I posted a plea for help with my Better World Books Project about three weeks ago, around October 24th. The response I got from friends and family was overwhelming, and showed me not just how generous they are, but how much they must believe in me and my program to donate. I don't think I have ever felt more supported by the folks at home. So now it's my turn to do something with all of these great donations and words of support. And I know it's my responsibility to keep everyone appraised of the situation and where their hard earned dollars went.
So as of yesterday, Monday November 11, Veterans Day, or as for some reason I like to call it, Armistice Day, I have received no books in the mail from Better World Books. Please don't let that discourage you. It takes forever and a day to receive mail in Hossana. Odds are it's just sitting in the city and waiting to find a bus down to my little town. I'm not worried.
But in the meantime, life moves on, and so does school. Belay was anxious to begin the program last week, and so I led with a lesson I did last year on Where the Wild Things Are, a book I received in one of my donation packages a year ago. As a result, the fifth grade students who heard it last year as fourth graders were more familiar with the story. This was helpful for the literacy skill I was teaching that day, which was making inferences.
For those teacher friends of mine reading this blog, I am loosely basing my program off of the Lucy Calkins Readers' Workshop model. The lessons I plan to impart on these students is how to make inferences, how to make connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world) and how to make predictions. Right now I am at the very beginning stages of that, and my big focus is inferences. Eventually, students will write their own story based on the pictures in The Blue Stone through the inferences they make from the images. But that's way later. Right now, they just need to know the basic idea of what an inference is.
Making inferences is one of the most important reading skills in my personal and professional opinion. Not only does it help with comprehension of text, but it also helps breed empathy, logic, observation skills and open minds. When a student is asked to infer how a character is feeling based on his behavior, for example, that student must use what he knows about the behavior and come to a logical conclusion. That student must also put herself in the character's shoes to imagine how he might be feeling. When the student sees that Max stops the wild rumpus and sends all the Wild Things to bed without supper and infers that he is lonely or homesick, that student is practicing empathy and logic, and it helps her to better understand the story.
With students whose first language is not English, and who have never been asked to make an inference about a story in their life, it is important to start with the basics and give as much scaffolding as possible after considerable modeling. My major challenge was getting students to respond in full sentences, but once they realized I just wanted them to read the stem sentence, they seemed to catch on a bit quicker. The super objective, of course, is that eventually, students won't need these training wheels and will be able to respond in full sentences without any visual support. But that's a long way off.
As a result, I presented the story of Where the Wild Things Are to a fourth and fifth grade class, the latter class having read the story with me before. This time, I asked them to try and imagine how Max was feeling, so they knew what they were being asked. I did not stray from this question, nor ask for more complex inferences. Here are some stills from a video taken of that lesson:
In the above photo, I am introducing the stem sentences "I think that Max feels..." and "I infer that..." Predictably, students chose the first stem sentence more often, but that's OK. I introduced the latter sentence more for the academic vocabulary. They'll use it when they're ready. One thing I did notice was that students could read the stem sentences themselves with no assistance from me. I was told by Belay that they didn't have much decoding skills and relied a lot on sight words, but they read "Max" just fine and I know that's not a sight word for Ethiopian students.
Behind me in this photo you can see the start of our Word Wall. I emphasized to Belay and the teachers in these classes that it was imperative that they leave this up forever and ever until Armageddon. We'll see if they're still there on Thursday. Words on this wall include "wild thing," "monster" and "supper." This still was taken at the beginning of the read aloud.
The next three photos illustrate my dramatic reading of the book.
But I'm sure you've seen enough of me. You want to know I wasn't just teaching to an empty room, right? Well, in order to assess student attention and listening skills, students were asked to "ROAR" whenever I said the word "Wild Thing" or "Wild Things." This is what some of them looked like.
I particularly liked that kid in the back. Still, it's not lost on me that several students are looking at me like they're bored. I had them do "Bananas" to wake them up and get them moving. Next time, I also hope to employ a few more active games to keep them awake and involved.
This brave little girl stood up to tell me that she thinks Max feels happy when he sees his supper waiting for him. She added that he is not hungry (anymore), which I thought was a great addition. The kid in the corner in the back is Aklilu. He also made a great observation about Max. On one of the rare occasions where I asked a question about the story unrelated to how Max was feeling, it was to ask where they thought Max was sailing when he said goodbye to the Wild Things. Aklilu said, "He is saying 'Bye, I am going to my mother.'" Super awesome kid. He was actually one of the kids that went to Christina's Hossana Camp GLOW last year and he was in my group of lions. So he's super awesome for that.
I just like this photo because you get me talking to the kids. I had the teacher hold the camera and he didn't get many great ones of me and the kids but I like this one. I'm asking him what his name is, and to think about Max.
Anyways, so this is the type of project your books are going to, in case you were wondering. Many other PCVs are doing similar book drive projects, however they have different goals. My very good pals Jackie and AJ (PLEASE go check out those two links!) are doing Library Projects, to create resource centers for their students to use. As a result, they're asking for hundreds of books, whereas I only need a few dozen. My focus is on specific titles that I know are goldmines for read-aloud lessons on literacy comprehension skills. You see, Hossana already has a library, filled with donated books, as does Belay's own private school. But unfortunately, none of those books suited my needs. They were all donated without thought to their usefulness, which is why we have an adult's guide to chess in the children's library at our hub school. But there are good picture books as well, and kids do explore them - they just aren't sure what they're doing with them.
The books being donated to my Better World Books Project will be used as training books, and books read aloud in classrooms. Teachers will familiarize themselves with the themes and teaching points of each of these books by observing my model lessons and having a talk-back debrief session afterwards to ask whatever questions they have and to give suggestions to inform how I might teach their students better. That's why I need less than fifty books - but fifty meaty books. And if last week's talk-back was any indication, the teachers and Belay's school are enthusiastic about adopting read-alouds into their curriculum and using them to teach reading and writing skills.
So that's a more detailed plan of my Read Aloud Program. The main objective is to get kids excited about reading and beginning to think like readers by making inferences, predictions and connections. The other main objective is to train the teachers how to support and encourage this kind of thinking and enthusiasm through the simple act of reading a book aloud to students.
That's what your books are doing. That's where they're going. And when I finish my service, I think I will either give them to Belay's school or the next volunteer to serve in Hossana.
If you have any other questions about the Better World Books Project or my Read Aloud Program in general, please feel free to ask any time. This is as transparent as I can possibly make it.
So as of yesterday, Monday November 11, Veterans Day, or as for some reason I like to call it, Armistice Day, I have received no books in the mail from Better World Books. Please don't let that discourage you. It takes forever and a day to receive mail in Hossana. Odds are it's just sitting in the city and waiting to find a bus down to my little town. I'm not worried.
But in the meantime, life moves on, and so does school. Belay was anxious to begin the program last week, and so I led with a lesson I did last year on Where the Wild Things Are, a book I received in one of my donation packages a year ago. As a result, the fifth grade students who heard it last year as fourth graders were more familiar with the story. This was helpful for the literacy skill I was teaching that day, which was making inferences.
For those teacher friends of mine reading this blog, I am loosely basing my program off of the Lucy Calkins Readers' Workshop model. The lessons I plan to impart on these students is how to make inferences, how to make connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world) and how to make predictions. Right now I am at the very beginning stages of that, and my big focus is inferences. Eventually, students will write their own story based on the pictures in The Blue Stone through the inferences they make from the images. But that's way later. Right now, they just need to know the basic idea of what an inference is.
Making inferences is one of the most important reading skills in my personal and professional opinion. Not only does it help with comprehension of text, but it also helps breed empathy, logic, observation skills and open minds. When a student is asked to infer how a character is feeling based on his behavior, for example, that student must use what he knows about the behavior and come to a logical conclusion. That student must also put herself in the character's shoes to imagine how he might be feeling. When the student sees that Max stops the wild rumpus and sends all the Wild Things to bed without supper and infers that he is lonely or homesick, that student is practicing empathy and logic, and it helps her to better understand the story.
With students whose first language is not English, and who have never been asked to make an inference about a story in their life, it is important to start with the basics and give as much scaffolding as possible after considerable modeling. My major challenge was getting students to respond in full sentences, but once they realized I just wanted them to read the stem sentence, they seemed to catch on a bit quicker. The super objective, of course, is that eventually, students won't need these training wheels and will be able to respond in full sentences without any visual support. But that's a long way off.
As a result, I presented the story of Where the Wild Things Are to a fourth and fifth grade class, the latter class having read the story with me before. This time, I asked them to try and imagine how Max was feeling, so they knew what they were being asked. I did not stray from this question, nor ask for more complex inferences. Here are some stills from a video taken of that lesson:
In the above photo, I am introducing the stem sentences "I think that Max feels..." and "I infer that..." Predictably, students chose the first stem sentence more often, but that's OK. I introduced the latter sentence more for the academic vocabulary. They'll use it when they're ready. One thing I did notice was that students could read the stem sentences themselves with no assistance from me. I was told by Belay that they didn't have much decoding skills and relied a lot on sight words, but they read "Max" just fine and I know that's not a sight word for Ethiopian students.
Behind me in this photo you can see the start of our Word Wall. I emphasized to Belay and the teachers in these classes that it was imperative that they leave this up forever and ever until Armageddon. We'll see if they're still there on Thursday. Words on this wall include "wild thing," "monster" and "supper." This still was taken at the beginning of the read aloud.
The next three photos illustrate my dramatic reading of the book.
 |
| Grrrrr - Wild Thing! |
 |
| "I'll Eat You Up!" |
 |
| Illustrating what it means to be "frightened." |
I particularly liked that kid in the back. Still, it's not lost on me that several students are looking at me like they're bored. I had them do "Bananas" to wake them up and get them moving. Next time, I also hope to employ a few more active games to keep them awake and involved.
This brave little girl stood up to tell me that she thinks Max feels happy when he sees his supper waiting for him. She added that he is not hungry (anymore), which I thought was a great addition. The kid in the corner in the back is Aklilu. He also made a great observation about Max. On one of the rare occasions where I asked a question about the story unrelated to how Max was feeling, it was to ask where they thought Max was sailing when he said goodbye to the Wild Things. Aklilu said, "He is saying 'Bye, I am going to my mother.'" Super awesome kid. He was actually one of the kids that went to Christina's Hossana Camp GLOW last year and he was in my group of lions. So he's super awesome for that.
I just like this photo because you get me talking to the kids. I had the teacher hold the camera and he didn't get many great ones of me and the kids but I like this one. I'm asking him what his name is, and to think about Max.
Anyways, so this is the type of project your books are going to, in case you were wondering. Many other PCVs are doing similar book drive projects, however they have different goals. My very good pals Jackie and AJ (PLEASE go check out those two links!) are doing Library Projects, to create resource centers for their students to use. As a result, they're asking for hundreds of books, whereas I only need a few dozen. My focus is on specific titles that I know are goldmines for read-aloud lessons on literacy comprehension skills. You see, Hossana already has a library, filled with donated books, as does Belay's own private school. But unfortunately, none of those books suited my needs. They were all donated without thought to their usefulness, which is why we have an adult's guide to chess in the children's library at our hub school. But there are good picture books as well, and kids do explore them - they just aren't sure what they're doing with them.
The books being donated to my Better World Books Project will be used as training books, and books read aloud in classrooms. Teachers will familiarize themselves with the themes and teaching points of each of these books by observing my model lessons and having a talk-back debrief session afterwards to ask whatever questions they have and to give suggestions to inform how I might teach their students better. That's why I need less than fifty books - but fifty meaty books. And if last week's talk-back was any indication, the teachers and Belay's school are enthusiastic about adopting read-alouds into their curriculum and using them to teach reading and writing skills.
So that's a more detailed plan of my Read Aloud Program. The main objective is to get kids excited about reading and beginning to think like readers by making inferences, predictions and connections. The other main objective is to train the teachers how to support and encourage this kind of thinking and enthusiasm through the simple act of reading a book aloud to students.
That's what your books are doing. That's where they're going. And when I finish my service, I think I will either give them to Belay's school or the next volunteer to serve in Hossana.
If you have any other questions about the Better World Books Project or my Read Aloud Program in general, please feel free to ask any time. This is as transparent as I can possibly make it.
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