Add Life to Your Teaching with Current Events

Hurricanes are a remarkable force of nature. The combination of powerful winds, waves and tides can wreak havoc.

As the country marks the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast, many are keeping their eyes on Hurricane Earl, which is churning its way through the northern Caribbean. Forecasters say there is a chance the storm will make itself known off the coast of North Carolina about mid-week.

News like this provides an opportunity to teach children. Teachers who keep one ear tuned to current events will find a vast resource to enrich lessons, making them vibrant and relative to life.

It is wise to keep your second ear trained on conversations your students are having amongst themselves. They hear their parents talking and see lots of images on TV. Age-appropriate lessons from a trusted adult can help children sort out facts, fiction and even gale-force worries. Allow adequate time for initial questions and the opportunity for followup conversation.

My family and I experienced a tropical storm firsthand in 2002. We had been living in Barbados for only about six weeks when Lili hit the island. We were in a strong house, but the roar of the storm was deafening on our tin roof. The storm gained momentum after it passed over, eventually reaching Category 4 status over the Gulf of Mexico.

I was schooling my two daughters for the year that we were abroad, so the storm prompted lots of questions and teaching moments.

– How fast is the wind?

– When will the rain stop?

– Where did the hurricane come from?

– Why don’t we have electricity?

– What happened to that person’s house?

– Who will clear the roads?

– Why can’t we go to the beach?

– Where do the birds, sea turtles and monkeys go during the storm?

– Has anyone else ever had a storm like this?

While I could answer some of the questions, it would have been great to pull up an online children’s book to help explore the topic – once the lights came back on. Big Universe now offers several books that would have done nicely!

• The Bellwether book “Hurricanes” by Kay Manolison describes how hurricanes form and behave. Part of Bellwether’s Blastoff! Readers series, the text is aimed at Level 4 readers. The author uses a variety of sentence patterns and expanded vocabulary and punctuation. The graphics are highly appealing. This would have been just right for my new fourth-grader.
•  Rourke Publishing’s “Surviving the Galveston Hurricane” by Jo Cleland would have been intriguing to my sixth-grader (AFTER our storm hit and everything quieted down). Cleland, a professor emeritus of reading education at Arizona State University West, worked in public education for 20 years prior to her university work. She continues to engage children through storytelling. “What we learn with delight, we never forget,” she says.
• “Ready, Set…WAIT! What Animals Do Before a Hurricane” is another storm-themed book on Big Universe’s library shelves. The illustrations by Connie McLennan are charming, and the text written by Patti Zelch is insightful. The extra information in the back of the book allows teachers to expand their lesson plans in many directions. Sylvan Dell Publishing also provides quizzes and cross-curricular activities online.

To read more about ways to use current events to add life to your teaching, read “10 Ways to Use Current Events in the Classroom” or Melissa Edwards’ blog titled “It is All About Making Connections …”. She writes, “When students make connections with the books they read, their understanding, comprehension and recall of the information increases.”  Preach it, Melissa!

It is all about making connections …

When students make a connections with the books they read, their understanding, comprehension, and recall of the information increases.

Normally when I think of students make connections with stories, I focus on either a connection with the author or relating something that has happened to them to something that happens in the story (event). A teacher may be able to help students make connections with the author using blogs, websites, or even skype. Students could do some type of writing or art activity to express personal connections to stories possibly using a blog or something like webspiration.

Reading Kristin’s Blog: Blogging with Afghanistan got me thinking about another type of connection that teachers can help provide for students using technology tools . . . a connection to the setting. A little background to her blog: In the past, her class read a story and posted discussion on a blog. The story was set in Afghanistan. A person who lives in Afghanistan read her blog and contacted her. He became her “friend” and offered to help out when she did the story the next year. . . it is all about making connections

A teacher could build background knowledge about the setting of a story by having students research general information about the area online, maybe look at pictures, or take a Google Earth trip. Those students would know a little more about the setting than before, but imagine how that level of knowledge would change if students could “talk” to someone actually in that area and ask questions not only about the geography/landforms but also about the culture.
The experiences of these students has the potential to greatly influence their understanding of the story.

Think about all the technology tools we have available to make it possible to make these connections to enhance student learning: skype, blogs, wikis, videos, pictures, voicethread, twitter . . .

So you don’t have a friend or connection in the area of study or setting of the book . . . chances are that posting on Twitter could prove to be beneficial . . . chances are somebody knows somebody who knows somebody . . . it is all about making connections.

Global Studies involves learning so much more by making connections rather than just reading or research from a book or online.

Got an Arts and Crafts Kid? Try a Rourke Book

My dad used to call my sister “Miss Fingers,” because she was always touching things. I now know that she was a tactile learner – driven by curiosity and the desire to understand and experience objects up close and in person.

Today she is a renaissance woman of many talents: school teacher, mother, tennis whiz, quilter, seamstress, great cook, scrapbooker and home decorator extraordinaire.

My youngest daughter takes after her creative aunt. When she was really little, I would have my “Miss Fingers” roll up her hands in the front of her shirt, when we walked through stores with lots of breakables. She just could not resist “looking at” all the pretty things with her busy little digits.

She now spends her free time cutting, pasting, gluing, stringing and knitting things together. Her collages cover her bedroom walls, and her friends have been the recipients of homemade cards, picture frames, scarves, jewelry and one-of-a-kind posters.

If you have a child with a hunger for hobbies, check out the craft series by Big Universe’s partner, Rourke Publishing. Written by Tracy Maurer, these well-illustrated books are aimed at the Grade 3-6 crowd. Following the directions for each project strengthens reading comprehension skills and vocabulary – while fostering artistic creativity.

• “Paper Crafts with Pizzazz”
• “Scrapbook Starters”
• “Fabulous Fashion Crafts”
•  “Rock Your Room with Crafts”
• “Fingernail Art”
•  “Cupcakes, Cookies and Cakes”

Paula Willey of the Baltimore County Public Library in Towson, Md., reviewed this series for the November 2009 issue of School Library Journal. Here is what she had to say:

“The crafts in these cheery books are not too hard, but not so simple as to be boring, and are made with a minimum of specialty supplies. Lively, upbeat covers feature photos of regular girls with big smiles. Inside, the subject of each book is first put into context and then illustrated with seven to eight crafts. There is an emphasis on safety and on getting permission and on responsibility. Many projects incorporate reuse of household items that might otherwise be discarded (worn-out jeans, buttons, jars, newspapers).”

 Rourke Publishing also offers an “Explore and Draw” series, which would have been up my other daughter’s alley when she was younger – a combination of reading and sketching! Titles include:

• “Horses”       
• “Dinosaurs”
• “Cars”
• “Monster Trucks”
•  “Spacecrafts”
• “Wizards, Witches and Dragons”
•  “Airplanes”
• “Knights and Castles”

Celebrate National Train Day, May 8, 2010!

Who can resist the magic of a train? Saturday, May 8, 2010, is the third annual National Train Day. This is a day to celebrate America’s love of trains. There will be free nationwide events happening all over the country. If you are not able to attend, host your own National Train Day event using these helpful resources.

Check out Bellwether Publishing’s Bullet Train on Big Universe. This book is great for reinforcing text features: table of contents, headings, bold words, visual aids, glossary, & index.

Lesson Resources

On the Valdez Middle School Language Arts website , there are several resources to promote Informational Text reading comprehension skills. Use the “Unlocking the Mysteries of Informational Materials” PowerPoint to introduce or review text features. Then use the “Text Features PowerPoint (pdf)” to model the use of text features and move into a “Text Features Scavenger Hunt” included in this document.

10 Ways to Use Current Events in the Classroom

Current events provide a rich resource for building language skills and promote active learning. Vocabulary enrichment, reading comprehension, writing opportunities and improved critical thinking are just a few of the benefits of using a newspaper, magazine or other news source in the classroom. Social awareness and improved listening aptitude and verbal skills are added bonuses.

Here is a list of ideas to get you started.

10 Ways to Use Current Events in the Classroom

1. Take advantage of “Today in History” columns in newspapers and on news websites. Let children take turns reading the history snippets. They’ll love being “news anchor of the day.” Try the Associated Press history page or the BBC’s “On This Day” link.

2. Use news stories to develop reader comprehension. Remember the 5 W’s and the “H” question. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? These six questions give children a simple way to start processing what they have read, heard or seen. Read an article together and have students answer the questions orally. Then give them article handouts and let them circle this core information with colored pencils.

3. Have students watch a TV weather story. They can draw a sun or clouds or a snowman and list the day’s highs and lows or write a paragraph about a weather event such as the recent tornadoes that hit the South.

 Pair this exercise with engaging children’s picture books about weather such as “Tornadoes,” “Sunny or Cloudy,” “Droughts,” “Weather,” “Hurricanes,” “Blizzards,” “Countdown to Fall,” “Ice Storms,” “Christmas Eve Blizzard,” “Snow” and “Ocean Seasons” – all available online at Big Universe and perfect for Smart Board application.

4. Ask students to clip a magazine or newspaper article or print a current event from a kid-friendly online news feed like DOGO News. Have them read their articles’ headlines to the class. Then let the class play 20 Questions about a particularly intriguing headline to encourage interaction and investigation into the news story.

5. Talk about big news events and discuss how they affect people locally and around the world. For example, Iceland’s volcanic eruption had widespread impact. Planes couldn’t fly because of the ash cloud over Europe. Tourists couldn’t get home. Delivery of supplies for manufacturing was delayed, so many companies had to shut down production temporarily.

6. Display a “Where in the World?” map on a bulletin board. Discuss a current event and then tack a miniature flag (office supply aisle), identifying the location of the story. Soon you will have a visual reminder of all the places your class “visited,” expanding your students’ global awareness.

7. Find colorful adjectives in news stories. Distribute news clippings and have students highlight the descriptive words. Then have them rewrite a few sentences, substituting their own adjectives and adverbs for each highlighted word.

8. Write a “BigWigs” book. Watch, listen to or read a news story. Identify the names of local or national leaders. Who is your mayor? Who is your governor? Who is the president? Who are the leaders of other countries? Use this to lead into lessons about elections, voting and government. Have your students write a “BigWigs” book using Big Universe’s kid-friendly Author Tool. Don’t forget to explain the term “bigwigs” (aka “the big enchilada” or “the big cheese.”)

9. Let kids create their class spelling list for the week. Split students into groups of five and have them read a news article. They should select five new or interesting words from the story. Have them rewrite their five words and then alphabetize them or use them in a new sentence. Finally, compile a master list. Being involved in the list construction will spark interest and help students take ownership of the learning process.

10. Teach children how to have civil debate. Read an age appropriate news story or editorial. Divide kids into separate groups and let them role play different sides of an issue. Supply hats or other fun physical props to help them identify with people in the news. Act out what happened. The teacher or an outgoing child can portray a news reporter to stimulate conversation and deeper thinking. Switch roles and do it again.

Remember socially aware children armed with a well-rounded education are the peacemakers of tomorrow!

Alternative Assessments and Teacher Burnout

I didn’t go into to teaching for the money. No one goes into teaching for the money. I love children. Ask any teacher that stays with teaching why they do it and they’ll tell you it’s because they want to make a difference in children’s lives.

Way, way, way……..back when I first wanted to be a teacher, when I was in high school, we were being told the market was going to be over run with teachers so it wasn’t a good choice. That was all I truly ever wanted to be so that threw me into a sort of inner turmoil. I started college going towards a medical degree, changed that to English and finally left after two years when I was 20 giving up a full scholarship.

Fast forward to a husband and three beautiful children all in their teens now… when the youngest went into first grade, the first year of all day school, I returned to college to get my degrees. First my bachelors, then my masters, with a double major in elementary and special education.

I always knew that I couldn’t just teach in a regular classroom. I love all children but I have always hated to see the “special” child taunted and teased and left behind. As a teacher I hate to teach to the masses and leave that small percent behind. I wanted to be the one to teach the small percentage.

So here I am today living my dream. I wanted you to have the history so you can see that I did not just choose teaching and go into it straight out of college without giving it any thought. I knew what I was doing. I even substitute taught while my little ones were in school when I didn’t have classes. The graduate program I took was a hands-on program where I spent a full day co-teaching and then took my classes at night. I knew what I was getting into. I knew. But, the lack of respect by my leaders is something I wasn’t expecting.

The Council on Exceptional Children has identified the top 10 Critical Issues Facing Special Education. The number one issue they’ve identified is the “National Special Education Policy.” Included in this is No Child Left Behind. Under NCLB all children are expected to show their achievement at grade level. While there are some alternative assessments those assessments are still missing the point. In order to show progress we as special educators need to be given a format to show that our students have shown progress commensurate to where they began, not that they are making grade level progress. When I can do this I will be doing my students justice.

Currently I am working with the Virginia Grade Level Alternative Assessment. That means I need to show that my student who is reading on a first grade level (thus the term “special education”) is able to read and comprehend on a fourth grade level. I also need to be able to show that this student who has poor short term memory is able to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. Does anyone else besides me see the problem here? The alternative to the alternative assessment is they can take the Standards of Learning exam at the end of the year and most probably fail.

So why did I give you the history of my journey to teaching? Because when you here about the high turn over rate of teachers you may think these are all young new teachers. But, they aren’t. There are many seasoned teachers being pushed to the brink and beyond.

I know everyone is facing poor economics these days. I’m looking at the total package. As a teacher there’s a feeling that as a whole the profession is treated poorly. Next year again, in my county at least, there will be no pay raises and no cost of living increases. As teachers in the county, more than the lack of money, we see this as a lack of respect. At the same time there is no money, the work load is increasing. This year alone my duties at work have increased and the paperwork has grown tremendously in special education. There are beneficial training classes being offered to help with the alternative assessments, after school.

I’m not whining. But sometimes I do want to cry. I get thirty minutes of planning time a day. That’s barely enough time to print out what I need to use that day. I go to work two hours early every day. I stay late. I work at home constantly. I have mandatory parent meetings with each of my student’s parents annually and now that’s just been increased by an extra meeting triennially. I now have an extra extensive assessment that I need to give my students. The alternative assessment is an extremely time intensive portfolio for each subject and I’m doing 10 portfolios this year. Doing these assessments with students who really don’t get the material is so… hard because the teaching is excruciating. The kids may get it for a minute. I can assess it for a minute…. . But is this learning? Is this teaching?

Luckily while I’m building the wheel everyday to teach my students there are a few websites that are helping me with my students. Big Universe is one of them. The majority of their books now have assessments that go with them. This is a great way for me to judge my children’s knowledge. For example, I have to do a biography with my students. I’m going to use Martin Luther King Jr.’s biography which has an assessment on Big Universe. I’ll show it on my Smart Board, read it aloud and have my students take turns coming up to answer the quiz questions. Along with anecdotal notes and some other work this will become part of my portfolios.

Teaching can be painful. The constant search for resources is very time consuming. If it wasn’t for the occasional gem like Big Universe, teaching would be even more difficult.

Jim Dale’s Tale

My nearly, nine year-old daughter would recognize Jim Dale’s voice in an instant; after all, she has listened to the Harry Potter audio books more times than I can figure.  But, her listening adventures didn’t start with Harry Potter; they actually began when she was four-years-old, as an eager listener to any one reading aloud.  Children naturally like to hear stories read to them, and as parents, many of us do just that.  Yet, life moves along, gets more hectic, and often we stop reading aloud to our children when they are old enough to read to themselves.  My advice: keep audio books in the house, the car, and on vacation at all times!  And, never stop reading aloud to your children.

Both of our children have listened to audio books since the age of four; our twelve-year-old continues to do so.  The younger child will draw and listen as a time to relax and find peace in her world.  Our older son listens to audio books while he is falling asleep at night.  Simply, put a CD player in your children’s rooms from an early age and get in the habit of searching for books of interest through Amazon or your library’s website.  When you visit a book store, write down titles.  Read book reviews. Compile lists of audio book titles to order through your local library system.  The benefits to doing this are children who possess strong, above grade-level vocabulary and comprehension skills.  It’s that easy

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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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!