In Mr. L’s 5th Grade Classroom Part I: Paul Fleischman’s The Matchbox Diary

 

 

 

The Matchbox Diary. 2013. Paul Fleischman. Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press. 40 pp.

Genre: Narrative fiction, picture book

Ages: Grades 2-6

Features: Magnificently detailed illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline, alternating between soft, rich color and sepia-toned moments, framed like old photos, as the story jumps from the present to the past.    

Summary

Award winning author Paul Fleischman has written so many of  my favorite books to share with students–Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, Seedfolks, Whirligig, Bull Run, Weslandia, and many more. As I sit at my desk writing this, all I have to do is look around the room to understand why his latest book, The Matchbox Diary called to me the first time I saw it. On my shelves, I’ve got old cigar boxes (wood and cardboard), handmade wooden boxes with ornate metal latches, and sturdy stationery boxes. Each one of these boxes holds items other than their original contents—I’ve lifted the lid on a cardboard box with a magnetic lid closure to peek inside. The box once held cards, blank on the inside with photographs of rural Italy on the outside. Now, its contents rattle and clink—metal campaign buttons, foreign coins, keys on a souvenir keychain from Yellowstone Park. Simply touching the treasures sends my mind time traveling back to places and moments, and the stories each holds. This idea, that the things we hold on to are keepers of our life’s stories, is at the heart of this beautiful book, told solely through dialogue—the conversation of a young girl and her great-grandfather meeting for the first time.

The book begins with the girl and her great-grandfather in a warm, amber-toned room busy with bookshelves, tables, and display cases. And each one of these is filled with books, boxes of all sizes, clocks, and antiques. The opening line is an invitation to the girl (and to readers) to “Pick whatever you like the most,” and he will tell its story. The illustration begs readers to pour over the room and search for the item each likes best. I reached for a magnifying glass (used by my grandfather when he worked with his stamp collection) so I could get a closer view of what the room had to offer. Unlike the girl, I couldn’t make up my mind. She chooses wisely, a cigar box packed neatly with row upon row of matchboxes. The close-up drawing of the box filled with boxes is my favorite. Readers can’t help but linger, looking closely at the logos, designs, and brand names on the matchboxes. (As a younger person, I used to collect matchboxes or matchbooks from restaurants or store giving them away as promotional items.) When the girl asks about what’s in each of the little boxes, great-grandpa replies “My diary.”

As she selects boxes to open, great-grandfather tells her the story of his childhood through the smaller stories that are held by the items in each box. He explains to her that when he was a young boy about her age, he began keeping this diary of objects because he couldn’t read or write. The larger story that unfolds is that of an Italian immigrant family coming to America for a better life. The sepia toned illustrations accompanying the matchbox stories remind readers of looking through an old family photo album. One of the matchboxes holds a bottle cap, a common, everyday object to most readers. But, like the contents of every box, the cap has a story. It comes from Naples, where the storyteller’s family has to stay for three days waiting for their ship to America. So many “firsts” happen here: seeing his first car, discovering drinks that come in bottles, setting eyes on the ocean for the first time. The bottle cap is the gatekeeper to important personal and family memories, like each of the items in his matchbox diary.

 

In the Classroom

1. The Matchbox Diary, Part II—Coming Soon. Rather than our customary sharing of ways to use this book in your classroom, I’m going to do something different.  I’d like to encourage you to read this book yourself, either by purchasing it, borrowing, flipping through it in a bookstore.  My next post will take you through my experience—from beginning to end—of using this inspiring book with Mr. L’s classroom of real fifth grade students from an elementary school near where I live. I’ll take you through the process we used, and I’m hoping to be able to share some of their writing, as well. I’m heading back to Mr. L’s classroom today for my third visit this week. As a former full-time teacher, I can’t tell you how great it feels to be back in the saddle for even an hour a day as a guest teacher.

 

Coming up on Gurus . . .

Vicki will be reviewing Amy Krause Rosenthal’s exciting new book, Exclamation Mark, about how a familiar punctuation mark discovers his purpose. I will also be sharing the process and results from using The Matchbox Diary with a classroom of fifth grade students. (I have been having such an amazing time!!) Thanks for visiting. Come often—and bring friends. Remember, for the BEST workshops blending traits, common core, workshop, and writing process, call us at 503-579-3034. Give every child a voice.

 

 

Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon

Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon. 2012. Steve Sheinkin. New York: Roaring Book Press.

Genre: Informational chapter book

Grade Levels: 5 and up

Features: Historic information; vintage photos, letters; resource list for further research; source notes; quotation notes; index.

266 pages (including end matter)

Summary

Steve Sheinkin is a writer of many talents. He knows how to write award-winning books. Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, and The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, & Treachery, have earned high praise and honors—National Book Award Finalist, Newberry Honor, to just begin the list.  And he also knows how to title his books to make them practically leap off the “shelf” into the hands of anxious readers. Whether you prefer to access books electronically or traditionally, you know, old school with bound paper pages, Mr. Sheinkin’s titles alone are enough to entice readers to grab or click and jump in. (More to come below on titles.) That’s no small skill for an author of non-fiction histories. This is especially true in light of the Common Core State Standards pushing teachers and students towards more informational reading and writing.

For many student readers, informational reading, especially in history, is a turn-off (I won’t use the word boring, a word that was banned from our house to keep our son from using it as a crutch). For many teachers and students, their experiences with informational texts and textbooks have been less than positive—dry, encyclopedic mounds of lifeless facts, dates, places, etc.  Author Sheinkin, in his bio on Bomb’s slip cover, after admitting to being a former textbook writer, states his intention to “dedicate his life to making up for previous crimes by crafting gripping narratives of American history.” Fortunately for teachers and students, he is doing just that. His recent book, Bomb, delivers on all fronts–an exciting title and a well crafted, informative, and engagingly “gripping narrative” history.

What Mr. Sheinkin understands is the importance of story. Cognitive scientist Mark Turner explains in his 1996 book The Literary Mind, “Narrative imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought…It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, of explaining.” History is stories. Science is stories. Mathematics is stories. In A Whole New Mind (2005), Daniel Pink emphasizes it this way, “Stories are easier to remember—because in many ways, stories are how we remember.” I think educators have to be careful to avoid pitting narrative writing against informational writing, or reading works of fiction against non-fiction content. I don’t see them as being separate and discrete elements of literacy. Stories provide the context to determine the value of information, to sort, categorize, and remember. What do classroom teachers do then, to make sense of the CCSS emphasis on informational/expository reading and writing?  Strike a balance. Don’t abandon one to serve the other. Help students to access reading that is motivating to help them develop the desire and the tenacity to tackle content—narrative and informational—that may be more complex. Continue teaching, practicing, and building skill in narrative writing because of its connections to building skill in informational, expository, and persuasive writing. Adopting the CCSS does not mean scrapping common sense. (To learn more about the value of narrative writing, including some myth busting, be sure to check out Vicki’s post from June 25, 2012, Dissecting and Defending Narrative Writing via the Common Core.)

So how does Steve Sheinkin begin his thrilling history—from discovery to deployment—of the atomic bomb? With the story, of course! And what a story it is! Scientists (Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein), spies, double agents, secret governmental agencies, super secret missions, world leaders (Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler), American presidents (Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman), plots and counter plots, and more! This book is a history lesson, well researched, complete with all the names, dates, events, and locations told with a storyteller’s eye and ear for detail and audience.

In the Classroom

1. Reading. As always, take time to preview and read the book prior to sharing or involving students in independent reading. You could select chapters or passages to share aloud to build excitement for independent reading or make connections to supplement a history text. If you plan to use this as a complete read-aloud or a book study where each student has a copy—and it would work well for either, I would recommend devoting a flip-chart page or part of a bulletin board to helping students keep track of all the important figures. There are a lot of “characters.” You could even keep three charts—one to follow the American development of the bomb, one for the Russian efforts to steal the bomb’s technology, and one for the people involved in sabotaging the German scientists attempting to build a bomb for their side. I would involve students in researching/finding images of each player to copy and post on the charts. This could be done as a hierarchical organizational chart to show the connections between each person, government, or agency. There are b/w photos of the key figures, included at the beginning of each of the book’s four sections. Each photo includes the subject’s name and brief identifying information—e.g. Harry Truman U.S. President 1945-1953. These could be shown to students using a document camera and serve as models for the students during their research.

2. Historic background. What do your students know about World War II—the leaders and countries involved, how the U.S. became involved, or how it ended? Is it an area of interest for any of them? Do any of them have relatives who fought or were involved in the war? The level of background information may, of course, depend on the age/grade of your students. They don’t need to know everything—this isn’t a complete history of the war—but a few key details will help students understand the urgency felt by the United States to direct and affect the war’s outcome. Science, especially physics and chemistry, is at the heart of this story. Are some of your students interested in a specific area of science? What do they know about the study of physics or chemistry? You don’t have to be a physicist or chemist, but you can be a guide to helping them find out what scientists in these fields do. This may help them begin to look for answers to the question—How does a college physics professor in Berkeley, California, end up working on a top secret project to develop the weapon that will be used to end World War II and change the world for all of us?

3. Images/Stereotypes. Popular culture, especially television and movies, has often guided our images of science and scientists and even the role of science in our world. The Nutty Professor, The Absent Minded Professor, Frankenstein, Gilligan’s Island, Bill Nye The Science Guy, and more recently, The Big Bang Theory, Ironman, CSI, Bones, and Breaking Bad. What are your students’ images of science/scientists? The nerdy or evil genius? The oddball crackpot? The suave jetsetter with the cool toys? The shy lab rat in the white coat? Have any of these stereotypes affected their interest in science? What are your students’ experiences with stereotypes each day at school?

4. Details/Purpose/Audience. One of the most striking things about Steve Sheinkin’s book is how much readers learn about physics and chemistry without being overwhelmed with theories, laws, processes, and terminology. I wouldn’t call it “Science Lite”—the author is not dumbing anything down for readers. He has chosen a level of detail that matches his purpose for writing, and his awareness of his audience. Discuss the concept of audience with your students. Why is it important, as a writer, to know and write for your audience? Who was the last audience they may have written for? How did that knowledge affect their writing (pre-writing, research, narrowing of topic, etc.)?

5. Becoming an “Expert.” Take a moment to discuss with your students how they as readers know when writers are experts on their topics. What happens to readers when they are in the hands of an expert? Are they able to tell when writers are faking it or stretching their limited knowledge too thin? What happens to readers when they discover the writer is posing as an expert? Spend some time with your students looking at the Source Notes, Quotation Notes, and Acknowledgments sections at the back of the book. What do these sections suggest to students about the expertise of Steve Sheinkin? This would also be a good time to talk about the differences between primary and secondary sources. Why is it important in a book like this to seek out so many primary sources?

6. Book Titles and Grabbing the Audience. I mentioned earlier that one of the author’s skills was the way his books are titled. How does a book’s title demonstrate the author’s audience awareness? Do titles make a difference in a book’s initial appeal? (What if Louis Sachar’s award winning book, Holes, had been titled Some Kids in the Desert With Shovels?) Are titles important to readers? How do they help our minds begin to ask questions, make predictions, or know what to focus on? Have your students identify what they see as the key words (words that grabbed their interest/attention) in the title, Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon. I recently asked a sixth grade student I’m working with to do just this before knowing anything else about the direction of the book.  She highlighted bomb, race, steal, and dangerous. She then made a prediction about the book focused on the words race and steal. This student thought that the race could be against time and/or against others. The word steal made her think that race was “…so important that someone would cheat in a very sneaky way to win.” This is a kind of concept formation practice—setting our thinking in motion prior to reading.

7. Organization. Ask your students to describe the overall organizational pattern of the book. Yes, it’s chronological, but there’s more to it than that. There’s a prologue, epilogue, and four main parts dividing the chapters. The author has chosen to begin his story at the end, with the arrest of Harry Gold, an American man the Soviets were using as a spy. How does this choice create interest for readers? What questions does it spark in the minds of curious readers? You could have your students begin a timeline with Harry Gold’s arrest in 1950, knowing they will have to jump back in time as the rest of the story begins to unfold in the first chapter. It is 1934 when readers meet young scientist Robert Oppenheimer in the book’s first chapter. The timeline and organizational chart suggested earlier could be added to as the story progresses. Students could not only keep track of the “characters” but how they are involved in the events of the story.

8. Voice. How would your students describe the voice of this book? Is it encyclopedic? The voice of a history professor lecturing to students? The voice of a scientist speaking to colleagues?  Passionate? Knowledgeable? Biased? Professional? Come up with your own list of words—and discuss the kind of voice you (and they) feel is appropriate or effective in an informational piece. Is there a connection between finding that appropriate/effective voice and being an expert on your topic?

9. Sentence Fluency/Dialogue/Voice. As a writer, if you are going to tell an exciting story filled with characters, from heroic to villainous, you need to have these characters interacting through dialogue. Readers will feel more involved with your story and connected with your characters. But what if your story is about a real historical event involving real people? How do we know what historical figures said to one another? Bomb is filled with dialogue between scientists, spies, generals, soldiers, and presidents. So what did Steve Sheinkin do to get his “characters” talking? Research! And lots of it! Check out the Quotation Notes section to help students understand, again, the importance of the writer as topic expert. Have students take roles and read sections aloud (try the Prologue) to see, hear, and feel how the dialogue helps readers identify, understand, and connect to each character. Is it appropriate to approximate, after extensive research, what historical figures might have said in various situations, if no actual record exists? What is the difference between historical writing and historical fiction?

10. Modern Devices/Secret Codes. A great deal of Bomb’s story is about communication—face to face, in letters, radio transmissions, coded notes, etc. Today’s students are used to communicating instantly with a variety of personal electronic devices and through various forms of social media (My old man is showing, but I’m uneasy with using the word social when a great deal of this type of interaction is not about meeting people face to face.) How many of your students have written/received actual letters? What is the difference, in their minds, between receiving a text and a letter? What is their preferred method of communicating with friends? Parents? How would the use of modern communication devices—computers, email, cell phones, etc.—have altered the events of Bomb? Are secrets harder to keep now? Are people, in general, less private? The spies in the book communicated through coded messages. Have any of your students ever developed or used their own secret code? (Some of your students might be interested in researching the Navajo code talkers used during World War II.)

11. Argument. Engage your students in discussion and writing about one or more of the topics below (or generate some of your own). Discussion is a great form of pre-writing and will help suggest the level of research needed to become “experts” as they begin writing.

•        The role of science in our world today
•        How the development and deployment of the atomic bomb changed the world
•        Nuclear weapon technology is crucial to national security
•        Other ideas _______________

 

12. Other Models. The more students are exposed to lively informational writing, grounded in story (narrative), the easier it will be for them to write in a similar fashion. Narrative writing is more than beginning, middle, and end. Informational writing is about more than a mountain of information. Besides books like Bomb, one of my favorite sources/resources for this blend of narrative informational writing is National Geographic magazine. Each issue is filled great with writing and, as a bonus, amazing photography. The April 2013 issue, for example, has a thought-provoking article about the scientific possibilities and environmental implications of de-extinction—reviving currently extinct species. The article is exciting science and history, and it’s a model of the kind of informational writing that begs to be read.

 

To find out more about Steve Sheinkin and his books, visit stevesheinkin.com

 

Coming up on Gurus . . . 
Vicki reviews Andrea Pinkney’s Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America. Drop by any time to see what’s new or mine our archive for some gold you may have missed. Thanks for visiting. Come often—and bring friends. Remember, for the BEST workshops blending traits, common core, workshop, and writing process, call us at 503-579-3034. Give every child a voice.

Kick Off Women’s History Month With Two New Biographical Picture Books

 

Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children. 2013. Jan Pinborough. Illustrator: Debby Atwell. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 40 pp.

Genre: Informational narrative/biography/history
Ages: Grades K and up.

Summary
From the time my son was an infant until well into elementary school, we used to visit our local library at least three times a month to check out a fresh bagful of books. So, first of all, after reading this book, I need to say, “Many, many thanks to Minerva Sanders, Lutie Stearns, Mary Wright Plummer, Caroline M. Hewins, Clara Hunt, and Anne Carroll Moore!” (There are most likely many others to thank whose names are not listed here. The National Women’s History Project website reminds us, “Even when recognized in their own times, women are frequently left out of the history books.”) This formidable group of women librarians helped change attitudes about children and reading, and paved the way for the development of children’s libraries.  Anne Carroll Moore, as readers will learn in Jan Pinborough’s informative picture book, Miss Moore Thought Otherwise, used the force of her tenacious personality and her position at the New York Public Library to promote and expand the concept of children’s library services both here in the United States and in many countries around the world. (Be sure to read the “More About Miss Moore” section at the end of the book.)

It may be hard for us to believe now, but in Limerick, Maine in 1880, when Miss Moore was nine years old, attitudes about children and reading were very different from the way we think today. Kids weren’t allowed in libraries and books for children, if there were many, were often kept locked up. Children couldn’t even put their hands on books, much less check them out and take them home. But when it came to libraries, children’s books, and reading for both boys and girls, thankfully,  “Miss Moore thought otherwise.” She moved to New York to attend the Pratt Institute library school. Her first job was at the Pratt Free Library working in the new children’s room, where kids could actually take the books off the shelf! Her “otherwise” thinking at the Pratt led her to the New York Public Library system. It was here that Miss Moore’s vision for children’s libraries really came to life. Her faith in children helped her persuade New York librarians to allow kids to borrow books, take them home, and be trusted to return them. My son’s bag of books might never have happened without Anne Carroll Moore. Thank you, Anne, for always thinking “otherwise.” And thank you to Jan Pinborough and Debby Atwell for bringing Anne’s story to light. It’s up to us now to help get Miss Moore Thought Otherwise onto library shelves, into classrooms, and into the hands of young readers.

Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Maker’s Strike of 1909. 2013. Michelle Markel. Illustrator: Melissa Sweet. New York, NY: Balzer + Bray. 32 pp.

Genre: Informational narrative/biography/history
Ages: Grades K and up.

Summary
Clara Lemlich, like Anne Carroll Moore, was also a young woman who thought and acted otherwise, and even became the leader in an otherwise movement that led to big changes for women and workers in the early 1900’s. In Michelle Markel’s inspiring new picture book, Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Maker’s Strike of 1909, readers are introduced to a real fighter, young Clara Lemlich. Clara and her family immigrated to New York from the Ukraine to escape government persecution and find a better life. Barely speaking any English, Clara wants to go to school but is forced to seek work when her father is unable to find a job. Fortunately for her family, Clara does find work, but unfortunately for her and thousands of other young immigrant women, the work is in the garment industry. But as the author reveals to us, Clara has “grit,” and she “knows in her bones what is right and what is wrong.” Clara takes the work and faces it head on. The pay is barely enough to pay for food and rent and the working conditions are inhumane. Author Markel’s text and illustrator Sweet’s drawings and layout work seamlessly to present to young readers the harsh realities of the factories without being too scary. The pages showing an overhead view of the rows of workers crammed together, drops of blood on fabric, and a padlocked door are great examples of visuals and clear, direct text working together to help readers. On top of her hard work and long hours, Clara pushes herself by going to school at night. She just won’t quit! And she won’t accept the idea that she and her fellow workers have to be treated so poorly. Clara begins to talk with other workers, men and women, about organizing a union and striking to get better working conditions and pay. When she convinces her coworkers to walk out or picket, she and the others are fired, arrested, and even beaten. But she is “uncrushable,” and her spirit is “shatterproof.” Clara knew that her cause needed something bigger—a gigantic strike of garment workers at hundreds of factories! In 1909, Clara helped to lead the “Uprising of 20,000” garment worker’s strike. It didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t easy, but Clara’s leadership, her grit, her uncrushable determination, and shatterproof spirit led to higher salaries, shortened workweeks, and safer factory conditions for workers in New York and across the country.

(These books will make a terrific twosome if used in tandem in your classroom. Clara and Anne’s lives, drives, and personalities have a great deal in common, so I’ll outline some ideas for their use as a duo, along with suggestions for their use as stand-alones.)

In the Classroom

1. Reading. As always, you’ll want to preview each book prior to sharing with students. I like to read picture books two to three times—I don’t want to miss anything! The illustrations in each deserve sharing as well. Miss Moore’s colorful folk-art scenes reflect both her small town background and her life in big-city America at the turn of the century. Brave Girl’s blend of watercolors with images of ledgers, paychecks, dress patterns, and close-ups of bits of fabrics stitched across the page help to bring Clara’s factory world and the working world of immigrants to life. Using a document camera will help students absorb the images and make clearer connections to the texts.

2. Background. Each of these books provides enough historical background and context to ease students into the lives of these historical figures. It might be helpful to locate New York City on a map and then find out what your students may know about the city—Big Apple, Yankees, Knicks, Broadway, Statue of Liberty, etc. Why was New York such a magnet for so many people near the turn of the century?

3. Personal connection. Miss Moore Thought Otherwise—With this book, encourage students to talk about their library experiences, both at school and at public libraries. What do they like to do at the library? How many of your students have a library card for their local public library? (At the Beaverton City Library, there is no minimum age for a card—kids can get a card whenever parents/guardians decide they are ready.) Have them imagine what it would be like if they couldn’t check out or even touch the books. What if only their parents could go inside? How would they feel if there were only books for boys/girls?

Brave Girl—The factory where Clara worked made women’s clothing, and the majority of the workers were young women themselves, some as young as six. What do your students know about how and where their own clothing is made? Have any of them ever had a “job?” What have they done to earn money for themselves?  One of the issues Clara fought against were the “rules” of her workplace—how much she was paid, what would happen if she were late to work or bled on the material, the amount of time for her lunch break, etc. Have your students discuss the rules of their worlds—home, school, classroom, or playground. Are there any rules they believe are unfair?  Have they ever worked to change a rule at home or school? Have you or any of your students ever stood up for something of personal importance?

4. Topic/Message. Each of these books is a biography, where readers are given a behind the scenes look into the life of a person who may be new to them.  Beyond when they were born and where they lived, what do your students believe the authors really want readers to remember about these two women? Why do you and your students think the authors picked Anne Carroll Moore and Clara Lemlich to write about?

5. Persuasive writing. Both Clara and Anne worked to change the beliefs and attitudes of people who disagreed with them to make their worlds better places for themselves and others. How did each of them do it? Think back to the discussion of the rules that govern their worlds of home and school. Have students select a rule they would like to change, describe their positions, and then plan how they would make their cases and persuade those in charge. (It might help to have them think, “What would Anne/Clara do? to convince someone on the other side of their argument.)  It would be both fun and useful with younger students to do a little acting/role playing with each side of their issues. In persuasive writing, it’s important to understand both sides of the argument and anticipate counter arguments.

6. Genre. The Common Core Standards divide writing into three broad genres: narrative, informational writing, and argument. Into which category do authors Markel and Pinborough’s books seem to belong?  Biographies, if done well, are probably a blend of all three. They are informational—providing facts and a sense of a timeline—but also tell the story (narrative) of a person’s life, giving readers a way to connect as they try to persuade us about the importance of the subject’s accomplishments or contributions—thankfully. Without the narrative elements, these books could end up being a list of dry facts. Have your students try writing/talking about Anne or Clara as if their lives were a story—Once upon a time there was brave young girl who came to America with her family…See how much information they are able to remember and include.

7. Informational writing.  The causes that Anne Carroll Moore and Clara Lemlich made the focus of their lives remain in the headlines today. In many cities today, public libraries have been closed or have limited hours/services due to funding problems. And many schools (including where I live) have made the tough choices to cut back on librarians and library services in the face of severe budget reductions. Working conditions and fair/equal pay continue to be issues for workers in the United States and around the world.  Invite students to choose one topic for further exploration, either as a class, small groups, or individually, depending on age. Ask them to research and write about their selected topics or create a short play/speech/public service announcement to help bring the issue to life. The bibliography of Brave Girl is divided between general and primary sources. This distinction may be one you wish to explore with your students. What is the difference? Are there certain topics/genres where primary sources are essential? Have them find bibliographies in other books. How many sources were used? What kinds of sources—the Internet, books, interviews, film, etc.—were used? Why is it always important to use more than one source and kind of research in informational writing?

9. Comparison/Contrast. Used together, these two books make ideal choices for introducing or expanding the concept of comparing and contrasting. Have students help you create a T-chart for a closer look at Anne and Clara in terms of their backgrounds, education, family, etc. As you discuss your chart, help students look closely for similarities and discern differences. You could even help your students create sentences/structures that help them express their findings, especially if the sentence structures involve elements (conjunctions, internal punctuation, etc.) that are new to them:

Examples

Both Clara and Anne lived in New York City.

Although each of the young women worked for their causes, Clara often faced physical danger and arrest.

10. Reviews. Anne Carroll Moore was determined to stock libraries with not just books for kids, but great books for young readers. She created lists of recommended books for libraries and wrote reviews of books in newspapers and journals to make sure that quality books were being published. Anne also invited authors and illustrators to visit her libraries to meet face to face with their readers. Your students could create their own lists of recommended books, do book talks about their favorites, and even role-play and answer questions as a favorite author. Share some book reviews with your students as models for their own reviews of new (or new to them) books.

11. Voice/Dialogue/Sentence Fluency. The Common Core Standards aren’t as clear about the writing trait of voice as I would be in my own classroom. Where they do emphasize some important components of voice—writers choosing an appropriate style in consideration of both audience and purpose—I think they neglect the developmental nature of the concept of voice. Younger writers need help understanding that voice comes from a focused idea, being an “expert” on your topic, making sure your thoughts make sense and are organized, choosing words that paint pictures for readers, building sentences that flow, and knowing your audience. It’s a nurturing process that involves all the traits and lots of strong models, like the two books being discussed here, and goes all the way back to number one on this list—reading the book aloud. I think it would be fun with these two books to “hear” the voices of their subjects, Anne and Clara. What if these two historical figures met? What would they talk about? What would each person’s voice sound like? If you created the T-chart suggested in number nine, you could use it to help students write some conversational dialogue. What can you and your students do to make sure each young woman has her own voice? Does their conversation sound like real people speaking? These could be read aloud, recorded like a radio interview, or even filmed.

Anne Carroll Moore                         Clara Lemlich

12. Word Choice. Work with your students to develop lists of key/important words used by each author as they describe their subjects or tell each person’s story. Discuss what it means to think “otherwise,” a phrase used not only in the title, but also at important moments for Anne throughout the book. What does author Markel mean when she says that Clara has “grit” or is “uncrushable?” Pay close attention to the verbs each author chooses. For example, here are a few of the verbs chosen by author Jan Pinborough as she tells Miss Moore’s story—trusted, created, persuaded, pushed, pulled, wrote, encouraged. What do these choices tell us about Miss Moore? Look carefully at these choices from Brave Girl—locked, bend, hurry, hiss, crammed, bleed, fired. What does the author want us to know about Clara’s working life?

13. For additional information. The authors each provide a More About… section focusing on their subjects, time periods, and issues, along with a bibliography for further research. For older students looking for a connection to Brave Girl, check out the November 30, 2011 post about Albert Marrin’s book, Flesh & Blood So Cheap: the Triangle Fire and Its Legacy. The National Women’s History Project site, nwhp.org, is another good resource for more information about Women’s History Month. And to discover more about the authors and illustrators:

Miss Moore Thought Otherwise–

janpinborough.com

debbyatwell.com

 Brave Girl–

michellemarkel.com

melissasweet.net

Coming up on Gurus . . . 
Next up, Vicki reviews Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, a 2013 Newbery contender with an important message about kindness. Thanks for visiting. Come often—and bring friends. Remember, for the BEST workshops blending traits, common core, workshop, and writing process, call us at 503-379-3034. Give every child a voice.

 

A Powerful Book for Boosting Informational/Argument Skills

Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust. 2012. Doreen Rappaport. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press. 196pp. (excluding extensive notes)
Genre: Informational narrative, history
Ages: Grades 6 and up. Rappaport handles a delicate topic with great sensitivity and skill. The content is necessarily somber—at times horrific—but Rappaport manages to make these stories accessible to younger readers without disguising or glossing over the truth.

Summary
In her moving Introduction, author Doreen Rappaport confesses that even while growing up in a Jewish household, she was told that during the Second World War, “Jews went like lambs to the slaughter.” Was it true? Determined to find out for herself, she embarked on a rigorous investigation that included six years of personal interviews with Holocaust survivors. Her conclusion: Even deprived of resources, homes, clothing, weapons, and virtually anything to fight with save their intellect and courage, the Jews proved to be formidable opponents, outwitting Nazi extremists at every turn, and preserving their treasured culture against overwhelming odds. Deeply moved by what she had learned, Rappaport wanted to share her findings with the world, and the result is this book.

Chilling in detail, highly readable, and impressively researched, Beyond Courage reveals the personal stories of people, many in their teens or younger, who risked everything to preserve their identity. Together, facing opposition from a political machine out to annihilate them, they set up schools, devised ingenious plans for smuggling children out of harm’s way (knowing they might never see them again), sabotaged Nazi trains and weapon depositories, trained themselves to be expert forgers in order to create travel documents, established wilderness camps from which to launch more elaborate plans, and routinely plotted and conducted the most daring escapes imaginable.

Children as young as seven or eight became spies and soldiers. Women carried weapons. People of all ages and both sexes faced unthinkable persecution, prejudice, starvation, and torture, yet refused to surrender or renounce their religion. They weren’t just brave. They were unstoppable. This is their story—and it is stunning.

In the Classroom

1. Reading. As always, you’ll want to preview the book prior to sharing. While it may be long to share in its entirety, it is broken down into 20 individual chapters, each of which is fairly short. You might choose one or two to share aloud, then invite students to read the remainder of the book on their own. Or as an alternative, choose a number of individual passages to read orally. Notice that the book contains historic summaries as well as the stories of individual resistance fighters. You will want to draw from both.

2. Background. What stories have your students heard about the Holocaust or Jewish resistance and survival during the time of World War II? Have they read The Story of a Young Girl (Anne Frank’s diary), In My Hands by Irene Opdyke, Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust by Allan Zullo, The Secret Holocaust Diaries by Carolyn Tomlin—or other books detailing true stories of the Holocaust, its victims, and its survivors? What do they know about Hitler, World War II, the Nazi movement, concentration camps, or the story of Hitler’s rise to power and eventual defeat? You may wish to provide some historic background prior to sharing the book to provide a context, keeping in mind that some history of the time is recounted in the book itself. If you are familiar with literature on this topic, you may also wish to create, with your students, a reading and media list for extended learning.

3. Personal connection. Are you or are any of your students of Jewish descent? What stories have you or they heard from parents, grandparents, or other relatives about Jewish resistance during the Holocaust? Can you or they provide any personal perspectives to enrich your class’s understanding of what Jews endured and overcame during this difficult and terrifying time? Regardless of heritage, we all have traditions or beliefs we hold dear, and family, religious, or cultural ties that are sacred. Ask students to imagine how it would feel to be evicted from their homes, separated from their families and possessions, and exist in constant fear of deportation or death. Would they have the personal courage to fight back, even if their lives or the lives of their families were at stake? Write a reflective piece about this—and expand this writing after sharing and discussing the book. (Suggestion: Before they write, share with your students poet Henryk Lazowertówna’s poem, p. 82. You may wish to have them perform it aloud, individually or through choral reading.)

4. Topic. From Rappaport’s Introduction, we know the central theme of the book: to demonstrate the extent to which the Jews fought back against Nazi domination. Does Rappaport make her case? Is this a persuasive book? If so, which stories or individual incidents provide, in your students’ opinions, particularly convincing evidence of Jewish strength and courage?

5. Persuasive writing. Is fighting back always the right choice—or is it a matter of judgment or circumstance? Are there times when the price to be paid for resistance is simply too great to justify opposition? Argument: Have students make a case for resisting oppression at all costs—or for peacefully abiding by a government’s rules, even if they seem unjust. If opposition involves violence, is it still justified? Under what circumstances? Have students use examples from the book or from current events to defend their arguments.

6. Character. The Common Core Standards for Narrative remind us that characters reveal their nature through the choices they make in challenging situations. Share the chapter titled “Coffee and Tea,” the story of Walter Süskind and his elaborate plans to rescue Jewish children. Based on the information in this chapter, what sort of person was Walter Süskind? What details help us to understand him? Based on the book, would your students regard his story as unusual—or was his a typical story of those who fought back? Cite evidence to support your claim.

7. Genre. The Common Core Standards divide writing into three broad genres: narrative, informational writing, and argument. Into which category does Doreen Rappaport’s book fall—or is it an effective blend of all three? Is narrative writing often informational? And do stories often provide the basis for sound argument? Does good writing generally comprise several different genres? Discuss or write about this.

8. Organization. Take a few minutes to discuss how this complex text is organized. Read the Introduction aloud, focusing on the six years of interviews and other research Rappaport did in compiling information in which to base her book. Have students imagine what it is like to have such an overwhelming collection of details, and to try putting them into a framework readers can process in a reasonable amount of time. What challenges would a writer face in doing this? What organizational strategies does Rappaport use to make this extensive and detailed information manageable for us, as readers? (Consider, among other things, how the book is divided into five sections and then into 20 chapters. Notice also the different kinds of text: historic summaries as well as stories. You may also wish to comment on how the author keeps individual sections short. Obviously, there was more—much more—to tell. How did she decide what to include? Also notice that while some of the organization is chronological, Rappaport also brings together multiple voices. Consider other topics for which a multi-voiced organizational approach might work well.)

9. Informational writing. The story of Jewish resistance is vast, and cannot be covered in a single book, however well-researched and written. Invite students to choose one topic for further exploration: e.g., life in the Warsaw Ghetto, Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), deportation of Jewish children, wilderness camps, children who acted as spies or procurers of food, the role played by skilled forgers, modern-day perspectives on the Holocaust. Ask them to research and write about their selected topics. You may also want to spend some time discussing the nature of research: Where will they find the best information? Note that Rappaport obtained much of her information through personal interviews—in other words, from first-hand sources. How is obtaining information from a first-hand source different from visiting a library or going on the Internet? What types of sources are most dependable when it comes to accuracy? And why is it always important to incorporate more than one kind of research (e.g., site visits, interviews, films, print) when preparing to write an informational piece?

10. Comparison/Contrast. If students have read any other literature written about the Holocaust (see item 2 above), invite them to do a comparison between any other work and Beyond Courage. That comparison might feature central themes, each writer’s approach to the topic, the kind of research each writer did, writing styles, document design, or any other elements of the two works. Students should be prepared to reference specific sections of each work, and include quotations from both works.

11. Reviews. Invite students to write reviews of Beyond Courage. They should focus on the strengths of the work and the audience for whom they think this writing is most appropriate. Reviews might be presented in written form or as podcasts or PowerPoint presentations. They can also be posted online with a vendor (e.g., Amazon) that invites such reviews.

12. Voice. The Common Core Standards suggest that informational writing or argument should be written in a style that is appropriate for the topic and audience. In other words, they are asking writers in such genres to assume a professional voice. Share any passage from the book aloud—e.g., the opening to the chapter titled “Scream the Truth at the World!” (p. 81). In this chapter, Rappaport is describing people starving on a diet of 184 calories per day—and children as young as six smuggling food into hungry families in the ghetto. How would you describe the voice she uses in this (or another) passage? Is it the right voice for this book? Why? (Note that Rappaport does not try to dramatize her information—but neither does she shrink from it. She relays her information in an unflinching but decidedly restrained fashion, letting the facts speak for themselves.)

13. Presentation. What do your students notice about the overall design of the book? You might draw their attention to colors, shifts in fonts, illustrations (what sorts of photos or drawings were chosen?), and the subtle background images. What do those images convey? The photos include numerous individual portraits of Jewish fighters, rather than Nazi military personnel or war criminals. Why is this significant? Also notice the silvery gray and blue cover of the book. What do those colors suggest?

14. Beginning and ending. Beyond Courage opens and closes with the words of Franta Bass, age eleven. Read Franta’s short free verse poem aloud and discuss what it reveals about her. Why do you think the author chose this piece to both open and close her book? What does this repetition say to us as readers? One need not be Jewish to feel the kind of pride and determination Franta conveys in her stirring poetry. Invite students to write poems of their own, honoring their own culture, heritage, or family.

15. Reflections on history. By her own admission, even the book’s author believed for many years that Jews had gone submissively to their deaths during the war. What created this impression? Write about this (Suggestion: Interview people of Jewish and non-Jewish heritage prior to writing). Many Jews were told they were being “relocated,” when in fact they were being shipped to work or death camps. Would they have resisted more forcefully had they known the truth? Could this sort of deception succeed (with any people) in our own culture in the present time? Why or why not? Have students write an argumentative essay taking one side or the other, and supporting their claims with specific evidence.

16. For additional information. The author provides extensive notes suggesting sources for further research (see the back of the book for important dates, source notes, and an impressive bibliography). In addition, however, she strives to continue the journey of discovery begun by this book by posting additional resistance stories on her website: http://www.doreenrappaport.com We invite you to visit her there.

Coming up on Gurus . . .
Next up, in honor of Women’s History Month (March 1-31), Jeff reviews two picture book biographies: Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children by Jan Pinborough, and Brave Girl: Glara and the Shirtwaist Maker’s Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel. Thanks for visiting. Come often—and bring friends. Remember, for the BEST workshops blending traits, common core, workshop, and writing process, call us at 503-379-3034. Give every child a voice.

Linking the CCSS with the Trait of Word Choice

Definition
Word choice embraces all the words and phrases a writer uses to create meaning, imagery, or voice. With at least a quarter of a million words in the English language (depending on whether a word like rock is one word or several, based on how it’s used), there are multiple ways to say just about anything—unless highly technical language is required. So the focus with this trait is on choice: choosing words that suit the topic, the audience, and the writer’s intended tone or message.

Link to the CCSS
When you think about it, every single one of the Common Core standards for writing is related to word choice. After all, words are the tools we have for making meaning clear and organizing thoughts. In addition, though, several standards make specific reference to this critical trait.

Emphasis on word choice in the CCSS spans all genres, and is most clearly evident in writing standards 1 through 3, which spell out the following requirements (Note: We are paraphrasing here; for precise wording, please see http://www.commoncore.org):

For informational writing or argument—
1. Write in a formal style—which is also voice, but formality is achieved through language
2. Use appropriate transitions to clarify relationships between ideas
3. Use precise or domain-specific vocabulary—in other words, choose words wisely, and be comfortable with any terminology pertaining to the content area or topic

For narrative writing—
4. Use transitions to signal shifts in time or setting
5. Include relevant descriptive details
6. Include sensory details

A word about transitions
Transitions are achieved through language, obviously—e.g., words or phrases such as for example, to illustrate, however, therefore, in spite of this, first of all, a few days later, and so on. Words and phrases are not the only kinds of transitions we use, however. Sentences, paragraphs—even whole chapters—can serve a transitional purpose. Moreover, while transitions—bridges from idea to idea—are achieved through wording, they’re really more about organization. Good transitions enable readers to track the writer’s thinking, through examples (for instance), flow of time (the next day), emphasis (what’s more), parallel ideas (similarly), contrast (on the other hand), and more.

Teaching Word Choice
Vocab lists revisited. Traditionally, language has been taught through vocabulary lists, which are probably not terribly harmful (though memorizing them does eat up precious time), but probably don’t do a great deal of good, either. Unless . . . they are connected directly to reading. The difference is that isolated words on a list are quickly forgotten, while words in context are far more likely to be remembered. If students learn a few key words (say five, as opposed to twenty), then read text in which those words are used, both reading and vocabulary benefit.

Reading, reading, reading. Seeing and hearing language used well is key to vocabulary growth, so reading is essential. Students need to read both silently and aloud—and need to be read to, as well. This is true even for older students. Why? Because a skilled reader—e.g., a teacher or parent—uses inflections that bring out meaning. To many of us, reading aloud feels like a treat—the slice of cake after all the broccoli has been eaten. But actually, it’s one of the most valuable instructional activities available to us.

Revising. Good word choice isn’t just about acquiring new words, however. It’s also about using the words we know well. Everyday language comes to life in the hands of a skilled writer. But gaining this kind of skill takes practice. Writing every day is one way to get it. Here’s another: revising unclear writing. I do not mean the student’s own writing, either. If students only revise their own work, they will never get enough practice in revision because they simply don’t write enough. The world is filled with writing that is unclear, vague, or downright senseless. Be a collector of such writing, and ask your students to try revising it, a sentence or short paragraph at a time. They can work with partners or even in small groups to do this. They will enjoy it thoroughly, and their word choice skills will grow by leaps and bounds. (Watch our next post for one example you can use with middle school or high school students.)

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Following are several of our favorite books for teaching and modeling word choice. We hope you like our choices, and we invite you to recommend some of your own.

Book 1: World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky. 2011. New York: Workman Publishing. Genre: Argument. Ages: 5th grade and up, including adults.

Summary
This offers one heck of a lot of instructional bang for your book dollar. By that I mean that you can use it to illustrate clarity, organizational structure, effective and precise word choice, and more–including presentation AND the art of argument.

The book is very appealing, in a whimsical, edgy sort of way. Kurlansky and his editorial team weave together photography, cartoon graphics, paintings and sketches, along with playful use of fonts and colors. The page design is brilliant. It’s meant to draw in young (sometimes reluctant) readers, and it does.
In addition, though, the book is written with a persuasive voice that is simultaneously appropriate and passionate. Kurlansky speaks as a man who means what he says. He writes with the confidence that only comes with knowing a topic extremely well, through firsthand knowledge and research. His is a voice of urgency that says to readers—albeit in a polite way—“Hey, listen up”:

The United States government said in a 2002 study that one-third of the 274 most eaten types of fish are threatened by too much fishing. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says this is true of almost two out of every three types of fish they have studied in the world. The oceans are in serious trouble. (p. xxiii)

The book is filled with scientific terminology, but Kurlansky uses it gracefully, consistently making meaning clear from context (e.g., the term “Cambrian”): In the ocean, that would mean sea life returning to conditions 550 million years ago in a time known as the early Cambrian period—long before dinosaurs. (p. 5)

The chapters are carefully arranged to support Kurlansky’s argument that current fishing practice is dooming our oceans. He lays out the problem, explains how we got to this point, shows why previously posed solutions will not work, then suggests things we can do. The organizational structure is compelling—as are the details and documented research. You could literally spend a week discussing this book in the classroom, then ask students to draft a response either supporting or countering Kurlansky’s argument. Note: If you fish, enjoy eating fish, or are a supporter of marine life in general, you do not want to miss this book.

Book 2: Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. 2001. New York: Ballantine. Genre: Nonfiction history, combining narrative and informational writing. Ages: Adult (but individually selected passages are suitable for upper elementary and beyond).

Summary
Hillenbrand’s book has won so many awards, it takes a full page to list them. All are deserved. This is a fine piece of research, but it has all the page-turning appeal of a great novel. It combines a remarkable portrait of 1930s America with the incredible story of a horse that became an American icon. Seabiscuit was small for a thoroughbred, and ran so badly early in his career that he did not seem destined to ever win a race. In what could be described as the perfect storm of horse racing, the destinies of three men—owner Charles Howard, trainer Tom Smith, and legendary jockey Red Pollard—came together and pushed the little horse to immortality. For a few years, America’s down and out public had something in which to believe.

Research. The book is incredibly well-researched, through reading (including the private scrapbooks of Charles Howard, “a wealth of newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, telegrams, and letters,” personal visits, and interviews (Notes, p. 349). If you choose to share parts of it with students, use a document projector to skim through the notes so students can see just how voluminous this research was. You may also wish to read sections from the Acknowledgments, in which Hillenbrand talks about how she gathered her information.

Word choice. In an interview a few years ago, I heard Laura Hillenbrand say that she likes to keep modifiers to a minimum in her writing, relying on the strength of precise nouns and energetic verbs to create imagery and meaning. Seabiscuit is a masterpiece of effective verb usage. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the book features numerous racing scenarios, all of which Hillenbrand recounts in a dramatic fashion that makes you feel you’re watching a film. Consider this passage describing the Santa Anita Handicap race in which three of the fastest horses in the world are pitted against one another:

Whichcee screamed along the rail, stretching out over the backstretch, trying to hold his head in front. Seabiscuit stalked him with predatory lunges. Wedding Call tracked them, just behind and outside of Seabiscuit as they pushed for the far turn. They clipped through a mile in 1:36, nearly a second faster than Seabiscuit and War Admiral’s record-shattering split in their 1938 match race. Seabiscuit still pushed at Whichcee. Pollard, up in the saddle, was a lion poised for the kill. (p. 321)

Technical precision. As noted previously, Hillenbrand literally spent years researching Seabiscuit. As a result, she writes with knowledge and precision about the world of racing. For an outstanding example of this, see her extended informational passage on Thoroughbreds and jockeys, pages 70 and following. Notice how Hillenbrand manages with ease to accomplish the ultimate goal of good informational writers, which is to make readers feel like experts.

Book 3: Reign of the Sea Dragons by Sneed B. Collard III. 2008. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge. Genre: Nonfiction science writing. Ages: Fourth grade and up for independent reading; all ages for selected passages shared aloud.

Summary
For precise use of language—a quality emphasized in the CCSS—Collard’s books are hard to beat. (Check out this prolific writer online for a wide range of nonfiction books ideal for teaching and modeling informational writing at its best.) Collard uses words with care, and great accuracy. It is evident in each line that he wants readers to understand what he is saying, and he has a talent for making the complex clear and accessible. Consider this passage from the book’s introduction (noticing the pronunciation guides, so helpful to younger readers):

The elasmosaur and the Pliosaur belonged to an astonishing collection of reptiles that filled our oceans during the Mesozoic (MEZ-oh-zoh-ik) era, about 25 to 65 million years ago. Some of these reptiles, such as crocodilians and turtles, have familiar relatives that survive today. Most, however, were totally different from anything in our modern world. They included porpoiselike ichthyosaurs (IK-thee-oh-sohrs), the long-necked elasmosaurs, and enormous mosasaurs (MOSS-uh-sohrs) with curved daggers for teeth. Scientists often refer to these reptiles as sea dragons, and they include some of the most extraordinary, awesome predators the world has ever known. (p. 13)

If you’re thinking that last sentence is intended as an enticing transition, you’re right. This book is chock full of predators, prey, and conflict. Sneed, who is a friend, once told me, “You can’t just pile facts on people relentlessly—fact, fact, fact. They can’t absorb it, and they stop paying attention. You need a little drama mixed in there. Good writing has a rhythm to it. It goes more like fact, fact, fact, drama—fact, fact, fact, drama—like a dance.” This is why, when we teach students about genre, we need to make it clear that genres are not mutually exclusive. Good informational writing and argument make use of narrative examples to hold readers’ attention—but also to clarify meaning. We learn from informational writing, but the human brain craves story. (See Appendix A of the Common Core for a discussion of this.)

Research. You may wish to share “Learning More About Sea Dragons,” a summary of Collard’s research, aloud (p. 55). Encourage students to visit the websites listed on page 56—and to discover others on their own. Collard also includes a fine list of museums (pp. 56-57) that display sea dragon dioramas and fossils. The idea of visiting a museum or similar venue may broaden the way some students view research.

The book also includes an excellent glossary and index, both worth sharing with a document camera. You may want to discuss when such features should be included with a piece of writing. Are glossaries and indices just for books—or could they be important components of reports your students might produce?

Book 4: Amos & Boris by William Steig. 2004 (reissued). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Genre: Picture book. Ages: All. The book is directed at young readers, but adults love this book.

Summary
Like all of Steig’s books, this one has depth—and passion. It is a touching story of the unlikely friendship between the compassionate whale Boris and the adventurer mouse Amos, told in eloquent language. It is my all-time favorite picture book, and I have shared it with countless children and adults, and given away many copies as gifts.

Sometimes in our zeal to teach precision and technical correctness, we forget to help children appreciate the value of words used beautifully—like this:

One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all. (Unpaginated text)

That’s flat-out gorgeous writing. Children who hear this passage for the first time have an immediate, intuitive connection to words like phosphorescent, marveled, luminous, immense, speck, vast, and akin. When it comes to expanding students’ vocabulary, the power of reading dwarfs anything lists and memorization can ever hope to accomplish.

We mustn’t forget that the most important things we teach cannot be captured in standards. If we do not teach students to love books, and to treasure some over others, then nothing else we teach them about the mechanics of word choice will matter very much.

Book 5: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. 2007. New York: Simon & Schuster. Genre: Fiction. Ages: Grade 5 and up. All ages for selected passages.

Summary
The CCSS calls for students to include sensory details in their narrative writing. No one does this better than Gary Paulsen, whether he is writing novels, short stories, or nonfiction accounts of his own experiences. All good narrative writers include visual details. What sets Paulsen apart is his talent for zeroing in on just the tactile, auditory, or olfactory details that make readers feel they are sharing an experience. Hatchet is filled with these. Brian, the hero, is particularly sensitive to smells, especially after being alone in the wilderness for some days—and knowing extreme hunger. In this passage, we not only picture the fish, but hear it sizzling over the fire and smell the aroma:

He cut a green willow fork and held the fish over the fire until the skin crackled and peeled away and the meat inside was flaky and moist and tender. This he picked off carefully with his fingers, tasting every piece, mashing them in his mouth with his tongue to get the juices out of them, hot steaming pieces of fish . . . (p. 127)

For a little contrast, read Paulsen’s account of eating turtle eggs—a lost person’s last resort (pp. 99 and following).

As you peruse Hatchet, it may hit you how easy it is to weave sensory detail into narrative involving food (just as athletic scenarios lend themselves to use of strong verbs, as in Seabiscuit). Encourage your writers to write a narrative involving the preparation or consumption of food—any memorable experience, good or bad, will do. There are two tricks to making this kind of writing successful: (1) go beyond the visual, including sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations; and (2) don’t hold back—include the ugly or unpleasant details along with the pleasant ones.

Coming Up on Gurus . . .
As promised, we’ll provide you with a passage much in need of revision with respect to clarity and word choice—and offer suggestions for using this in a revision lesson with students. Meantime, Happy New Year to each and every one of you. Thank you for stopping by, and please come often. If you enjoy our posts, please recommend them to friends. And remember, for the very best in writing workshops featuring traits, standards, writing process, and literature, call us at 503-579-3034. Give every child a voice.

Linking the CCSS for Writing with the Trait of ORGANIZATION

Introduction

A recent post focused on connecting the trait of Ideas with the Common Core. This time around, we’ll look at Organization: ordering ideas to make them both clear and interesting. We’ll define the trait, link it to the CCSS for writing, and suggest favorite books to use as mentor texts in teaching important elements of Organization—including leads, endings, and transitions. As always, we encourage you to explore the Common Core Standards for Writing on your own; check out www.commoncore.org

Defining ORGANIZATION

One of my favorite quotations about writing comes from Ernest Hemingway, who said, “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” Indeed, writing needs internal structure to hold ideas together. Picture your living room. Imagine that “living room” is your big idea, and everything in it, fireplace to windows, beams to floors, rugs to lamps, is a detail. What you did with those details—how you arranged them, the overall impression you created, where you directed a visitor’s eye—that’s your organization. Organizational structure, whether for a room or a piece of writing, varies with purpose…

In narrative, good organization helps readers follow the story. That doesn’t necessarily mean things are told in the precise order in which they happened, however; good narrative often includes flashbacks or previews, or skips back and forth across time. The plot may bounce from one character’s perspective to that of another, as in Bull Run by Paul Fleischman. One way to assess effective organization in narrative is through our own sense of anticipation: Are we just dying to know what happens next? Matilda, in Roald Dahl’s book by the same name, grows very weary of having her parents tell her she is ignorant, when she is anything but—and vows revenge. The second chapter ends this way: “You must remember that she was still hardly five years old and it is not easy for somebody as small as that to score points against an all-powerful grown-up. Even so, she was determined to have a go. Her father, after what had happened in front of the telly that evening, was first on her list” (Roald Dahl, Matilda. 1988. Puffin Books, p. 29). Just what does Matilda have planned for her overbearing, judgmental father? We can’t wait to find out—and that lures us right into chapter 3.

In informational writing, organization is designed to maximize learning by effectively ordering the myriad of details that emerge from thorough research on a focused topic. Imagine you were going to write a report on cockroaches. What subtopics might you cover—and how would you arrange them? Visualize a pyramid: main topic at the apex, major subtopics midway down (clusters of chapters), smaller subtopics at the base (individual chapters). To see an example of this organizational design, check out the table of contents for The Compleat Cockroach by David George Gordon (1996 Ten Speed Press). You’ll find eleven subtopics (chapters) arranged under three major sections: Cockroach Basics (anatomy and history); Sex, Food, and Death (how they’re born, where they live, and what can kill them: cannibalism, wasps, millipedes—and the occasional lucky human); and When Humans and Cockroaches Meet (how cockroaches affect civilization, our efforts to control them—plus a fascinating chapter on cockroach pets). This informational pyramid makes it simple for us, as readers, to find what we’re looking for: e.g., How long can a beheaded cockroach survive? Good informational writers turn chaos (random piles of details) into purposeful design—and that takes skill. As Gordon explains, “This book contains the collected wisdom of several hundred individuals—entomologists, pest control specialists, psychologists, filmmakers, novelists, historians, fine and folk artists, and a few of my close friends” (vii). (Sidebar: Gordon’s book is also an exemplar of GREAT informational voice, and is jam packed with some of the best leads and conclusions you’ll find anywhere. One of my favorites (from “Gastronomy,” p. 97): “What do cockroaches eat? Well, what’ve you got?”)

Organization is vital to the success of an argument. Readers want to know straight off what the writer’s position is (so this often pops up right in the opening paragraph), and immediately after that, they want substantive evidence to back up the writer’s claim. At that point—and this is one important way in which argument differs from other forms of informational writing—they also want objections addressed. What does the opposition have to say, and what makes the writer’s argument stronger than theirs? Good arguments usually close with the very most compelling evidence the writer can muster, and/or recommendations for action, or revised thinking about the issue at hand. Consider these lines from the closing chapter of Our Planet (MySpace Community with Jeca Taudte, 2008, p. 141): “It sometimes gets lost in the talk about the number of wildlife facing extinction, trees being clear-cut, and ice caps melting, but there is a very real human face to global warming. We see it every time someone with asthma struggles to get a deep breath. We see it in those places where food or water is scarce and people are starving. We can even see it where people are fleeing from war.”

Following are the key elements of Organization:

• A strong lead
• An easy-to-follow flow of ideas
• Clear transitions
• Effective pacing
• A satisfying ending

All five elements are embedded in the Common Core.

 

Organizational Words & Phrases within the Common Core

Certain words or phrases within the Common Core are directly connected to the trait of Organization. Look in particular for the following—

introduce a topic or text; organizational structure; ideas are logically grouped; logically ordered; supported; link ideas; related; concluding statement; group information logically; headings; concluding statement; clarify relationships; appropriate transitions; transition words, phrases, and clauses; cohesion; previewing; unfolds naturally and logically; sequence; pacing; orient the reader; smooth progression of events

Here are two specific examples from the Common Core (grade 5 and grades 11-12) that show this language in context. Please note that we are condensing and paraphrasing here; we ask that you refer to  www.commoncore.org for precise wording.

 

In grade 5, students are developing their organizational skills . . .

W.5.1 (argument) requires students to—

• Introduce a topic clearly
• Create an organizational structure in which ideas are logically grouped
• Link opinion and reasons
• Provide a concluding statement

W.5.2 (informational writing) requires students to—

• Introduce a topic clearly
• Group information logically
• Link ideas using transition words, phrases, and clauses (e.g., in addition, despite all this, to illustrate)
• Provide a concluding statement

W.5.3 (narrative) requires students to—

• Orient the reader
• Introduce the narrator or characters
• Organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally
• Manage the sequence of events through varied transitional words, phrases, and clauses
• Provide a conclusion that follows logically from those events

By grades 11-12, those skills have become more sophisticated . . .

W.11-12.1 (argument) requires students to—

• Introduce the claim or claims
• Create an organization that logically sequences claims, counter claims, and evidence
• Use transitions to link ideas as well as major sections of the text
• Create cohesion
• Provide a conclusion that supports the primary argument

W.11-12.2 (informational writing) requires students to—

• Introduce a topic
• Make sure each new element builds on what came before
• Create a unified whole
• Use appropriate transitions to link ideas and sections of the text
• Create cohesion
• Provide a conclusion that suggests the implications or significance of the topic

W.11-12.3 (narrative) requires students to—

• Engage and orient the reader by setting up a problem or situation
• Introduce the narrator or characters
• Create a smooth flow of events, using strategies suchas pacing
• Sequence events in a way that creates coherence
• Sequence events so they build toward a particular outcome
• Provide a conclusion that follows from the story and offers resolution

Check out parallel writing standards (1 through 3) for the specific grade you teach, referring to the italicized list of terms above to see how close the link to the trait of Organization really is.

Teaching to These Standards

Now for the instructional side! If you were going to put this complex trait in a nutshell, these are the things you’d want to teach—

• Great leads that set up whatever follows (argument, discussion, story)
• Strong transitions that tie ideas or sections of text together
• Structure—ways of presenting information, whether that means comparison and contrast, main point and detail or support, step by step, chronological order, point and counterpoint, or something else
• Pacing—spending time where it counts by lingering over parts that require attention, and gliding quickly through (or over) anything obvious or less relevant
• Effective endings that wrap up a discussion or story, and leave a reader feeling satisfied

Following are some of our favorite books for teaching these important organizational elements.

 

GREAT BOOKS for Teaching Organization
as Presented in the Common Core

 

3 of Vicki’s Favorites . . .

1. Spiders and Their Web Sites by Margery Facklam. 2001. Little, Brown and Company. Informational. Elementary and up.

This book has traveled the country with me. I use it to teach detail, voice in informational writing, effective use of terminology, and exceptional formatting (the illustrations by Alan Male are excellent). It’s also a great book for opening discussions on organizing informational details because its structure is so easy to follow, even for young writers. Don’t hesitate to use it with middle or high school students, though; it’s entertaining enough for adult fans of spiders.

As the Common Core standards suggest, good informational writing begins by setting the stage for the discussion to follow. This means, usually, starting with a broad overview to introduce the topic, then zeroing in on specifics. You couldn’t have a better book for illustrating this approach. Notice the content of the first chapter: “A Dozen Spiders Plus One That’s Not.” It opens with one of my all-time favorite leads: “People who create computer Web sites to attract attention are borrowing an idea millions of years old. Even before there were dinosaurs, spiders were luring insects to their web sites” (p. 4).  Facklam goes on to tell us a little about spiders in general—“No matter where you are, there is a spider not far away” (p. 4)—and to share a number of intriguing details, including how many insects they eat, just how many spiders inhabit the world (you’ll be surprised), and the many ways they use their remarkable silk. What she does not do is tediously summarize details about the dozen spiders to which she’s about to introduce us. She meticulously avoids retracing steps—saving each detail for just the right spot. That’s good organization.

The second chapter (we’re still setting the stage here), “Spider Parts,” focuses on the anatomy of the spider, introducing us to technical terms, like Arthropoda, exoskeleton, cephalothorax, chelicerae, pedipalps, and spinnerets. Now we know enough about spiders as a whole to move in for close-ups of twelve species—plus the one that’s not (you may not guess what that is without reading the book). For beginning writers, that may be enough to share: introductory chapters followed by one detailed chapter for each species. Clean, straightforward organizational structure. With older writers, though, look deeper . . .

Notice that each species-specific chapter opens with one or more fascinating details about that particular spider—then goes on to share related knowledge about spiders in general. Chapters are short and content-rich, so the pacing is outstanding. For example, we learn in chapter 3, that the Garden Spider (pp. 6-7) attaches a ribbon to its web, presumably to ward off small birds that might otherwise become entangled. But we also learn how spiders build webs, why they don’t get stuck in them, and (most fascinating of all) how spiders in space become temporarily disoriented, and until they can re-orient themselves, spin webs that are a tangled mess. Who knew? (Teaching tip: When you share a multi-chapter book, check out leads and conclusions from each chapter, not just those that open and close the book as a whole. Notice how often you find the very best details within these opening and closing lines.)

2. Guys Write for Guys Read edited by Jon Scieszka. 2005. Viking. Memoirs by famous writers. Grades 5 through high school.

What a superb collection of mini (one- to two-page) life stories. This lively, sometimes zany, anthology offers a wondrous opportunity for students to get to know some favorite authors (Avi, Ted Arnold, Edward Bloor, Bruce Brooks, Chris Crutcher, Jack Gantos, Will Hobbs, Brian Jacques, Stephen King, Walter Dean Myers, Gary Paulsen, Richard Peck, Jerry Spinelli, Laurence Yep, and many others) a little better.

The book is filled with voice, and is great fun to read silently or aloud. Some essays are wildly comic, others more poignant. Their brevity and no-holds-barred content (many are clearly aimed dead center at a middle school audience) will pull in many a reluctant reader. Boys in particular love this book. One thing these essays have in common: great leads and endings.

You can use the book to illustrate the power of both because it’s easy to read six or seven leads—or endings—in just a few minutes. Here’s a tip you won’t find in the Common Core: When the ending echoes the lead, it’s an almost sure sign that what falls in the middle has coherence. Check out this example from the essay by Bruce Brooks called “E, A Minor, B7.” It opens this way: “There was only one thing you did in eighth grade, and I did it. I played in a band” (p. 42). I love that lead. It has focus but also a bit of comical anti-climax (Band? Seriously? That’s what you were leading up to??). Brooks hearkens back to this endearing, self-deprecating moment with the “now-we’re-more-worldly” tone of his ending: “We were right: at the start of school the next September, these guys were still together . . . But now they were losers. Bands were eighth grade. Nobody played in a band in ninth grade. Ninth grade, it turned out, was about girls” (p. 44). Well, that’s more like it. That’s also brilliant. A good ending does follow logically from what’s gone before, as the Common Core requires—but a brilliant ending points to the future, and makes you want to read on. (Teaching tip: Have students identify leads or conclusions from their own reading that they find especially effective. Which leads would encourage them to read on? Which endings are satisfying, like a good dessert—and which leave them unfulfilled? Create a class collection and talk about which leads/endings speak to you. By the way, my all-time favorite ending is from Charlotte’s Web; if you haven’t read it in a while, have a look.)

3. Years of Dust by Albert Marrin. 2009. Penguin. History/Informational Writing. Grades 6 and up. Appropriate for adults.

Award winning author Albert Marrin has a talent for making nonfiction ring with voice, and for sifting through oceans of meticulously researched details to identify what is most important. This book is also brilliantly organized—more on that in a moment.

Notice the formatting straightaway. This is the story of the Dust Bowl, told through text, mind bending photos, newspaper clippings, journal entries from those who lived it—even song lyrics from people like Woody Guthrie. After appreciating the sheer beauty and scope of the book (you will want a document projector to share the stunning, often shocking, photos), take time to talk about how this author took literally thousands of details and worked them into a coherent whole. Discuss the challenge involved, and strategies Marrin used.

In his riveting introduction, he gives us a hint about his master plan: “This book aims to tell the story of the Dust Bowl disaster. It is really two stories. The first focuses on ecology—the natural world of the Great Plains. The second story is about how people invited disaster by changing the ecology of the Great Plains: “assaulting” might be a better word” (p. 4). Two stories = two main parts to the writing. Therein lies a great lesson in how to deal with an overwhelming number of details: Step back and get the big picture first. Ask yourself how many subtopics or chapters your BIG topic spans. Begin there, remembering that you will need to leave some things out.

Study the Table of Contents and you’ll see a definite, purposeful progression. Marrin begins with a shocking look at just how severe the Dust Bowl was—total “Darkness at Noon.” This whole chapter is his “lead,” and it is gripping. He means to startle us, and he does. Then, he shifts back in time a bit, giving us a picture of life on the prairie before dust storms erased nearly everything in their path—through chapters titled “The Great Plains World” and “Conquering the Great Plains.” We learn more about the ecology of the plains—and just who those “conquerors” really were. (Authors’ note: We usually think of leads as an opening line or two, but a lead can run a whole paragraph, page—or chapter.)

At this point, the book switches directions: Early ranchers, cowboys, and unscrupulous buffalo hunters were followed by farmers (“The Coming of the Farmers”), a group with a strong work ethic and close family ties. Unfortunately, their farming practices—replacing the native grasses that had held the land together for centuries with cash crops like wheat and corn—aggravated the worst drought in our nation’s history, and created, in part, conditions that led to the Dust Bowl. The illustrations accompanying this section of the book will have you gasping for air yourself. The graphic, heart-wrenching tale of these farm families culminates with the chapter titled “Refugees in Their Own Land.” Marrin’s conclusion has two parts: “The New Deal,” a summary of how America dealt with this crisis; and “Future Dust Bowls,” chilling projections about the very great likelihood that similar catastrophes could occur, not only here but elsewhere in the world. It takes an extraordinary writer to put this much information into a design we can follow with ease. If I could award a prize just for organizational know-how, I’d give it to Albert Marrin.

I chose to include this book not only because of its masterful overall design, however, but also because it’s one of the best books ever for illustrating the power of transitions. Thoughts, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters are all beautifully connected. Here’s one short passage (from page 16) in which I’ve underlined the transitions to help you see what I mean (Read this passage aloud without the transitions to hear the difference):

Wherever a grasshopper cloud set down, it cleared the ground of plant life. All you could hear was the sound of countless jaws CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMPING until nothing remained to eat. Young children, caught outdoors, screamed in terror as the insects’ claws caught in their hair and bodies wriggled into their clothing. On railroad slippery with crushed grasshoppers, trains could not start, or, worse, stop. Yet, since grasshopper jaws could not get at their roots, the native prairie grasses always grew back.     

 Years of Dust is among the best books of our time—an ingenious blend of genres, written from a strong research base and told with unforgettable voice. If you’re looking for that “just right” note for informational writing, here it is. (Teaching tip: Informational writing is designed to answer readers’ questions. We can use this bit of insight in planning. As students are preparing to write an informational piece, suggest that they list 3 to 5 questions a curious reader might have about their topic. Each question can become the focus of a paragraph, section, or chapter—depending on the length of the document. This is an easy but extremely effective way of getting large numbers of informational details in order.)

 

4 of Jeff’s Favorites . . . 

1. The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller. 2002. Henry Holt and Company. Informational. Grade 1 and up.

As Vicki said about one of her recommendations, this book, The Scrambled States of America, has traveled the country with me. I use it with younger students to teach detail, voice, and most importantly, organization. Yes, it’s a wonderful introduction to some basic United States geography, but at it’s core, the story being told is about finding the best, most logical way to fit each of the fifty states together into one whole country. Kansas is feeling a bit isolated and complains to his good friend Nebraska, “I just feel bored…We never DO anything, and we NEVER meet and NEW states!” They decide to throw a party and invite all the states to come. (Be sure to look closely at the detailed artwork, also by Lauire Keller to see what each state brings to the party, and to “hear” their chitchat—very funny.) Idaho and Virginia suggest that the states switch places so they could see a new part of the country, and this is when the scrambling begins. There’s great picture of the states all crammed into their new arrangement—Minnesota switching with Florida, North Dakota sliding into Texas’s spot, Arizona moving to the east coast, and so on. But of course, this organizational system doesn’t work—Minnesota didn’t bring sunscreen and Florida was freezing up north, and poor Kansas, who had switched with Hawaii, was now stuck by his lonesome in the middle of the Pacific without any neighbors at all. To solve all the problems, they decide to pack up and move back to where they belonged.

Logic, order, and chunking of like-information are the building block components of writing for our youngest writers. Books like this are a motivating way to teach students to think organizationally by helping them learn to ask themselves questions—What should I say first? Does this sentence connect to the one that comes before it? Does everything fit together, including my pictures? Young writers may begin to think of their writing like a jigsaw puzzle, where all the pieces—sentences, details, ideas—naturally, logically, and comfortably fit together.

(Note: The Scrambled States of America may also be purchased in a set with a matching jigsaw puzzle or as a board game, with more of an emphasis on each state’s geography. Very fun!)

2. The Vermeer Diaries: Conversations with Seven Works of Art by Bob Raczka. 2001. Millbrook Press. Informational/Historical Fiction. Elementary and up.

I’m just thrilled to have an opportunity to rave about any of Bob Raczka’s books. Though each of his books has a focus on art, they bring readers into the world of art he so obviously loves by very different paths. That’s right, his books are not all organized the same way. Here’s Looking at Me: How artists See Themselves, focuses on self-portraits and is a series of short essays about different artists. No One Saw: Ordinary things Through the Eyes of an Artist, uses rhyming text to emphasize how each of the featured artists viewed the world. And, Unlikely Pairs: Fun With Famous Works of Art, is a wordless book, juxtaposing two works of art on opposite pages to suggest a startling/humorous/revealing relationship between the pair. (These are just a few of his books.)

The Vermeer Diaries follows its own organizational design, as well. This book is a series of interviews/conversations, not with artist Jan Vermeer but with the subjects of seven of his paintings answering question from the author, Bob Raczka. In his introduction, the author tells readers, “Most of what we know about Vermeer, we have learned by studying his paintings…I wanted to know more about them. So I decided to interview a few of my favorites.” (p. 3) Here’s a little of the back and forth from Bob’s conversation with the milkmaid from Vermeer’s painting, The Milkmaid.

BOB: Do you have a favorite detail in this painting?

MAID: Well, since you ask, I do love the broken windowpane.

BOB: Wow. I’ve seen this painting dozens of times and never noticed that before.

MAID: That’s what I love about it—the fact that most people don’t see it. It’s one of those little things that makes me feel at home. (p. 7)

Each conversation begins with a large sized reproduction of the painting in question, and sprinkled around the pages are smaller photos of maps, tools, etc. pertinent to the conversation. This book, like each of his books, is a worthy example of a creatively designed structure, tailor made to the author’s purpose—he wanted to know more about the artist by getting the subjects to talk. A conversation, in the form of an interview is the perfect structure to deliver information to readers and allow the author to keep the pacing lively. Readers, imagining the subjects speaking with them, stay interested and focused on the secrets being spilled. Imagine your students choosing this structure to demonstrate learning, as an alternative to a traditional report format.

3. New Found Land by Allan Wolf. 2004. Candlewick. Historical Fiction. Grades 4 and up.

Think about the last time you finished reading a book you just loved and had to tell someone about it. “You’ve just got to read this book. It’s s-o-o-o ____________!” Of all the words you might have used to complete this glowing recommendation, organized is probably not one of them. You’ve just got to read this book. It’s s-o-o-o organized! Though it may be true, the comment has an odd ring to it. Does this mean that as readers we take strong organization for granted? Perhaps. Or maybe it just means that we understand that when a piece of writing is well organized (refer back to the bulleted list of key elements of Organization above), readers are able to focus on what is most important, the writer’s ideas. Organization’s role is to create structure yet stay behind the scenes and help make sure the spotlight stays shining brightly on the author’s story or information, the real star of the show. When a writer creates an organizational structure that is too clunky and obvious about being organized, the focus strays, leading readers away from the big ideas and details—

I am writing a report about Lewis and Clark. In my report I will tell you four things about Lewis and Clark. The first thing I will tell you about is some background information about Lewis and Clark. The second thing I will tell you about is who else went with them. The third thing I will tell you about is the kind of danger they faced. The fourth thing I will tell you about is what they discovered.

In my first paragraph, I will tell you some background information about Lewis and Clark. The first thing I will tell you about Lewis is that his first name was Meriwether. The first thing I will tell you about Clark is that his first name was William… 

As a reader, I call this “bumping into the beams.” The writer is so self-aware of the structure being built, that readers become hyper-aware and are forced to slam into the beams at every turn—Oh! I’m reading a report…Let me guess—right after your second thing…Yes! There it is! The third thing! Now, I’m going to go out on a ledge and go all-in that just around the corner is the fourth thing…Bingo! (We can even predict the ending—I hope you have enjoyed my report on Lewis and Clark…Bump! Slam! Ouch!) When this happens to readers, the spotlight is not on the writer’s big idea—the story and characters, or the thesis and support—but on the organizational structure. In a well-organized piece of writing, the structure goes undercover, guiding readers gently, not pulling them by their noses.

Allan Wolf’s book, New Found Land, is a great example of historical fiction brought to life through a thoughtful, purposeful organizational design that gently and creatively guides readers along the amazing journey of Lewis, Clark, and the Corps of Discovery. The guiding begins with the table of contents, which clearly lays out the book’s path—six parts broken down into a logical progression of chronology and westward geographical progress. Readers are also given a preview of the extensive Notes section (which includes significant background information, glossary, further reading suggestions, and historical references), an important (yet subtle) signal to the historical foundations of this fictional story. Like a play, the book begins with a cast list of all the key players whose voices we will hear—Sacagawea, Lewis, Clark, Thomas Jefferson, York, Oolum, the alter-ego of Lewis’s Newfoundland dog, etc. And then, like a good history, readers come across a map, one of several placed throughout the book to both locate and keep us on the trail of the story. And with the turn of the page, the real surprise is revealed, the writer’s design for telling his story. The author is going to let the characters tell their stories and reveal their perspectives in moments—poetic monologues, dialogues, letters, and reflections that are connected but not directly linked like a story told in sentences, paragraphs, and chapters would be. (Think Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg, Sold by Patricia McCormick, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, or Love That Dog by Sharon Creech.) Readers move down the trail of the big story—the overall expedition—transitioning between the moments of each character’s individual story as easily as turning your head to face the next speaker during a dinner table discussion with family members.

This book is filled with all the information of a research paper, yet its organizational design delivers it to us in a more personal, memorable way, and the spotlight remains fixed on the story, characters, and events—the stars of the show. Use this book in your classroom though, to give a standing ovation curtain call to the crew who put the show together—all the elements of Organization. You’ve just got to read this book. It’s s-o-o-o organized!

4. Animals in Motion: How Animals Swim, Jump, Slither, and Glide (and other titles in the Animal Behavior series: Animals Hibernating, Animal Senses, Animals and Their Young, Animals Eating, Animals and Their Mates, Animals at Work, Animal Talk, etc.) by Pamela Hickman or Etta Kaner. 2000 et al. Kids Can Press. Informational. Elementary and up.

Many of our younger students are information hounds, sniffing out books to feed their need to know more about their favorite animals, dinosaurs, cars, or periods in history. Whether they are reading every word or browsing, these students are soaking up the facts, statistics, diagrams and photos filling the pages. Now, as we ask students to do more and more informational writing, beginning in early grades, I’m always on the lookout for books to help students make the jump from consumers of information (readers) to producers of information (writers). Animals in Motion: How Animals swim, Jump, Slither and Glide (as one example of the great books in this series) is a perfect resource to help young writers do just that—become writers of informational text. Even the full title of the book serves as an example of how to break down and organize a broader topic into significant subtopics. Readers will see in the Table of Contents that the book is broken down into sections telling more about different types of animal locomotion: Swimmers and floaters, Fliers and gliders, Runners and walkers, Hoppers and jumpers, Slippers and sliders, and Climbers and swingers. In each section, readers are encouraged to find points of comparison between the ways various animals move and the ways they move through their world. The Swimmers and floaters chapter, for example, begins with a focus on beavers. Following an introduction, readers are asked to imagine themselves as a beaver:

If you were a beaver…

• you would have webbed hind feet to help you swim.
• your broad, flat tail would help you steer through the water.
• you could close tiny flaps in your nose and ears when you dive so that water couldn’t get in.
• you would have a set of see-through eyelids, like goggles, that close over your eyes to protect them while you are underwater.
• you would spread special oil from your body over your fur to make it waterproof. (p. 7)

This serves as a great model for students to use in their own writing—helping readers make connections to the information you, as the writer, choose to include. It shows student writers the value (and option) of serving readers information in bulleted lists, which in this case, is also an effective format choice to engage them in your point of focus. Each chapter includes an introduction, a section like the one above, detailed drawings, and frequently, an experiment they could do at home (or in the classroom) for even greater understanding and insight. These also serve as great examples for students of another organizational structure, step-by-step/how-to/directions. Flipping through the pages of these books will remind both you and your students that engaging informational writing is not about following one, rigid structure, but is often accomplished by a blend of structures and format choices.

Authors’ Note: Remember that there are countless ways of organizing information (even though we usually limit ourselves to teaching just a few of them—chronological order, step by step, comparison-contrast, and so on). So in teaching this complex trait, share as many writing samples as you can, always asking your students, “How did the writer organize this? What strategies did he/she use to make this easy to follow?” And don’t be surprised to find several (or more) organizational designs all used within the same document!

Coming up on Gurus . . .

In an upcoming post, we’ll share ways to link the CCSS with the traits of VOICE and WORD CHOICE. We’ll be including favorite books for one or both traits. Also look for a preview of Vicki’s soon-to-be-released sixth edition of Creating Writers, which now features sections on the Common Core. Thanks again for making time to visit us. Come often—and bring friends. Remember, for the BEST workshops blending traits, common core, workshop, and writing process, call 503-579-3034. Give every child a voice.

Linking the CCSS for Writing with the Trait of IDEAS

 

Introduction

How close is the connection between the Common Core State Standards for Writing and the Six Traits of Writing? Somewhat close? Pretty close? Try VERY. In fact, virtually every standard references one trait or another. That’s because the traits are simply qualities that make writing work, and making writing work is the primary focus of both the traits and the CC writing standards.

Two traits, Ideas and Organization, stand out particularly strongly within the first three writing standards (those dealing with genre).However, Voice plays an important role in grades 6 through 12, under the guise of “formal style and objective tone” as well as writing effectively to connect with an audience. And Word Choice is repeatedly cited under “precise language” and “domain specific vocabulary.” As you might expect, Word Choice also receives much attention within the Language Standards—along with Conventions and Sentence Fluency.

Over the next several posts, we’ll help you understand these important connections, focusing on the first four traits (Ideas, Organization, Voice, and Word Choice), and sharing some of our favorite literature for teaching traits AND standards-based skills. Here’s something to feel confident about: If you teach the six traits, you ARE teaching standards-based skills, without doubt. (See for yourself by exploring the Common Core Standards for Writing on your own, at www.commoncore.org)

In this post, we’ll focus on the trait of IDEAS, and see just how closely this trait is embedded within the Common Core. Let’s start with a definition . . .

 

IDEAS: What’s this trait about?

Ideas are everything you think, imagine, remember, know inside and out, and share with readers. Think of the trait of ideas as your reason for writing.  In narrative writing, ideas take the form of a story. In informational writing, your information IS your idea. In argument, ideas comprise your position and all the evidence you can summon to support it—or refute the other guy’s claim. Following are the key elements of this trait:

• Clarity
• Accuracy or authenticity
• Strong main idea, position, or storyline
• Details, details, details
• Expansion and development

Sound familiar? Of course. You’ll find this language everywhere throughout the Common Core.

 

QUICK PAUSE for . . . A Close-Up Look at Details

Before going further, let’s explore the concept of detail. Oh, that’s an easy concept, you’re thinking. Actually, for many students, it isn’t. In their writer’s brains, they see the complete picture of their story, information, or argument clearly. They struggle as writers because they don’t have the foggiest idea what we mean by the word “detail”—and consequently, they don’t understand what we mean when we ask them to explain, provide evidence, support their position, expand an idea, “be specific,” or “tell us more.” What on earth are we talking about?? What more could we want to know?? Well . . . we’re talking about details . . . which could take the form of—

• Sensory details: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings
• Quotations: what someone else had to say about a topic
• Observations: firsthand information from the writer’s own experience
• Facts: names, dates, measurements, data, findings, and other specifics
• Images: clear descriptive pictures (of a person, a scene, an event) that help readers “see” what a writer is talking about
• Definitions: explanations of difficult terms or concepts a reader might not know
• Examples: specifics that support a generality—e.g., kinds of prey animals, people who hold world records, top 10 French foods, qualities of Olympic champions

Detail is the difference between this—

The fireman liked looking at fire.

—and this—

“It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor, playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history” (Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 50^th Anniversary edition, 1981, p. 3).

If you’re familiar with the CCSS, you already know that details of various kinds are emphasized across all genres. So teaching students ways of creating detail within their writing gives them an important leg up on (1) developing a topic (as the CCSS require), and (2) holding a reader’s interest—something essential to writing success in and beyond school.

Structure of the Traits—versus Structure of the Standards

Here’s an easy way to think about how traits and standards are linked . . .

The Six Trait Model is organized across writing concepts or qualities: ideas, organization, voice, and so on. The CCSS model is organized across three umbrella genres: narrative, informational writing, and argument. The traits are embedded within and are an integral part of each of these genres. Or, to put it another way: Traits are the qualities that make writing strong within any genre.

Words to Look For

Certain words or phrases within the Common Core link directly to the trait of Ideas. You’ll know you’re talking about this foundational trait when you come across any of the following:

argument, accuracy, topic, claim, evidence, opinion, information, events, details, information, reasons, focus, definitions, develop or development, descriptions, knowledge, concrete details, quotations, examples, sensory details, story, point, clarity, clarify, clear writing, coherent writing, summarize or paraphrase information, gather information from credible sources, demonstrate understanding, logical reasoning, valid reasoning

For example,

In kindergarten . . .

W.K.1 (argument) requires students to tell about a topic and state an opinion about that topic.

W.K.2 (informational writing) requires students to name a topic and share information about that topic, through drawing, writing, or dictation.

W.K.3 (narrative) requires students to narrate an event or series of events.

By grade 8 . . .

W.8.1 (argument) requires students to write an argument supported by clear reasoning and evidence, using accurate, credible sources—and to refute counter arguments.

W.8.2 (informational writing) requires students to not only introduce a topic but develop it through facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, examples, and other credible information.

W.8.3 (narrative) requires students to develop events and characters through various literary techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description.

Check out writing standards for the specific grade you teach, referring to the italicized list of terms above, and you will see how close the link to Ideas really is. Now, let’s think about the instructional side of things. Following are some of our favorite books for teaching this trait and all the Common Core skills related to it.

 

GREAT BOOKS for Teaching
Ideas and Related Common Core Skills

Remember that you don’t always have to share a whole book aloud. Often, you can make a terrific point about clarity or detail through one short, well-chosen passage. And if students choose to read the whole book on their own so much the better.

 

3 of Vicki’s Favorites . . .  

1. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. 1952. HarperCollins. Fictional narrative. Intended for primary and elementary students, but enjoyable by all ages.

E.B. White’s beloved classic is a masterpiece of detail. Consider the opening to Chapter III, “Escape”: “The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows” (p. 13). This passage goes on to tease our senses with other aromas until we feel we’re right there in the barn with Wilbur and his companions. White teaches us that by focusing on one kind of sensory detail (smells), we can create a vivid sensory experience. It’s interesting to know also that White spent considerable time observing spiders in order to write with authenticity. Though this is by no means an informational text, it does—like any powerful narrative—depend on the author’s in-depth knowledge of his topic. Check out Chapter V, “Charlotte,” and see if your students learn anything new about spiders. Make a list of the informational details White weaves into his story. One last thing: Good stories have a message, a main idea. Just what is the message we’re meant to take from White’s unforgettable story?

2. How Fast Is It? by Ben Hillman. 2008. Scholastic. Nonfiction informational essays. Grades 4 through 8. Adults love this book, too—thanks to Hillman’s extraordinary collection of facts.

One of the most important concepts we can teach young writers is how vital it is to have a clear main idea—and to connect important details in some way to that main idea. You could hardly do better than this book for teaching that lesson. Every essay in the book (there are 22, and each runs only a short page) relates to one common theme: speed. We learn just from the table of contents how many things depend on speed to function well—from computers to cheetahs, race horses to light. But what’s particularly fascinating about the book is the research behind it. Hillman has taken time to dig for the right details (meaning they’re intriguing and new to many readers), so he can share information like this: “The cheetah also has extra-light bones to keep it nimble; oversize lungs, liver, and heart to enable sudden bursts of energy; large nasal passages for quickly inhaling large amounts of oxygen . . .” (p. 21). We learn something with almost every line. This book is an invaluable resource for illustrating how powerful detail can be in giving informational writing both believability and voice.

3. Our Planet: Change Is Possible by the MySpace Community with Jeca Taudte. 2008. HarperCollins. Nonfiction persuasive and informational essays. Grades 5 through high school.

Argument can be challenging to teach because it’s hard to get our hands on good examples. This terrific little book abounds with persuasive topics that discuss and promote ways of “going green” in our everyday life through thoughtful choices involving cosmetics, food, television, spare time, social life, health—and more. The arguments consistently promote a eco-conscious lifestyle, and do so in a no-punches-pulled manner that make it easy to see what the writer’s position is: “Avoid skin products made from petroleum. You wouldn’t go to the local gas station and douse yourself in gas, so why would you slather it on in your bathroom?” (p. 13) Arguments are readable, filled with voice, and backed by specific, well-researched data. The writers are also good at exploring alternate points of view and distinguishing myth from fact. The presentation makes this book highly inviting and also makes the information accessible even for younger readers. It’s a winner.

3 of Jeff’s Favorites . . .

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. 1994. St. Martin’s Griffin. Fictional narrative. Intended for primary and elementary students, but enjoyable by all ages.

I recently re-read this classic (originally published in 1908) and was blown away again by both the characters and world Kenneth Grahame imagined for readers. To create both the setting and inhabitants of his story, Grahame has to paint close-up, detailed pictures for the story to come to life for readers. Early in the story, Rat introduces Mole to the wonders of life on the river with a boat ride and picnic: “Leaving the main stream, they now passed into what seemed at first sight like a little land-locked lake. Green turf sloped down to either edge, brown shaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet water, while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir, arm-in-arm with a restless dripping mill-wheel, that held up in its turn a grey-gabled mill-house that filled the air with soothing murmur of sound…It was so very beautiful that the Mole could only hold up both fore-paws and gasp, ‘ O my! O my! O my!’” Mole’s reaction is one shared by readers. We are also immersed in these precise details, stirring each of our senses. O my! is right! Grahame’s story is replete with detailed descriptions of not just the river and surrounding fields and underground burrows. Picnic basket contents are brought to life with figurative language: “…a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried…” Even supporting characters, like the Water Rat, are drawn with the kind of precision that reveals both physical and personality traits: “…his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the corners, and he wore small gold earrings in his neatly-set, well-shaped ears.” It’s clear that Grahame, like E.B. White, knows a great deal about the water, land, and creatures he writes about. Your students will know that, of course, moles, rats, frogs, and badgers don’t actually speak, wear clothes, or drive cars, like the characters in the book. After meeting Mole in the first chapter, have your students do a little digging (pun intended) about real-life moles—what about the character of Mole is authentic or based on factual information? Students may even want to further to find out the story behind the story—where did the author’s original idea come from? As Vicki suggested with Charlotte’s Web, “Good stories have a message, a main idea.” That message is the author’s reason for writing in the first place. What message does Kenneth Grahame want your student readers to take away from his animal story?

2.Wild Delicate Seconds by Charles Finn. 2012. Oregon State University Press. Short, nonfiction informational essays. Intended for high school to adult audiences, but passages could be used across all grade levels and content areas.

Charles Finn describes the contents of his book as a collection of nonfiction micro-essays—one to two pages in length, “…each one a description of a chance encounter I had with a member (or members) of the fraternity of wildlife that call the Pacific Northwest home.” Each piece is an exemplar of the many forms details might take in writing: sensory details, quotations, observations, facts, images, definitions, and examples. The author gathered information through close, purposeful observations of each animal, and recorded his descriptions and experiences in journals to be crafted later into these focused essays. From Bumble Bees: “I sit watching the bees, their inner-tube bodies overinflated, their legs like kinked eyelashes hanging down. The white noise of their wings soothe me…” From Water Ouzel (also known as dippers, my favorite bird): “The tiny bird dips and dunks…It is tiring to watch: knee bend, knee bend, knee bend, tail twitch, dunking, tail twitch, kneebendkneebendkneebend…” And from Western Toad (offering a counterpoint to The Wind in the Willow’s automobile loving character, Toad of Toad Hall): “It has eyes cowled like headlights, Popeye forearms, and skin that sags. It could be a burp from a tuba.” Finn’s perspective is that of a scientist/poet/storyteller/teacher and clearly, a lover of wildlife. These micro-essays will have a macro impact on your young writers.

3.They Called Themselves the K.K.K. : The Birth of an American Terrorist Group  by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. 2010. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Nonfiction informational/argument/persuasive. Intended for middle and high school students.

If you think about it, from the perspective of the writer, all writing is persuasive. A writer’s job is to persuade readers, from their first sentences, to begin and then continue reading. And they do this, especially in the informational and argument genres, by beginning with a strong main idea and demonstrating immediately to readers that they are experts on their topics. Susan Campbell Bartoletti convinced me of her expertise from the get-go. Her idea for the book, she explains, came from seeing a statue commemorating Confederate general and the first K.K.K. Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest: “’I asked myself: Where are the statues commemorating the victims of Klan violence?” In her A Note to the Reader, before her book actually begins, she tell readers: “You will read the stories of the Ku Klux Klansmen and their victims from a variety of sources, including congressional testimony, interviews, and historical journals, diaries, and newspapers.” She goes on to let readers know that we will see images, cartoons, drawings, and photos from newspapers and personal collections. The author even offers a warning that to be true to the topic and historical time period, readers may experience crude language and offensive/disturbing images that she has left uncensored. I believe the author’s underlying purpose is to inform readers, and because of her balanced, meticulous research, she absolutely leaves readers well informed, enriched, inspired, and thoroughly persuaded about both “…the difficulty of reform…” and the “…terrible things that happen as people stand up for an ideal and strike out against injustice.” This book is a tremendous resource on a difficult topic.

Coming up on Gurus . . .

Very shortly, look for ways to link the CCSS with the trait of ORGANIZATION. And within the next few weeks, we’ll also link the writing standards to VOICE and WORD CHOICE, including reviews of favorite books each time. So—welcome to a new school year. Thanks so much for taking time in your busy schedule to visit us. Come often—and bring friends. Remember, for the BEST workshops blending traits, common core, workshop, and writing process, call 503-579-3034. Give every child a voice.

A Brilliant Narrative for the Youngest of Readers (and Adults, too!)

Perfect Square by Michael Hall. 2011. New York: HarperCollins. Unpaginated. 

Genre: Picture book that’s part adventure story, part philosophical essay

Ages: Primary and up. The text is minimal and easy to read/understand on a literal level. But the story is thought provoking enough to engage older readers of all ages.

Features:Bright primary colors, super large print, collage art

Summary

Here’s a book with a most unusual hero: a red square. In the beginning, the square is perfect—or is it? It has matching corners and equal sides, just as any square should. So . . . what more is there to wish for? Well, as they say, life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans—or perhaps while we’re just standing around being, uh, square. Life hits this shapely hero rather hard, in a series of unforeseen events that have potentially disastrous consequences, but wind up pushing this clever little geometric character into some imaginative ways of coping. On Monday, for example, the square is cut into pieces and poked full of holes. Sounds bad. But it’s actually an artistic opportunity in disguise, for the square gamely transforms itself into a bubbling fountain. And so it goes—through a week’s worth of colorful adventures that force the square to get more creative by the day. Things come to a head on Sunday, when nothing much happens, and our foxy hero is disappointed to be left hanging about in its original, now old-hat shape. Luckily, the artistic lessons of the previous week have not been lost on the tough and savvy square, who comes up with a brilliant and satisfying solution.

The story line is eminently simple; but the story beneath the story has both depth and universal implications: In making the best of misfortune, we grow not only wiser and more courageous, but also (perhaps ironically) increasingly dissatisfied with our former lives and selves. And for the spunky among us, it seems, life’s little speed bumps are the very things that make the journey interesting.

Author Michael Hall is an award winning graphic designer, and the art has an elegant simplicity that gives the book enormous eye appeal.  

If you’re looking for literature to introduce very young readers/writers to the narrative basics of the Common Core Standards (for both reading and writing), this is your book. It’s short enough to read more than once, engaging enough that your students will enjoy that, and deep enough to prompt good discussions about difficult days and the consequences of our reactions. It would also make an outstanding graduation gift or coffee table book.  

 

In the Classroom

1. Reading. As always, you’ll want to preview the book prior to sharing. Read it more than once, and give yourself time to think about the implications of this deceptively simple plot.
2. Common Core. Prior to sharing the book with students, you may wish to refresh your memory about the Common Core requirements relating to narrative reading and literature, as well as narrative writing. The Common Core asks young readers to notice and discuss characters, settings, and major events within a story. In particular, this is a book in which character (a square that becomes very creative) and events (both challenges and solutions) play a major, ongoing role. Young narrative writers are asked to demonstrate writing skills relating to sequence, detail, use of temporal words, and a strong sense of closure. Because Perfect Square so beautifully illustrates each of these, it’s an ideal model for showing young writers how such elements contribute to a strong narrative.
3. Sharing with students. We recommend using a document projector, if possible, when sharing this book. The illustrations tell much of the story, so you’ll want to make sure everyone can see them clearly. Take your time reading, though, so students can make . . .
4. Predictions! One of the very best things about this book is that Hall doesn’t rush through the story. He tells just a little bit at a time, and in a way that follows a pattern: On Monday, this happened, and here’s what the square did about it . . . On Tuesday, this happened, and here’s what the square did about it . . . This pattern beautifully illustrates the concept of sequence (see item 6), and also allows students to guess (1) what will happen next, and (2) how the square will deal with this latest challenge. Each challenge is different, so the square’s creativity is continually tested.
5. Character (Common Core reading). What is the square like? What do we know about it? Does it change through the course of the story? Talk about this with your students. (You may wish to point out that characters often change in stories, and this is something interesting to listen for—not just with this book, but with any good narrative.) Also—did your students notice that the author always refers to the square as “it”? Why? We are used to calling characters “he” or “she.” Even storms often have male or female names. Ships and countries, cities and schools are usually referred to as “she.” But the little red square is “it.” What do your students think? Why might the author make this choice?
6. Sequence of events. More than one thing happens in this story; indeed, many things happen. Hence the term, “sequence” of events.This is a handy expression for young writers to know because it makes it easy to talk with them about plot. After reading the story the first time, see how many events your students can recall; they may or may not recall them in order. Remember that each event has two parts: what happens, and what the square does about it. A sequence of events should be easy to follow—and should also have a main event (high point, turning point) that stands out. Is that true of this book? What stands out? Many students may say that the most striking (or important) event occurs at the end of the story when the square, no longer satisfied to be “perfect,” transforms itself into a window. This truly is the turning point—but, how do we know that? After all, the square does many amazing things. What’s so special about the window episode?
7. Temporal words. Temporal words signify the passing of time and help link events in a reader’s mind. Ask your students to listen for words that tell when something happens in the story. (On Monday, On Tuesday, etc.) If they are currently working on narratives of their own, ask them to look for “time” words (or words that tell when) in their own writing: words like Later, The next day, In a while, Next, Then, In a few minutes, Just then, After that, and so on. Together, brainstorm a class list to help students keep the concept of temporal, or time, words and phrases in their minds. Talk about why words like this help readers follow a story.
8. Closure. “Closure” is another good word to teach young writers. It refers to the end, of course, but it also implies that the ending is satisfying. It feels right. It answers some of our readers’ questions. A good ending sometimes comes as a surprise, but it usually shows that the main character has changed or grown or learned something important. Is that true in Perfect Square? If so, what has the main character learned? Is this an ending we could say has closure? To help your young writers understand this, try to imagine a different ending. Suppose, for instance, that at the very end of the book, the square were crumpled into a ball—and then could not figure out what to do. So nothing more happened. Would that ending have closure? Why not?
9. Message. In a good narrative, the author is usually trying to teach us something. What could this author be trying to tell us about life? Have students write their opinions about this.
10. Behind the scenes. Someone or something keeps interfering with the red square’s life: cutting it into strips, punching holes in it, tearing it into scraps, and so on. Who or what is doing this? (Though there is no right or wrong answer to this, students love speculating about it, and may come up with intriguing possibilities.) Also, does someone help the square come up with solutions to its various predicaments—or does the square do this all by itself? Is this important? What do you think the author might be trying to show us?
11. 11.   Feelings. On Sunday, nothing happens. Suddenly, the four sides of the square feel “confining.” Discuss this with your students. What does “confining” mean? Have they ever felt this way? When or why? Also notice that the square’s corners suddenly feel “rigid and cramped”? What do these words mean to your students? Talk about why the square experiences these feelings at this point—toward the end of the book—when it once felt just “perfect.” What caused such a change?
12. Verbs! This book has what one student called “verby power”—which is to say, it makes good use of verbs: babbled, giggled, torn, shredded. Talk about what a verb is, and have students listen for and identify a few of the verbs they notice. What, specifically, do verbs add to writing? Have students close their eyes as they listen to some of the verbs. What do they picture in their minds? Have them describe what they see. Who has a favorite verb from this book that he or she might use in a piece of personal writing?
13. Creating . . . art & text! This book makes young writers just itch to do an art and writing project of their own. You might begin with red squares—or with any shapes, any color. Students may also wish to change shapes or colors as they go along, so provide plenty of colored paper if you can, and show them how to tear it carefully, or consider providing Kraft Edge scissors if you have them. Encourage students to think inventively in choosing shapes to work with: hearts, pumpkins, snowmen, mountains, wheels, leaf piles, kites, clouds, anthills, tree trunks, etc. Maybe a book. Anything that can change and reshape itself. Give students as much freedom as possible to invent both problems and solutions for their main “characters.” Beginners might try just one problem and solution, while more adventurous and/or experienced writers may want to do a whole series (a sequence of events, as in the book).  
14. Opinion (Common Core argument writing). As human beings, are we anything like the square? If so, in what way? Have students write about this and explain how or why the square might remind us of a person.
15. Opinion (Common Core argument writing). Is the square more “perfect” at the beginning of the book—or at the end of the book? What does the author mean by “perfect” anyway? Ask students to write an opinion piece about this.
16. Opinion (Common Core argument writing). Some online reviewers think adults might like this book as much as young readers. Do your students agree or disagree? Ask them to write an opinion piece about this. You may wish to post some responses online.

Coming up on Gurus . . .

Coming up soon, look for reviews of John Green’s stunning young adult novel, The Fault in Our Stars, followed by a close-up look at the Newbery Honor book Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Velchin. As always, we’ll help you make connections to both traits and the Common Core Standards. Thanks for visiting. Come often—and if you enjoy our posts, please tell your friends. Remember, for the BEST teacher training seamlessly blending traits, standards, workshop, and writing process, call 503-379-3034. Give every child a voice.

The “Battle” for Complexity

Toads vs. Frogs

                 Skiing vs. Snowboarding

     Chips vs. Pretzels

 Charles Dickens vs. Suzanne Collins

Father vs. Son

       King Kong vs. Betty White

(OK, this last one was just for fun and for that brief, bizarre image that flashed into your brain. Oh, the power of a few words.)

Except for the final example, each of these pairings pits two similar/related opponents in a “battle” of like against like—amphibians, winter sports, salty, crunchy snack foods, famous authors, and family members.  These are, of course, fictional contests (except for the father/son pair—that is a daily contest and very real for me)—you won’t find them as summer “reality” programming on network television, and they are not part of the bill at a B-movie marathon at a drive-in theater near you. And as I said, they aren’t really contests; they are choices within a category; they are spots along a continuum. It is something my son said to me the other day though, that started my mind thinking along battle lines.

I had just started reading a book recommended by a good friend. I’m an early riser and like to read in the mornings, especially summer mornings, when it’s quiet. When my son (not an early riser) got up, he asked what I was reading. Defending Jacob by William Landay, was my answer. Andrew flipped through the book, noticing my bookmark at page 126/432. “Did you read all that this morning?” he asked, and yes, I had. (The book is a page-turner—highly recommended by both my friend and me.) It was at this point that he “threw down,” dismissing my reading as being a mere trifle compared to his, and the “battle” began. Andrew was reading Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and suggested that reading 126 pages in my book was possibly like reading 15-20 pages in his, though, according to him, you really couldn’t compare the two at all. Thus, his reading feat was stunning, and mine was, well, rather pedestrian. The battle for Andrew wasn’t really about whose book was better; he hasn’t read my book and I haven’t read his. But after he quickly scanned a few pages, the issue was clearly about whose book was “deeper,” “intellectual,” and “complicated.” In my son’s mind, he was obviously the victor.

This got me thinking (like nearly everything does these days) about the world of reading and writing instruction and the CCSS (www.corestandards.org). The Standards see pairings of the written works by authors like Thoreau and Landay or Charles Dickens and Suzanne Collins being separated by the notion of text complexity—neatly broken down, defined, and even measured in the informative, Appendix A (also highly recommended reading). The triangular visual is a representation for their Three-Part Model for Measuring Text Complexity. (Figure 1, Appendix A, page 4.)

What Andrew was suggesting to me (without knowing the specific CCSS terminology), is that Mr. Thoreau’s text is more complex than Mr. Landay’s on a Qualitative level—text structure, language conventionality, knowledge demands, a Quantitative level—word length, sentence length, text cohesion, and in terms of Reader and Task variables, specific to each reader—motivation, knowledge, experiences. To employ a term that we like to use at home, Thoreau is “chewier” than Landay. For those of you unfamiliar with the term chewy (chewier, chewiest), we are saying that Thoreau, for example, causes us as readers to read slowly, pause to look up words, stop to think (or even discuss), reread sentences, paragraphs, or even the whole text a second time. It’s not that there was no chewing going on with Defending Jacob, but in a novel, the rereading and pauses for discussion (with my wife, who has also read it), may not be as frequent and may be more about our personal connections to the characters or plot than about the content you would find in non-fiction.

The Standards for both reading and writing, from K-12, clearly emphasize a progression of chewiness—complexity and sophistication—in reading materials—to prepare students for the reading/writing/language demands of “college, workforce training programs, and life in general.” This makes absolute sense to me.

College may not be the next step for every student, but every student should leave a school system with next-step options. So how can teachers provide the kind of instruction that helps students through increasingly sophisticated and complex texts? Well, the bad news and the good news—in my opinion—is that no one knows exactly, and consequently, the Standards aren’t mandating specific processes and strategies—“Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards.”

That leaves us free to experiment—but also scratching for teaching ideas. But as you know, we’re here to help. So, following are some ideas and practices, connected to both reading and writing, to be filtered through your professional judgment and experience, designed to help students conquer this slope of complexity.

I want to focus my suggestions—we are operating under the name Sixtraitgurus—on the trait of sentence fluency. Though this trait is not named specifically, one of the key elements of the Standards’ emphasis on reading and writing complexity is varied syntax—sentences of varying lengths, structures, and purposes. (Sounds a bit like sentence fluency to me.) The standards also emphasize that students need to experience both texts and tasks that are developmentally appropriate and progressively more complex.

One of the practices I like to engage my writing students in is something we just called “Sentence(s) of the Day.” It became a part of our AYE (As You Enter) daily routine. In the beginning I chose the sentences, trying to vary sentence lengths, structures, fiction/non-fiction source, placement/purpose of each sentence—opening/closing sentence(s), first/in-between/last sentence of a paragraph, topic, support, detail, commentary, etc. The procedure went something like this:

1. Students see the sentence(s) posted on the board/overhead/computer/document camera. Here is a pair of sentences I have used before:                                                                                       A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.                                                            (John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, Ch. 1)
2. Students read the sentence out loud to themselves, then to a partner, listening while their partner reads the sentence aloud, as well. (They have now heard and/or read the sentence three times.)
3. Students write the sentence on their Sentence of the Day paper (to be used for the current week), underlining any capital letters and circling all punctuation marks. (These are important clues for readers about starting/stopping points, type of sentence, and the capitalized words could indicate characters, important places, etc.)
4. Students are also encouraged to highlight any words that they don’t know or understand, even after checking with their partner for help.
5. Students need to count the words in the sentence(s) and record the number.
6. A student volunteer reads the sentence aloud—maybe even more than one reader to hear it several times, and then the class directs the teacher to the circled, underlined, and highlighted parts. The teacher follows with questions (like these or any that come to mind): What punctuation did you notice? What is the reason for the comma/internal punctuation? What kind of sentences are these? What is the purpose of these opening sentences? Reasons for the capital letters? Does anyone know where Soledad or the Salinas River is located? What is the subject of each sentence? Predicate? Are there any words you aren’t sure of? Do you know the book? Author? Does this remind you of anything we have read? Can you tell from this sample what the book will be about? How many words are in the sentence(s)? Do they feel like long, medium, or short sentences? Etc. (As you can see, your questioning can go in several directions, including a focus on conventions, grammar, vocabulary, and so on. This all goes pretty quickly once the routine is established.)
7. (Now for the fun part) It’s time to imitate! Students will now (working alone or with a partner) write a sentence that imitates the model sentence patterns. (These imitations are a student’s chance to try on a sentence whose structure or length is different from what they might independently use in their own writing. Over time, the imitations become more original, but in the beginning they could simply substitute in a new subject, verb, location, or as much as they are comfortable doing. They can’t change the punctuation or the basic structure. This is a great opportunity for you to model and write with your students.) Here are a couple examples of sentence pattern imitations of the model–                                                                                             Example A– A few miles south of Roseburg, the Umpqua River drops in close to the mountainside and runs deep and blue. The water is cold too, for it has slipped twinkling over the white snow in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.                                            Example B– A few blocks north of Jeff’s house, the Sunset Highway cuts in close to the hillside bank and rolls for miles in either direction. The pavement is warm too, for it has sat baking beneath the many cars in the sunlight before cooling in the evening air.
8. Sharing—Ask for volunteers to share their imitations. If you have a document camera, use it to project each student’s work. Students need to see and hear how their classmates imitated the sentence pattern. Volunteers need to feel safe, so I like to have everyone clap for each brave volunteer. I like to share as well, to help build a supportive culture. Sharing time is also a fast, formative assessment for me—I keep track of volunteers, and look and listen for the depth of changes in the imitations.

I collected the student’s papers at the end of the week, so I could take a closer look at their work, another formative assessment opportunity. I also looked for interesting examples to be posted in the room—each Sentence of the Day is displayed, followed by 1-2 imitations. This is meant to be a resource for students to use in their own writing—the Sentence of the Day bulletin board is a place to go for help when revising for sentence fluency. Students can choose a sentence pattern to try in their own writing.

For me, this classroom practice of reading, analyzing, and imitating sentences from increasingly complex texts, is just that—a practice. I’m not expecting perfection, but I am looking for evidence of progress in both their reading and writing. The first time I used this in my classroom, three important pieces of evidence of this kind of progress jumped out at me. After just a couple days, students began asking if they could read the book I had taken the day’s sentence from—I remember one day when I had taken a pair of sentences from Iain Lawrence’s The Wreckers. It was a rather gruesome description of a body washed up on the shore after a shipwreck and stirred up quite a bidding war—“I want to borrow that book!”—for my only copy of the book. Really cool! After only a few weeks, students, based on their own reading (I have even received some sentences from parents), began suggesting sentences for us to use as Sentences of the Day. I snapped these up, giving the student credit when it was used in class. Very cool! The last evidence highlight took a bit longer to surface. It took close to five weeks of Sentences of the Day before I began noticing obvious imitations of sentences we had focused on popping up in students’ writing; they were applying their practice to improve the sentence fluency of their own writing. These were not copycat sentences but tributes to the original authors and the complexity of the original text. And other students began noticing the exemplar tributes in their classmates work, as well. Cool. Really, very cool!

Here are a few more sentence exemplars, of varying complexity, I have used with students. I have selected them from books I have read. This allows me to help students understand the sentence’s context within the whole text. :

My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog.

Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

 

While some sharks eat only plankton, most are supreme fish-eating predators whose jaws bristle with several rows of teeth.

Joyce Sidman, Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors

 

When the first raven came it was alone, a piece of blackness laboring across a cold dawn sky.

Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild

 

Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea. That he had long iron grey hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to weather.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Determined to apply economic pressure peacefully, black protesters let the nearly empty buses rumble on by like green ghosts, ignoring the doors that snapped open invitingly at the corners, and devised their own transportation system.

Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

 

Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and baskets of eggs.

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

 

Next, catching sight of Odysseus, Priam said,

“Now tell me about that man over there, dear child.

He is shorter than Agamemnon but, truly, he looks

more muscular, and broader in chest and shoulders.

His weapons and armor lie on the bountiful earth,

And he himself strides about through the ranks of soldiers

Like a thick-fleeced ram through a flock of silvery ewes.”

Homer, The Iliad, translated by Stephen Mitchell

 

I think it’s important to remember that complexity, as defined in the Standards, is not one-dimensional. Complexity is not solely about the length of a text, the number of “big” words, whether it is fiction or non-fiction or rhyming couplets, the publication date, or the historical status of the author. It could be about one or all of these factors. The issue of complexity is, in itself, complex. In Appendix B, it states that, “Complexity is best found in whole texts rather than passages from such texts.” Well, I feel that complexity isn’t that simple. The classroom practice just described, is based on “passages” taken from longer texts.  I believe passages can be used to preview, prepare, establish classroom practices, scaffold necessary skills, focus classroom instruction, and even to motivate students to be excited about tackling whole texts.

Appendix JH

I want to put in a pitch for taking a careful read/study of CCSS for ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks. That title is a real mouthful, perhaps a bit chewy, and not a real grabber, but please, dive in anyway. As the last part of the title suggests, Appendix B is filled with grade-level specific suggested texts and tasks, not mandates. This appendix is a resource, a bulletin board, a possible template, a potential comfort zone, and definitely a professional conversation/discussion starter.

 

Coming up on Gurus . . . Look for reviews of some stellar literature, including Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Velchin, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and coming up next, one for young readers, Perfect Square by Michael Hall. Please remember, for the very BEST in writing workshops combining standards, traits, process, workshop, and literature, phone 503-579-3034. Thanks for stopping by, and please come again. If you enjoy our posts, recommend us to friends. Give every child a voice.

Meet Minette, the Luckiest Cat in Paris

Minette’s Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat. 2012. Susanna Reich. Illustrated by Amy Bates. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers. 40 pages.

Genre: Non-fiction, picture book

Ages: Grade K and up. The reading level makes this text accessible for younger readers, though there is a sprinkling of French language here and there (the setting is Paris). Readers are supported through contextual definitions and a glossary to assist with both meaning and pronunciations.  Of course, Minette’s owner is the iconic Julia Child, making the story equally appealing to older students, adults, foodies, and aspiring chefs.

Features: Afterword (Julia Child’s life after Paris), Notes, Sources, Glossary and Pronunciation Guide, Author’s Note

Summary

Susanna Reich’s latest book should come with several warning labels.

WARNING: Experiencing this book may lead to a strong desire for international travel, especially to the city of lights, Paris, France.

WARNING: Do not read this book on an empty stomach. You may be overcome with hunger pangs for rich, savory foods!

WARNING: Reading this book may lead you to your kitchen resulting in a flurry of slicing, blanching, roasting, and whisking, and of course, many dishes to wash.

WARNING: Dog lovers may find themselves feeling a bit warm and fuzzy about cats in general, and specifically, a cat named Minette. Be careful not to do anything rash, like rushing out to get a cat. (Not all cats are as charming as Minette. Trust me.)

Though I remember watching the PBS series, The French Chef with Julia Child, I never knew she had a cat or anything about her personal life. She was always just the tall, wacky cooking lady whose voice I loved to imitate. Recently, with the film Julie & Julia and several books, viewers and readers have had the opportunity to learn a great deal about the person behind the cooking legend. Susanna Reich’s latest book, Minette’s Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat, offers readers a close up view—thanks in no small part to Amy Bates’ tender, detailed illustrations—into Julia’s life in Paris, and the roots of her love for cooking. Susanna’s factual story of Julia Child’s training, perseverance, and ultimate rise to cooking fame, comes to readers through the equally factual story of Julia’s adopted cat, Minette, “the luckiest cat in Paris.” Now, you might think that a cat living with someone who loves to cook would grow fat and spoiled on all the rich food being prepared daily right in front of her. Not Minette! She is a finicky French cat, who may sample a taste here and there but much prefers to follow her hunting instincts and dine on a bird or mouse. Readers, however, will wish they could join Julia and her husband Paul at the dining room table for a plateful of anything she is serving.  Ooh-la-la! Bon Appétit!

In the Classroom

1. Background. Julia was born in the United States—Pasadena, California—but is living in Paris, France, as readers meet her and Minette. How many of your students know where France is? What do they know about France and Paris? Are any of them familiar with the Eiffel Tower—name or shape? Locate both the country and the city on a map. Perhaps some of your younger students have seen Disney’s The Aristocats. (Yes, it’s a cartoon, but it may serve as a beginning reference point.) The focus of the book isn’t Paris, but the culture and setting are important to understanding the lives of both Minette and Julia. Paris is filled with outdoor restaurants and sidewalk cafés. Maybe some of your students have eaten at a sidewalk café. The internet is such a great resource for images, videos, and information that will help you with any frontloading your students may need to get the most out of this book. Some older students (and adults) may notice a couple artistic references/tributes by the illustrator. For instance, the drawing of Minette on the dedication page, I believe, is a tip of the hat to Theophile Steinlein’s “Le Chat Noir.” The advertising art of Alphonse Mucha (another possible inspiration) could be compared to Amy Bates’ watercolor/pen/ink illustrations.

2. Reading. As always, you’ll want to preview the book prior to sharing. I like to read picture books through at least twice before sharing them with students. During my second (or third) preview reading, I use sticky notes to mark pages/passages/illustrations I want to emphasize—interesting word choices, fluent sentences, particularly sharp details, evocative illustrations, any “extras” the book has to offer, etc. Don’t miss the opportunity to share Amy Bates’ illustrations—a document camera is a great tool for this, as is simply holding the book up or passing it around.  This book can be read easily in a single sitting yet may, in fact, require a second or third reading for the fun of experiencing all the tasty language.

3. Personal connections. How many of your students have cats for pets? What are the animals’ names? Is there a story behind each pet’s name? Minette’s full name is Minette Mimosa McWilliams Child. Check the Afterword section to find out how she earned the Mimosa part of her lengthy name. What do your students’ cats eat? Compare Minette’s dietary preferences with your students’ cats. The Child’s adopt Minette, who appears to be a stray cat. Are any of your students’ cats adopted, either from an agency or because they found a stray like Julia and Paul? Perhaps some of your students feel as if they were the ones being adopted by their cats. Do any of your students have an interest in cooking? What are of some of things they are both able and allowed to cook on their own? Are there student’s who like to watch cooking programs? Do they have a favorite celebrity chef—Rachel Ray, Bobby Flay, Jamie Oliver, etc.?

4. Comparing Day-to-Day Life. Julia and her husband, Paul, love to spend their weekends strolling down the streets of Paris. These walks always included taking in a fine meal from one of the many cafes they discovered during their wanderings. That sounds very pleasant and leisurely to me, yet it’s very different from the way I spend most of my weekends. How does this compare with the way your students spend their Saturdays and Sundays? Do any of your students have parents who work during the weekend? Are there students in your classroom who participate in sports activities on Saturdays or spend part of their weekend time at church or involved in church functions? Julia also spends part of each day shopping at the marketplace or going to individual shops for bread, meat, milk, and other necessaries. (Be sure to check out the glossary in the back for pronunciation help with the French names for each of the shops.) Students could compare this with the way that their family shops for food. Do any of them help with the shopping—pushing the cart, retrieving items from the shelf, or checking items off a list?  There is also a page where the author tells about Julia and Paul’s apartment. This description begins as a series of complaints—it’s cold, dark, lacking important amenities—and ends with the wonderful line, “But this was home…” Students could imitate this page about something from their own life (home, family, etc.) focusing first on honest complaints and finishing with an equally honest, realistic, assessment—But he’s my big brother…But it’s the only car we have…But at least I get to talk to her on the phone once a week…Writing about real life experiences, even things which may sound too dull and ordinary, allows students to energize their writing with authentic details, the kind readers can connect with in a personal way.

5. Word Choice #1—Adjectives. Each word a writer chooses is important, of course, and the words used to describe the people, places, things, and animals are especially important if readers are going to be able to see and understand what the writer is describing. Ask your students to pay close attention to the words chosen to describe both Minette’s personality and the way she looks. Your students could draw pictures of “Mischievous Minette,” or “Energetic Minette.” After hearing Minette’s story and seeing the illustrations, are there any other describing words that would also help complete the “picture” of Minette?  Students could write reflective pieces describing themselves—physical and/or personality—to practice choosing the just-right adjectives to help readers understand them better. You could also have students write about a partner, and with their partner’s permission, share their writing aloud.

6. Word Choice #2—Adjectives, Verbs, and Terminology. The Common Core Language Standards focus a great deal on, not only word meaning, but also word relationships, nuances in meaning, and using words acquired through reading and being read to. As you might imagine in a book about Julia Child, Susanna Reich’s writing is practically a compendium of food terminology, filling readers’ senses with sights, tastes, smells, textures, from the moment an ingredient is selected in its rawest form, to the final moment when it slides into a waiting mouth. Eliminate these words or diminish them in any way, and the reader’s experience suffers. Have students discuss the difference between the author’s actual words describing Minette’s whiskers, nose, and paws with a weaker, repetitive substitute: …Minette’s nice whiskers, her nice nose, and her nice paws.  Since verbs are the engine of every sentence, and are chosen to bring a topic to life for readers, I suggest working with your students to create a chart of Cooking Verbs (plucked, blended, whisking, etc.) and a chart of Minette’s Verbs, (gnawing, dancing, prancing, etc.) These charts could become part of your classroom word wall, a reminder of the importance of choosing the right action word, and a daily reference for your writers. Students could work in groups to learn meanings of a selected set of the chart’s words to act out for their class. Physically demonstrating the differences between verbs—blending and whisking, dancing and prancing, etc.—is a great way for students to understand word meanings, nuances, and relationships, and promote their use in student writing. And it’s a lot of fun.

7. Word Choice, Figurative Language, and Sentence Fluency. If I haven’t made it clear already, this book has to be read aloud, more than once, and even performed in parts by students. There’s so much to discover—the variety of sentence beginnings, length and structure, purposeful repetition of sentence beginnings and structure, and the use of alliteration/assonance/consonance. (There is a beautifully long sentence that contains mayonnaise, hollandaise, cassoulets, and more!) The author uses these techniques skillfully to bring rhythm and movement to each page and involve readers in the dance/music of cooking.

8. Organization/Ending. Make sure you linger on both the beginning and ending of this book to help students hear and feel how the author has brought them full circle. By repeating at the end, nearly word for word (and rather poetically), the language from the beginning, Susanna Reich underlines for readers the wonderful Parisian life that Minette leads with Julia and Paul.

9. Writing/Fun. Here are a few quick ideas to extend the ideas from this book and have some fun. Fun is good.

a) Create a class cookbook with favorite recipes from students. Have them plan the                   organization and layout.

b) Explore what your students know about table manners, for both formal and informal                   situations. Watch a video, then practice at lunch.

c) Find videos of Julia Child in action from her PBS cooking shows. Compare the real Julia                   with the way she is portrayed by illustrator Amy Bates.

10. Further Research—Biography. Share all the extras this book has to offer: Afterword, Notes (In this section, be sure students hear what the author says about the source of this book’s dialogue.), Glossary/Pronunciation Guide, and Author’s Note.  Discuss with students the depth of knowledge required by biographical writers like Susanna Reich. Ask your students if they think she included everything she learned about Minette and Julia Child in this book. Discuss why she might have decided to leave some information out.

11. More About the Author and Illustrator. Be sure to visit Susanna Reich, learn more about her, and check out all the cool books she has written, at www.susannareich.com For more information about the books and art of illustrator Amy Bates, go to www.amybates.com

(A special thanks to both Susanna Reich and Abrams Publishing for providing us at Gurus with a copy of Minette’s Feast.)

Coming up on Gurus . . .Look for a discussion of the often underrated importance of narrative writing in the classroom—coming soon. And we’ll continue making connections to the Common Core as we go along. Please remember, for the BEST in workshops integrating traits, standards, literature, process and workshop, phone us at 503-579-3034. See you next time, and bring friends! Give every child a voice…