Character Fiction and Down-home-feel-good-be-inspired Books

Each month I spotlight a genre for my students, so I've decided to post genre book lists each month. This month is Character Fiction and Down-home-feel-good-be-inspired books.

Character Fiction

This genre is one that I may have invented. I've always struggled to find a place for these books. How would you classify Anne of Green Gables? I realized that these stories revolve around a character and his/her life. These are character-driven stories. It isn't about action or plot devices--it is all about the character development. These are those characters that you get to know and learn to love and while reading the book, you feel like you're making a good friend, like if you ran into this character on the street, you would greet each with a big hug/high five and invite him/her over for a family dinner. I consider Anne one of my childhood friends, that's for sure! Thus a genre was born. Now I realize that girls tend to gravitate toward character fiction more than boys (boys tend to go for biographies about someone they admire, such as a sport's hero, or books with stronger plot/more action), but there are some books on the list that boys and girls will appreciate.

Smiles to Go-Jerry Spinelli Stargirl--Jerry Spinelli
Maniac Magee-Jerry Spinelli
Loser-Jerry Spinelli
Defining Dulcie-Paul Acampora
Ida B-Katherine Hannigan
Shug-Jenny Han King of the Screwups-K.L. Going Utterly Me, Clarice Bean-Lauren Child
Ramona Forever-Beverly Cleary
The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones-Helen Hemphill
Miss Spitfire-Sarah Miller
Heartbeat-Sharon Creech
Fearless Fernie-Gary Soto
Write On, Callie Jones-Naomi Zucker
The Schwa was Here-Neal Shusterman
Antsy Does Time-Neal Shusterman
So Totally Emily Ebers-Lisa Yee
Millicent Min, Girl Genius-Lisa Yee
Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time-Lisa Yee
No More Dead Dogs-Gordan Korman
The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez-Judy Goldschmidt
The Loser's Guide to Life and Love-A.E. Cannon
Diary of a Wimpy Kid-Jeff Kinney

Down-home-feel-good-be-inspired books

These are those books that make you want to be a better person because you read the book. These are the books that feel like a cozy blanket wrapped around you. These are the books that make you feel like you just watched a Hall-mark card commercial. These are simply good books.

Hattie Big Sky-Kirby Larson
Ruby Holler-S. Creech
Ida B-K. Hannigan
Antsy Does Time-N. Shusterman
A Year Down Yonder-R. Peck
Because of Winn-Dixie-K. DiCamillo
Notes from the Dog-G. Paulsen
The Last Lecture-R. Pausch
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane-K. DiCamillo
On the Wings of Heroes-Richard Peck

**Books in italics means I haven't read them yet...but I will!

Graphic Novels and comic books

This comes from an article, "Comics and Graphic Novels" by Samantha Cleaver, in the Scholastic Instructor magazine (May/June 2008).
"Comic books can be a great way to pique reluctant readers' interest and challenge those students who are fluent in more traditional literature."
"If we show kids how the written word actually has a visual component to it...and teach kids how to think that way, I think they'll become much better writers. Their word choice is much richer, and their creativity is boundless."
"Kids are at ease with combining visual and text information, and as new media becomes mainstream, comic books offer a way to reinforce traditional grammar and spelling within a layout that's familiar to kids."
"Writing comics asks kids to be writers, editors, and artists all at once."
Some ideas for using graphic novels and comic books in teaching:

• Comics are all about sequence. You could use a comic/graphic novel to illustrate the sequence/plot line of a story. They can also be used to teach character development, setting, theme, and any other story element.
  
• Comics are all about inferences. Between panels and within panels, the reader must make inferences in order to understand the story.
• Have students write a story or essay and then convert their writing into a comic book format. For example, students may write a metacognitive essay on things they do that help them to understand what they are reading. They then need to convert that to a comic strip. You could then take all of the comic strips and create a class book of reading strategies.
• You could use the storyboard format of comic strips to help students as a pre-writing strategy before doing a story or multimedia project such as a PowerPoint presentation or digital storytelling.
• You can use comic books and graphic novels as supplements to support a theme of a novel or short story that you are reading. Many of the classics have been converted to graphic novels. For example, you could use a graphic novel version of Romeo and Juliet to help students understand the story as you read Shakespeare's words.
• Make your last unit of the school year a comic book unit. Have students write an essay about they did and learned in your class that year and then convert it into a comic strip. Then compile all of the comic strips into a book for the class.
• Have students create comic strips about themselves as a getting to know you activity.
• Use comic books to teach onomatopoeia or dialogue.
• Use comics to study a time period. For example, if you are reading a novel that takes place in the 50's, you could look at the Archie Americana series and Archie classics as anthropologists and list clues of what life was like back then based on what you find in the comic.
  

Here are some resources that might help in incorporating comics and graphic novels in your classroom:

• www.graphicclassics.com
  
• Comic Life--most Macs come with this program as part of the package. Students can take pictures on the computer, import pictures from the web, or just print out the frames and draw their own pictures.
• The Bone series by Jeff Smith. Not one of my favorites, but the kids seem to like it.
• Mouse Guard by David Petersen. Hero's journey, knights of the round table, fantasy...all with mouse characters.
• American Born Chinese by Gene Yang. One of the BEST graphic novels out there. There are three parallel plotlines that weave together. This book addresses issues of race, stereotypes, and acceptance. A few years ago, I was on my district's book approval committee which decides whether or not a book can be used in a classroom setting. This book was not approved because many parents felt that it was too racial and most of these parents were still holding onto the idea that graphic novels aren't literature. I don't think they read the book. Too bad because it is amazing!
• --Bubbler: http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/ (Image drop easy create your own comic strip).
  
• http://www.bitstrips.com/ (you can create yourself as a cartoon character or create other characters and create a comic strip).
  
• http://www.makebeliefscomix.com (Simpler format/more limited to create comic strips).
• Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack by Shannon Hale. This is a twist on two classic fairytales. Great graphics and storyline.
• http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/graphicnovels/

Hats off for Editing and Revising

This idea might work better for younger grades, but then again, I could see my 8th graders liking this!
For peer-editing groups Nicole Hughes uses actual hats when she tells her students to put their thinking caps on. Students have jobs in their peer editing group according to the hat they are wearing.
Grammar Queen/King: student wears a crown and looks for grammar mistakes in a paper. Are there spelling or punctuation mistakes? Typos?
Sentence Flipper: student wears a fast-food burger-flipper hat (like from In-n-Out) and focuses on sentence structure and fluency. Are there any fragments? Do the sentences flow together?
Revision Rockstar: student wears a sparkly headband and looks specifically for revision suggestions. How is the introduction and conclusion? Does the writing make sense?

Thoughts on Teaching and a Thing called Money

The Equity Project (TEP) opened a charter school in New York City in 2009. A new charter school is nothing new these days, but this school has caught my attention for three reasons:
1. They teach Latin. What's that you say? Latin? Yes, Latin. This is a school that consists of 6th-8th graders. Why Latin? You ask. I don't know. They have a very basic curriculum: math, science, English, music, P.E./health...and Latin. I suppose knowing Latin could help you with root words and give you a foundation for learning any of the romance languages, but I'm not sure it is high on my things-I-want-my-kids-to-know list. Ah, well, to everyone their own.
2. There are 480 students in the school and a majority of these students come from low-income families. Many of these students are not gifted and talented students, but rather, students who struggle. So in other words, this is a school that can choose its students, and chooses to say, "Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free."
3. This school recognizes the teacher as the crucial component of education. As such, the teacher average salary at this school is $125,000. Wait! How many zeroes did I just type? Are these teachers also playing a sport on the side? Nope. The number is correct. In addition to this salary, there is a possible $25,000 bonus based on school-wide achievement. Teachers are required to take a one year sabbatical every five to six years. This is something I think every teacher should do. Burn out is too common among teachers. To earn the wage listed above, teachers are required to work from 7 am to 6 pm and to complete a six week teacher development course during the summer. I could do this; I do this...just not for $125,000. My principal once asked me if I was independently wealthy or stupid. I'm not wealthy, that's for sure. My husband tells me that at some point (mathematically) if you work too many hours, you begin to lose money rather than make money. I've been losing money for years. I don't know how to fit all the stuff teachers do into the few hours between 7 am and 3 pm. This school sounds like a dream to me...a place I heard of once in a lullaby. You not only just do your job, you show your passion and talent through hard work and devotion, and you get paid what you're worth. This is what dreams are made of...
For more info on this school, you can check it out at: www.tepcharter.org.
I want to label this 'inspiration', but perhaps I will create a new label: 'jealousy'. =)

The Six Phases of Teaching

Phase 1

You are listening to jazz
Your first day at work is great.
Your co-workers are wonderful, the students are great, your classroom is cute, and your principal is the best!

Phase 2

You are listening to pop music
After a while you are so busy that you are not sure if you’re coming or going anymore.

Phase 3

You are listening to heavy metal
This is what you feel like at the end of the quarter/month.

Phase 4

You are listening to hip hop
You become bloated due to stress, feel sluggish and suffer from constipation.
Your coworkers are too cheerful for your liking and the walls of your classroom are closing in. The students seem to be out to get you.
You have started thinking “WHATEVER” about your principal.

Phase 5

You are listening to GANGSTA RAP
After more time passes, your eyes start to twitch, you forget what a “good hair day”
feels like as you just fall out of bed and load up on caffeine.

Phase 6

You are listening to the voices in your head
You have built a makeshift fortress of books and paper around your desk to keep people out,
you have a dartboard with your favorite student’s picture on it in your classroom, and
you wonder why you are even here in the first place.

Book Group

The secretary at my school does this cool idea with her grand-daughters. Every year she buys all of the girls the same book (the girl's join Grandma's Book Club when they turn a certain age). She gives them time to read the book and then they all go together on a book outing. The first year they read The Secret Garden and then she took them to an English-style garden here in Utah. They also had a tea party where she explained different rules of etiquette, and they discussed the book. They take lots of pictures and she makes a little scrapbook of the pictures for all of the girls to remember the outing and the book.
I loved the idea, so I've begun to do this with my nieces. Every year for Christmas I buy a book for all of my nieces who are 12 or older. They then have until summer to read it. I started with Little House in the Big Woods (Laura Ingalls Wilder) last year. The girls read the book and then we went to Wheeler Farm. (I had also thought about going to Pioneer Park; that would have been fun also). We discussed the book, made old-fashioned rag dolls, and ate old-fashioned candy. The girls seemed to like it and I really had a good time with them.
This year I've purchased Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett for them and will take them to an art museum in the summer.
Some other ideas:
Esperanza Rising--go to a Mexican market and make tamales together.
The Misadventures of Maude March-go to a western museum or rodeo.
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler-go to a museum.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane-go to the Build-a-Bear shop.
Peeled-go to an apple orchard.

Using Technology Tools With or Without the Computer

This is from my presentation at the UCIRA conference at Salt Lake City, UT.

Using Technology Tools With or Without the Computer

PowerPoint Presentation

• Why/How is technology an effective tool in the classroom?
• What obstacles keep us from using technology in our classroom?
• Technology is a tool--not a new program or gimmick, not the end-all answer to all of our problems, and not a replacement for teachers… technology is only useful as we, the teachers, use it in creative and resourceful ways.
• In our planning and deciding which tool we want to use, and how we want to use it, we need to ask ourselves,
  What is the purpose of this? How will it help me to teach this concept?
• My purposes for the tools listed here:
  
• • Reader Response
  • To monitor understanding
  • To promote creativity and higher-order thinking
  • To practice summarizing and determining importance
  • To enhance understanding of character in a story
  • To communicate with students in their ‘language’

FaceBook Ideas
www.facebook.com
Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Since September 2006, anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address (and not residing in one of the countries where it is banned) can become a Facebook user--Definition from Google Web Definitions.

A place where I can spy on my friends and family and waste a good hour or two without even realizing it—My definition.

FaceBook Personality Quiz--have students create a personality quiz for characters from a book. I would have students work in groups of 2-4 and before having them do the quiz on their own, I would model how to do with a common story/book. Students can create a quiz on their own paper or you can provide a worksheet for them. Click here for the worksheet I created.
To further use this tool, I would challenge students to create their quizzes on Facebook and would offer incentives (points on a test for each person who takes their quiz or a prize for the group who gets the most people to take their quiz). Students can print out a page from their Facebook quiz that shows how many people have taken their quiz and breaks it down to percentages of how people responded.

Twitter Ideas
www.twitter.com

•Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations.

•At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length, but don’t let the small size fool you—you can share a lot with a little space…You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of a Tweet as the headline...

--From the ‘About page’ on Twitter.com

On NPR, the Morning Edition host, David Greene challenged the Song of the Day editor and music reviewer, Stephen Thompson, to review an entire music album in a tweet, just 140 characters. Thompson compared tweets to haiku. I love that comparison! Lengthier writing is great but a haiku can also have great power and beauty. So can tweets! In our fast-paced world, students need to learn to write succinctly and to the point (something I'm still learning).
Twitter Music Reviews: Criticism as Haiku

Some Tweet Ideas:

•Admit/Exit slips

•Quick reading summary

•Book report, review

•Flash fiction

To take these ideas further, you could easily set up a class Twitter page and encourage students to check out the class tweets by choosing the five best tweets from each class and posting them. If a student sees his/her tweet posted, he/she can tell you and receive a piece of candy (students will do anything for candy). This would also be a great resource if you were to post admit/exit tweets (tweets about what students are learning in class). If a student is absent or needs reminding of what was taught, he/she could find out from the class Twitter page.

Tweet Worksheet

Instant Messaging (IM)/Texting Ideas

Instant Messaging (Iming) or Texting is a real time conversation. You talk through typing text either on a cell phone or through a chat/IM program on the computer (such as chat on FaceBook, Googletalk, or any other chatting service available with most email accounts).

One activity that you could do with this is have students create a text/IM conversation between two characters. Remember, with this you are NOT focusing on grammar but ideas. The idea behind this is to help students really understand the characters and for you, as the teacher, to see if they understand the characters.

An interesting study about technology use in the classroom: http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010040.pdf