Market Street

The View From Saturday

The Red Crayon

These are just a few of the books that are on my list of "want to read."  As I was doing some research for my new learning path, I came across a website titled 27 best moral stories to read with your kids.  It has titles like The Invisible Boy, Beautiful Oops, and a title I remember hearing about years ago, but never bought...The Empty Pot.


So, I guess this was not a quick post, but I'm just so excited about getting back to school to engage my students in reading and discussing books that will touch their hearts, ignite their compassion and empower them to help make our world a kind, healthy, flourishing place to be.

Have a great holiday.
Kim

                                                                                                 

                                                                                           

Scarecrows...? December...? Yep!

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Anne and I have so much to post that we could not fit it all in on our last entry.  So, I'm up early on Sunday morning just itching to share some of our scarecrow ideas.

Before Thanksgiving break my literacy group read the poem Scarecrow by an unknown author.  The first read was to get the gist of the meaning of the poem and ask some questions.  (Questioning has been our reading strategy focus.) The second read was focused on finding strong verbs in the poem and their synonyms.  (Strong verbs has been our grammar focus).  I wanted to introduce connotative and denotative word meanings.

Poem link!

The students identified a few different groups of synonyms from the poem.

saw/observed/watched

surprised/astonished

flow/wave/dangle/shove/shake

I wanted to focus on the last set of verbs, and I did accept wave even though it is used as a noun in this poem.  We discussed how it could be used as a verb.

After identifying the synonyms, I showed a PowToons video explaining connotative and denotative word meanings.  The kids were super excited to be learning something new about words.  All of our students love noticing amazing words and using them.  Now, they know they can be more specific with their word choices.

I wanted the students to practice thinking about the connotative meanings of words and arrange them in order from most positive to most negative or from the strongest meaning to a more subtle meaning of the word.

We began by arranging pictures.  These pictures were created by TheBookWrangler.

I chose a few groups of pic, glued them to construction paper, and the kids arranged them!  So fun.

Next week, the students will look up the meanings of the last 5 verbs listed above and try to put them in order from the strongest (negative) meaning to the most subtle (positive) meaning.  Then, they will work with a partner to organize a different set of words.  Eventually, the groups will combine their word lists with the words going from strongest to weakest and synonyms to antonyms on "Word Thermometers."

The second poem, titled The Scarecrow Goat was Nuzzled in His Tattered Coat by an unknown author will be used to identify amazing words.  After looking up some of the meanings, the kids will make vocabulary scarecrows to display.  We also have discussion questions the students will use to gain a deeper understanding of the poem.  Anne's literacy group is going to use a different poem titled Scarecrow by Kristin Riley.

Here is a link for this poem.

Here are more discussion questions.

If you have not checked out the website Ideas by Jivey you must!  She has a wealth of literacy knowledge and her website and TpT store is a treasure trove of resources.  We are going to use her mentor text unit The Scarecrow by Beth Ferry to focus on compound sentences and combining sentences to make our writing stronger.  

This is a beautiful story of an unlikely friendship between a baby crow and the scarecrow.  The plot moves along through all four seasons as we get to know the scarecrow and his feelings about the crow.  The ending is heartwarming and a few tears may flow as you read it to your students.   

I have not planned this yet, but I'm thinking this poem might be good to use to do a compare/contrast activity with the book.  If not, then some other poem we are reading could be used for a comparison activity.

We will wrap up with the Christmas Scarecrow poem.  This is the poem we will dive deep into inferring the author's meaning and figurative language (personification).  

This site might be cute for making scarecrows, but I love Red Tag Art!  Look there for incredible crafts to accompany your literacy lessons.

Next up...spiders.  In December?  Yep!

Kim and Anne

Great First-Day-Ideas Websites

Friday, August 2, 2019

I CAN. NOT. BELIEVE. IT. IS. AUGUST!!!  I'm excited to go back into my classroom, set it up, and plan lessons.  I'm excited to meet my new students, too.  What rattles my cage is having being on a schedule once August 19th arrives!  I love summer mostly because I can do whatever is on my To-Do list at my own pace.  Believe me, I am going to take full advantage of that these last few days of summer break. :)

So yesterday I decided to revise our lesson plans we use for the first three days of school. I was able to get into that focused, relaxed, motivated mode, and it was invigorating.  I looked back at some of my favorite teacher sites I tagged this summer on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

The first site I reviewed was  Not So Wimpy Third Grade Teacher.  The author of this website is Jamie Sears.  She has a wonderful Facebook group, TpT store, blog, and Instagram site.  Her first day of school ideas are great.  I have incorporated some of her activities to freshen up my own.  We always like to add new ideas to our lesson so we don't get bored.  My favorite idea on this site was reading aloud Words and Your Heart, by Kate Jane Neal.  I bought this book last February to use for Valentine's Day writing, but it fits perfectly here.  To go along with the read aloud, Jamie does the toothpaste activity.  A fifth grade teacher friend of mine used to do this activity.  I love it, but Anne and I have never used it with our class, so this is the year.  It is a great SEL hands-on activity.  Check it out.  Jamie even gives you the templates for the toothpaste responses.

You can find all of this and more on this site.

We are going to again read Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun: Having the Courage to be Who You Are, by Maria Dismondy.  Anne and I have the students make a heart because it symbolizes so many of the messages in that book.  There are repeated phrases in the book that include the word heart.  Great connection between books, themes and symbolism.

Love this book.  We read it for the first time last year.

The next site is The Thinker Builder. The author of this site is Michael Friermood.  He has several first day of school activities that get students up and moving.  His "All About Me" Rollups seem so cool.  I read about this after I had finished our plans, but you better believe I am going to incorporate this during our first three days of school.  If we run out of time, then we will do it the following week.  It's too cool to miss.  He also created a spin on the traditional "People Search" called "Maze of New Friends."  I love his blog and his TpT store.  Check them out!

So excited to try this.  It sounds cool and I think the boys will like it.

Ok, I'm off to look over my plans, revise and add in some new cool ideas from the amazing teachers I just mentioned.  Enjoy the last of your summer break.

Anne comes back from vacation tomorrow.  She will look over our plans and make revisions if she thinks they need some.  Maybe we will post those plans.

Kim

Vivid Visualizations

Monday, July 29, 2019

Good morning!  I know, Anne and I haven't posted for months, and now I've posted twice in two days.  I think it's because I'm getting antsy for all things school and third grade.  I'm getting excited to get back into my classroom to clean and decorate. It's one of my favorite things to do. However, once I'm given the "okay" to go in, my days will be a whirlwind, so I wanted to take advantage of this calm moment to share some cool websites I learned about while taking a graduate literacy course this summer.

The course was called Activating Students' Creative Thinking Through Literacy ELA Grades K-5. I did not realize the rigor these concepts, theories and activities would provide for our students and us.  It is all very exciting.  Below is an excerpt from my final research paper that may give you some insight into the course objectives.

“If we teach today’s students as we did yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

John Dewy

According to Module One’s foundation reading resource, activating students’ creativity is vital because it will aid educators in teaching students how to be flexible in their thinking, so when they encounter new situations they can solve problems in innovative ways.  We must explicitly teach our students to think creatively because they are going to be performing jobs and having careers that have not even been invented yet. We need to change our teaching so it matches what our students will face when they leave our classrooms. Now more than ever, we need to teach our students how to be creators and innovators, (Spencer, 2019).

“Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity” (2018), as well as Module One’s foundation text, had similar definitions for the word creativity.  It is the “generation of a new product that is both novel and appropriate in a particular scenario.” Research has shown that creativity increases motivation, deepens understanding and helps students develop intrinsic rewards and enjoyment. These feelings lead to life-long learners, which is my ultimate goal as a teacher.  According to the article, implementing activities that promote creativity, help students make cross-curricular connections, which in turn deepens understanding.

To synthesize everything I learned in this course, I wrote a lesson plan that includes seven literacy activities that will give students opportunities to make their thinking visible and divergent. The lessons are designed to help  students move from the knowledge level of visualization to a deep understanding of this literacy strategy. Not only is the visualization reading strategy one of our favorites, we believe it is one of the more useful strategies our students can use to deepen their reading comprehension, as well as their love of reading.

You can find this entire lesson plan bundle on our TpT store.

Below is a website that explains this thinking strategy: See Think Wonder.  You can use this strategy with any lesson, however in this plan I use it with the Newsela article titled Sunglass Cat.

You can use this strategy with any text, too.  In my lesson plan I use it with Dog Breath: The Horrible Trouble with Hally Tosis by Dave Pilkey.

I cannot wait to use these lesson plans in the fall.  I'm most excited about my kick-off lesson.  Anne and I are going to dress up like movie directors complete with sunglasses, megaphone, beret, and clapboard.  This is because we teach visualization as making a movie in our minds.  The kids will all get a pair of movie star glasses, too, to use when we visualize various texts and genres.  This lesson plan bundle includes visualizing poems, music, fiction and non fiction texts.  At the end, the students must use their understanding of visualization to design an animal shelter.  It will be the first time we will incorporate a project-based activity when teaching reading strategies.

Below are some websites I found useful when researching how to activate my students' creativity.  We hope you find them helpful, as well.

Artful Thinking

Visible Thinking

K20 Learning

See Think Wonder

I will try to post our first day scavenger hunt and our safari outfits we wear on the first day of school later this week.  Otherwise, Anne and I will post it when she gets back from vacation.

Have a great rest of your summer.

Kim