Big Universe

Books and Such – Hold the Mayo

It’s January and bazillions of people are dragging their loaded chassis to the gym. Carrots and yogurt are “in.” Sugar cookies and high-octane eggnog are “out.”

My Inbox is getting a workout too. Work memos, sales notices and email replies beg for attention as the new year gets underway. My news alert system is huffing and puffing too, and if sheer numbers count for anything, it would appear that the children’s books industry and literacy movement are alive and well!

I know you are an information-hungry bunch, but are as busy as all get out and are trying to scale back from the onslaught. …So, I did the work for you. For your dieting pleasure, I offer Literary News Lite:

• Newbery medalist Katherine Paterson has been named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She wrote “Bridge to Terabithia,” “Jacob Have I Loved” and the 2009 title “The Day of the Pelican.” 

• Retired teacher Warren Williams of Bucks County, Pa., has put pen to paper to record a local legend about our first president. “A Basket of Pears for General Washington” relates life as it was during the American Revolution – just in time for President’s Day.

• Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has co-authored a children’s book about his cat and dog. “Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle” debuts Jan. 26 with proceeds going to The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.

• Red carpet seats are being auctioned for the 16^th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 23 in Los Angeles to benefit the children’s literacy programs BookPALS (Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools) and Storyline Online.”

• Monica Brown’s new book “Chavela and the Magic Bubble” will be available to the public May 3. Although written in English,  the heroine is a Latina girl who loves to chew chicle. Ms. Brown  is also the author of “My Name is Gabito” and other award-winning bi-lingual books. She has four additional upcoming releases.

• India’s disadvantaged are the beneficiaries of new solar energy projects and various micro-loan businesses, which provide free or affordable light to those with no electricity – promoting literacy, improved health conditions and stimulating cottage industry development.  An estimated 76 million homes in India are unconnected to the power grid, according to the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP).

• Author Ann M. Martin has written a prequel to her gargantuan “Baby-Sitters Club” series (213 titles from 1986-2000). “The Summer Before” is set for publication in April along with revised versions of the first two books in the series.

• Big Universe, an award-winning children’s education website, recently added dozens of titles to its collection of 1,000-plus online picture books from nationally recognized publishers. Reading quizzes, Fountas and Pinnell and DRA leveling, and browsing for books by language, topic and reading level are just a few of this site’s many features.

• Prolific author Marilyn Helmer just had her 27^th children’s book published. “The Fossil Hunters” mystery is the second in her Orca Echoes series. She is perhaps known best for her multiple-award-winning picture book “Fog Cat.”

• Read-a-thons, book drives and celebrity story readings will mark Canada’s Family Literacy Day on Jan. 27, a national initiative to promote learning and reading together as a family.

• Media Source Inc. sold Darby Creek Publishing, publisher of almost five dozen kids’ books, to Lerner Publishing Group Inc. of Minneapolis.

• The Chicago Cubs’ literacy-themed Caravan Tour is scheduled for Jan. 13-14. Players, coaches and staff will visit seven cities, making numerous stops at schools, kids clubs, a library, a hospital and elsewhere. This is the sixth year the team has participated in the “Cubs Spotlight on Reading Program,” which is designed to promote reading enthusiasm and reward reading achievements.

Alternative Assessment

One of the outcomes of standardized testing in our schools is the way we handle the assessment of our special education population. Because No Child is to be Left Behind, our children with special needs are held to the same standards as all students. All children should have the same educational opportunities and should not never be looked upon as limited simply because of a disability. However, testing some of these children annually just to say that they have been tested is ludicrous.

 States have been given the opportunity to create alternative assessments so a special education student does not have to take the one day question and answer test, but I have to question whether anyone creating these assessments have ever worked with these children or ever come into the classroom and asked teachers if these assessments are working. The answer is NO. 

In Virginia there are two alternative assessments for the special education student in elementary school. They are both based on the premise that a student can’t take a multiple choice test (read my last blog). The first assessment is the VAAP, the Virginia Alternative Assessment Program. The student being considered for this must have a significant cognitive disability, which requires that he have individualized instruction most of the day among other criteria. 

The second alternative assessment in Virginia is the VGLA or Virginia Grade Level Alternative assessment. The VGLA allows the student (in reality the teacher) to collect a portfolio of his/her work in place of the standards exam at the end of the year. The teacher actually collects an extensive portfolio of material that shows the student has met a wide range of criteria for all of the standards for their grade level in reading math and sometimes other academic areas. 

The grading of the portfolios is very open-ended though there are guidelines but since no child’s binder is exactly the same a lot is left up to the discretion of the graders. Often it is how well the teacher has put together and collected the material. Did the teacher grade each document? If the answer is no then it isn’t supposed to be counted. If the evidence shows 3 correct answers and 3 wrong answers on a worksheet with 6 questions then the average scorer won’t take the piece of evidence as adequate but, the teacher can turn in a work sample showing just the 3 correct problems that meet the criteria and get a good score.  As a teacher I’m better off cutting and pasting the correct answers and submitting just those, but is this teaching? 

A teacher could teach and assess a student over and over again on the same information until they get good evidence. For many of these kids there are memory issues so the only way to get an assessment of their knowledge is to teach a topic and assess their knowledge shortly after the teaching. They won’t remember what you taught tomorrow. Is this learning? 

The average math portfolio for a fourth grade student requires approximately 100 pieces of evidence to demonstrate standards have been met. For example just one strand of one standard in math is the student must  “solve problems involving 1.) addition and 2.) subtraction with 3.) fractions having 4.) like and 5.) unlike denominators of 12 or less and with 6.) decimals expressed through thousandths using various computational methods, including 7.) calculators, 8.) 9.) paper and pencil, 10.) 11.)  mental computation, 12.) 13.)  estimation.” I probably lost track but there are at least 13 items that need evidence in this one strand. There will probably be at least 3 or 4 pieces of paper.

 As a teacher, the process is exhausting and as a student I’m sure it’s not much better. The VGLA is no guarantee of a pass but it does show what a student can do. In the end the teacher and school never get the graded binder back so we can’t truly see how our student did, we only get numbers. 

I definitely believe that all students need to be given the opportunity to learn and achieve to their maximum potential. As a teacher, that’s my goal for every student. The state and federal government have stepped in and said that they now need proof that shows I’m teaching these children to the highest standards possible. Why would I want to be a special education teacher, which pays no more money than a general education teacher, which pays very little, if I didn’t want to help these children reach their highest potential?

Here are some sites where VGLA type materials are available. Unfortunately it isn’t going away. 

Math worksheets at Eraser Dog, Good Example of VGLA type questions on a California standards outline, Practice Problems for California Math Standards, which can be used in all states. These are examples only and should be matched carefully to your state’s standards. Good Luck!

Children and Worry

Some topics are universal and worry is one of them. There is a beautiful picture book available online at Big Universe that covers the topic of worry beautifully. When I was a child I worried about everything! When I shared my difficulty with worries with my fourth grade students I got an overwhelming response from the children telling me that they had the same feelings and they sure were glad they weren’t alone. We spent quite a while discussing some of the worries they had.

The worries children have to deal with are numerous. For some it’s whether they’ll get the tennis shoes they want or the part in the play. Others worry about a grandparent who is sick or a brother or sister who is away at college. For some there’s the worry of losing a home to foreclosure, having the electricity turned off, or what kind of mood dad’s going to be in when they get home. Others worry that someone’s going to find out they don’t have a home, that when they leave school everyday, they go to the homeless shelter; That those clothes they wear everyday once belonged to someone else. That woman that comes to see them during the day at school, she’s a social worker, she might be taking her and her brother away from their parents.

Children worry about so many things. Is There A Worry Worrying You? written by Frieda Wolff and Harriet May Savitz, beautifully illustrated by Marie Le Torneau and published by Tanglewood Press, addresses the problems of a child’s worries in a very child friendly way. The book is written at a first grade reading level but the interest level is much wider. As a read aloud the book’s reach stretches all the way from preschool through the elementary school years and beyond. Even as an adult I enjoyed the bitter sweet memories it helped me recall from my childhood.

Picture Power in Books

This week I’ve been sorting through pictures. I’ve got thousands – the old fashion kind – taken with a 35mm camera. It’s funny how quickly things change and become out dated. I bought a converter specifically designed scan photos directly into a computer. 

The old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” has come to my mind many times this week. Each picture is a special time in place. A picture has the power to make us smile, laugh, or cry. A picture has the power to place us at the beach, in the mountains, in a cozy country kitchen in front of a warm, crackling fire, or in a contemporary living room, lounging on a white leather sofa looking out through a wall of glass windows at a yard of wildflowers. A picture can tell a whole story without one written word. 

The magic of pictures combined with the written words holds immeasurable power in books! The right picture, with the right words can bring to life a whole world for a child and activate neurons in the brain that will enrich the learning process. Unknown vocabulary is easier for children to figure out with good picture reinforcement. Reading comprehension is deeper and more meaningful with the enhancement of quality illustrations.

 There’s a series of things that need to take place in order for complete comprehension to take place. The best way to demonstrate this is through pictures:

8 Strategies for Reading Comprehension

Reading is Fundamental or RIF has a list of tips for using picture books successfully. Being able to interpret illustrations, use illustrations to decode unknown words, tell a story from an illustration, put a story to an illustration and even create stories using pictures are all things that RIF outlines in the attached literacy skills.

Tips for Using Picture Books in the Classroom

As a teacher my problem has always been finding classroom sets of picture books. Now, thanks to technology and Big Universe that’s not a problem any more. Big Universe has 1,000 quality publisher picture books online! These books can be projected to a SmartBoard or other interactive white board for teaching and they can be used on any computer system 24 hour a day. Plus, there is a very high tech, easy to use authoring tool that let’s members design their own picture books. Now everyone, children, teachers, parents, can be a published author. There are almost 7,000 clipart pictures online and a user can import their own pictures and art. 

Picture books are a wonderful way to teach reading and writing. In fact, using picture books to teach any academic subject is the best way to engage both the left and right sides of the brain ensuring you reach all learners in the classroom.

Language is Vital

Children have to see, hear and write words in order to learn. Without language they lose the ability to learn and continue to learn. It’s sad to see children who are unable to answer questions because they don’t have the language to respond. “What is that?” we as teachers ask each other. The children simply don’t have the language to respond. Some children respond but they do so with limited words. What’s missing? How are we changing as a society and what should we do to help our children reach their potential?

Talking is the first way to help a child reach their potential. The more language a child hears the more they’ll eventually be able to read. Once a child has heard a word it’s far more likely they’ll be able to read it once they come upon it in writing. Read to children. Young children should be read to everyday. If books aren’t always available choose newspapers, websites, street signs, cereal boxes, anything. Language!

Have language readily available. Books, magazines, newspapers, paper, pencils, crayons, computers… Television isn’t bad. There, I said it. My own children, now very happy, good teenagers, learned so much from Barney! But, they also heard the spoken word, used the computer, played outside, drew pictures, talked to each other, and experienced life in many different forms. Television wasn’t their life.

Parents are working. In most cases both parents are working and sometimes one or both parents are working two jobs. Sometimes there is a second language involved. Sometimes a parent can’t read or write. Economic difficulties play a large part in language deficits. When both parents work hard just to pay the bills there’s nothing left of their energies or their funds to explore the world with their children.

Back ground knowledge of many children today is extremely limited. I stop frequently during my reading to clarify vocabulary that I never would have clarified ten years ago. Garage, buffalo, slugger, shipyard, dock, camel… the list goes on. Children don’t need to have been everywhere to be able to recognize vocabulary. It helps, but it’s not realistic in our society.

The Internet, Smartboard, picture books, television, videos, virtual field trips, all of these can help bring the world to our children. It’s the way we, as teachers, parents, and concerned adults in the twenty-first century are going to have to bring the world to our children if we want them to reach their potential.  Language is the most vital component of learning. Our kids need to see it, hear it, even play with it. Language!

Children, Books and Summer Vacation

It can be hard to keep a child motivated about reading when vacation arrives. Many kids drop the books when school ends and don’t pick them up again until school begins again. That can be detrimental to the learning process! Vacation is a wonderful time to help children extend their reading experiences. There are numerous books that can be used in conjunction with your travels. This is a great way to help children make connections between their world and the print world. When a child learns to make connections between what they read and what is happening in their world they learn a very important strategy in reading. Making personal connections to text, connections between text and happenings in the world and connections between one text and another text a child has read are very important methods for a child to become better readers. Reading is not decoding of words. Reading is understanding the words that have been decoded and finding some meaning in them!

The book Using Math Outdoors by author Amy Rauen and book publisher Weekly Reader is a math counting book that is great to read and then follow-up with a fun day on the beach imitating the activities from the book. The children in the book write numbers in the sand, count sea shells and rocks, and do some math. For the older kids there are several wonderful books. Weekly Reader has a book called Deep Sea Fishing by William David Thomas. It’s a beautifully well written picture book that will be a big hit with the kids before they hit the beach. The book details the different types of fishing, fishermen and the different fish that are caught in various areas around the world. Seasquirt Publications gives us The One Sea, Voices from the Deep by David Pierce Hughes. Learn about the Albatross, Crab and Sea Urchin and read about the Coral Reef, Penguins, the Abyss and more. If staying home is your plan for summer vacation then Illumination Arts Publishing has the book. Just Imagine by Thompson and Schultz is a beautifully detailed picture book that takes children to space, sailing on the ocean, and to dinner with kings and queens, anywhere their own imagination can guide them. Each of these books and many more are available to be read online over and over again at Big Universe, or the books can be purchased or found at your library.

As the kids gather their own memories of summer have them write their own book. On Big Universe  kids, teachers, anyone, can use some powerful authoring tools to create, print and even publish their own book. Pictures can be imported or you can use any of the almost 7000 clipart pictures that are already available on the site. When the teacher asks, “What did you do on your summer vacation?” why not hand her a copy of your book. That would be impressive!

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Writer's Block in Children

We know about writer’s block in authors. We even know that when we sit down to write a letter or a memo we often have a hard time getting started. Yet, as teachers we expect our students to write with little notice on a topic we’ve decided on. We then place time constraints on their writing. Is it a wonder that so many of our children leave high school with such bad writing skills?

Of course, there are children who can’t begin writing even with the most detailed of prompts, days notice and given their own choice of topics. These are children with the ability to write but a disability that keeps them from even beginning the process. Many of these children have such an obsessive need to be perfect that they can’t begin writing because they need to see the complete picture, beginning to end, in their head first.  Children who fall into this category are children with Asperger’s Syndrome, Autism, Emotional Disabilities, Obsessive Compulsive Disorders, and other highly creative kids who just need time. Often the best way to get these children to discover their own ability to write is to let them write – give them freedom. 

A website that gives children the freedom to discover their inner author is Big Universe. This site has a book authoring tool where anyone can write, add pictures, print and even publish their own book.  My fourth grade students with learning disabilities authored some incredibly creative books on Big Universe, often making them into sequels. bookChrisL and bookMahtabA were just two of these authors.

 The confidence this site gave my kids is incredible. Many of them began the year not able to write good sentences. When they saw they could create books, writing sentences was no longer a problem. They are all now able to write good detailed sentences and were even able to write to a prompt for the end of the year assessment. Thanks to Big Universe my students went on to fifth grade with the ability and confidence they need to be successful as writers.

Reading is Not Just Words

When you work with children with learning disabilities you quickly learn that there are two different meanings to the word read. Yours and theirs. To many children reading is  pronouncing every word on the page quickly, sometimes even with the correct fluency and tone. However, when they get to the end of the reading sample, they have no idea of the meaning of what they just read. To a teacher, reading is all about comprehension. Without understanding there is no need to read. 

The first books we give our children are picture books. Then slowly the words are added but there are still lots and lots of beautiful pictures. Eventually the pictures disappear and there are just pages full of letters. For a child with learning disabilities when you hand them a book with just pages of words it’s like you’ve taken away their crutches. Those pictures that have been removed gave clues. They helped to give meaning. They helped make connections. Taking those connections away before a child is ready, has a negative impact on the child’s ability to understand the written word. 

As a teacher the challenge is finding picture books that are age appropriate. Most schools have hundreds of leveled books for fourth, fifth and sixth grade students. There are very few that are picture books that a student in that age group would want to carry around in the open. Most picture books, available in the public schools are not age appropriate for older children.  

There’s an absolutely fantastic website called Big Universe, which is overflowing with picture books for children of all ages. Picture books! My students love Big Universe and so do their parents. . I have one fourth grade student who is in love with history. He has found many fantastic books to read in the social studies category. I have a couple of others who love space and the science and technology category is wonderful. As a teacher I’m able to project the Big Universe  books onto the Smart Board and I build lessons around the books. I love picture books for their teaching capabilities and my students love them because they are more pleasant to read. They are a natural bridge to learning that I plan on using as long as quality material is available.  Now that I’ve found an endless source, thank you Big Universe, my students and I are ready to read and comprehend!

Reading and Vocabulary Development

As our world becomes more and more diverse it becomes even clearer that the vocabulary, expressions and idioms of the English language have to be directly taught and explained to our children. As a special education teacher I work with children everyday who don’t know the vocabulary of things I have always taken for granted –  garage, valley, harbor, barn… I read through everything, on the look out for vocabulary that I need to introduce to my students so they can understand what they are reading. It’s not just the special education students. It’s the general education population. We, as teachers and parents need to make sure our children really understand their world. Vocabulary is the first stepping stone to reading comprehension. 

This week my group of fourth graders, the majority with learning disabilities is reading The Baseball Card . Wherever possible I use books that are accessible on the Internet. They are less expensive, ecologically friendly, and my students love reading on the computer. The Baseball Card is available on Big Universe. The Baseball Card a beautiful picture book that tells a story of a little boy’s special experience with his father. It all centers on an old fashioned playground game and a special baseball card. Even a book about baseball has vocabulary that is confusing to children who don’t have English as their first language or who don’t have background knowledge about baseball. Some of these words and phrases are – slugger, card shark, snicker, and the phrase “tip of the hat”. These are all great starting points for a reading lesson. Vocabulary should be introduced before reading the book. 

Introduction of vocabulary can be quick but it needs to be visual. The Internet has made this easy. Using the Smartboard and Images any teacher can make a quick 5 minute vocabulary presentation before a reading lesson.

After the vocabulary is understood, read the book together then have each student read the book on their own. At this point it’s time to gauge their comprehension. As we prepare for the Virginia Standards of Learning I have found that having the students do tests similar to the SOL for the text they are reading is very valuable. It helps them generalize their knowledge. SOLtypetest1 (worksheet).   

Reading and vocabulary are a necessary combination. As teachers and parents we need to realize those connections are not being made naturally. Direct instruction is necessary in order for students to comprehend reading material. It’s our job to see that we use all of our many resources to link what we are teaching in a way our students can understand, through visuals and clearly defined vocabulary. Beautiful picture books, like those on Big Universe do some of the work for us, now we have to fill in the blanks.