Reading Update: House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

My former teaching partner connected several of our middle school boys with this title, and I was surprised by just how many of them liked it and how much they liked it. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer has been on my reading list for a while, and I flew through the book in three days.

The science fiction book is based in the future, and our protagonist, Matt, is the clone of one of the most powerful men in the world. As the story unfolds, Matt challenges the perceptions that surround him, and he questions his own purpose and identity. Repeatedly throughout the novel, the following question is raised: to what extent, if at all, does one allow the actions and opinions of others to shape one's identity?

In addition to identity, the story explores the importance of free will. Many characters choose safety veiled in slavery instead of struggle teamed with the ability to make one own's choices. The story also explores the humane use of technology. Because the technology exists, does that mean it should be used? Where is that line drawn? Last but not least, the book also lends itself to discussion of leadership. Matteo Alacran is arguably the most powerful person in the world, and his leadership is unquestionable. Yet, few people would argue that he was a good leader.

Practical Considerations:

• I have no qualms designating this book a 7th grade+ book. For being a terrific read, it's about as PG as they come.

Reading Update: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly would serve as an awesome tool to teach setting. Multiple layers of setting sift the story so that in the end I was left mulling over the powerful oppressive systems that Mattie, our protagonist, faced as a woman in the early 1900s.

The book illustrates women's lack of rights, and African Americans, although freed from slavery, have even fewer rights. In the book, Mattie's best friend is a victim of racism, a defenseless widowed neighbor is preyed upon due to her lack of power, and a young girl is murdered because she is trapped by her circumstances as a pregnant, unwedded woman. On a micro-level, Mattie is burdened by the toiling drudgery required of her on the family farm, and her family's financial straits pose another obstacle as she attempts to pursue her dream of becoming a writer.

Although the book serves as a powerful study of oppression, it also illustrates the courage of those who resisted and paved the way for others.

Practical Considerations:

• Due to a description of child birth, a brief one-sentence description of a sex scene, and various making-out sessions that include kissing and groping, I would designate the book as an 8th grade + book. 
• I expect students to struggle with the foreign setting. In 1906, cars were rarities. Cell phones and internet didn't exist.  Running water was unheard of, and consequently the outhouse was part of daily existence, and water had to be carried to the house. In addition, some students may not understand the stigma that surrounded a pregnant, unwedded woman during that time period.
• I would save this one for the girls in the classroom as I believe there are books that boys would better connect to.

Reading Update: Whale Talk

Ohhhhhh, Chris Crutcher! I wish there weren't quite as many swear words.


If you haven't read Chris Crutcher, do. His books are controversial, but I believe that's why they're special. They address taboo topics like abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, rape, sex, homosexuality... aspects of life that whether we like it or not are present in some way in many of our students' lives.

As a former public school teacher and a family therapist, Crutcher's inspiration for many of his stories come from his experiences with kids who he has met throughout his career of 30 + years. These stories are for kids. They're about kids.

I could never use this book as a whole novel for the whole class. Call me chicken, but I'm no dummy. I would go down hook, line, and sinker if any parents opted to challenge my use of this text in the classroom - and I have no doubt some would. For me, Crutcher's novels are powerful gifts for students who are mature enough to handle them. Some of those students will be able to relate personally to the struggles of Crutcher's characters. Other students could appreciate the opportunity to grapple with realistic events that don't provide a black-and-white answer.

This particular book addresses topics such as popularity, integrity, guilt, and the self-perpetuating cycle of abuse. Our main character is T.J., and he is a well-adjusted, confident high school senior who defies any system that reeks of the good ol' boy tradition. My one beef with this book is just how confident T.J. is. I can't say I have met many high school seniors, or even many 30-year-olds for that matter, with his unwavering confidence and moral compass. Anyway, T.J. with the help of his English teacher creates a rag-tag team of misfits for the new swimming program at his high school. The story shows how these high school outcasts, all for various reasons, overcome differences to form a formidable, albeit losing, team.

I am in search of a school-appropriate Chris Crutcher book because I think his books would be ideal for teaching kids about archetype in a relevant way. In college, I read several Crutcher books for one of my adolescent literature classes, and I plan to re-read them to determine classroom appropriateness. If you have any Chris Crutcher suggestions, please leave them, and if you're interested in reading some of his books, check out the ALA Best Book for Young Adults List. Nearly all of his books made the list... although they can't make the classroom.


CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.9: 
Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.

Illustrating the Importance of Background Knowledge

The beginning of the school year... a time of organized chaos for any soul found in a school building. Kids are trying to remember locker combinations,  different materials required by eight teachers, and terms and definitions they haven't heard for three months. Teachers are trying to get to know their 120 students... which means they're trying to cram 120 different faces and names into their memory banks, administering get-to-know-you reading and writing surveys, carving out time to sit down with 120 different kids for a personal connection... and well, you get it.

In addition to trying to get to know our students, teachers are also kick-starting the curriculum for the year. I always like to include mini-lessons at the beginning of the year that review reasons why people read. This type of classroom discussion naturally leads to the value of reading, and then we can move into discussion about what "good" readers do, the different types of reading required in the classroom, and our expectations of different genres.

I have been a fan of Kelly Gallagher long before I realized how many fans Kelly Gallagher actually has. I was extremely fortunate to stumble across his books Reading Reasons and Teaching Adolescent Writers in my early teaching years in rural Wyoming, and they served as a guiding light as I navigated those first two years of teaching, and they continue to be teaching resources I mine for instructional ideas.

In one of his more recent books, Readicide, he offers a great activity that would supplement discussion about what "good" readers do. (I'm putting quotations around "good" because this term makes me uncomfortable although it is commonly used. In my class, reading is not a binary system with "good" and "bad" readers. We're all readers, growing and learning together.) Okay, quick digression. As I was saying, Gallagher offers a quick activity that illustrates the point that "the reader's knowledge of the world factors into making sense of print. What the reader brings to the page is often more important than the ability to read the words on the page" (33).

                            

Select a couple political cartoons and ask the students to read the cartoon. It will become quickly apparent that kids will be able to read the words in the cartoon. No problem. However, comprehension of the cartoon will belong to those few and far between. This activity illustrates the importance of background knowledge, a term students will hear throughout the year. It emphasizes the importance of having a broad knowledge base, which in other words emphasizes the importance of school. Pay attention. In order for students to develop into critical readers of the world, they're going to need knowledge capital.

The activity also reiterates that reading is thinking. You're not reading if you're saying the words fluently but there is no comprehension. Reading is one of the most complex skills because we're multi-tasking constantly... predicting, inferring, questioning, connecting. The activity provides a natural way to introduce these reading terms, which are ones they will continue to hear and practice throughout the school year, too.

Reading Update: CCSS.R.L.7.3

Okay, so not too creative of a title this morning for my most recent post. For those of you teaching 7th grade ELA, that mix of letters and numbers means something... for those of you who don't, I'll shed some light.

Common Core State Standards Reading Literature Grade 7 Standard 3: SWBAT (Students will be able to) analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact (e.g. how setting shapes characters or plot)

Susan Beth Pfeffer has published a long string of books based in an apocalyptic future where the moon has been hit by a meteorite and knocked off course. Severe repercussions result for humans on Earth. Epidemics plague the country, food shortages cause starvation and rioting across the country, and extreme weather changes cause natural disasters that further endanger people and wipe entire cities off the map. I have only read her first two books in the series, and these are the two I'll discuss shortly, so I cannot speak to any of the others. However, please feel free to share thoughts if you have read any.

Life As We Knew It tells the story of how 15-year-old Miranda survives with her family in rural Pennsylvania. Although there is a female protagonist, two other major characters include Miranda's brothers, and I think middle school boys could relate easily to this suspenseful book.

In The Dead and the Gone, Alex lives in New York City with his family, and he learns how to survive in the dangerous city. Alex has the added responsibility of keeping his younger sisters safe, too, since his parents disappear (and are presumably dead) when the first catastrophes occur. Although the story has a male protagonist, I think most of my boys in rural Montana and Wyoming wouldn't relate to The Dead and the Gone any better than Life As We Knew It because of the urban setting, Alex's Hispanic culture, and the smattering of Spanish throughout the book.

I would recommend both books to readers in my middle school classroom with no qualms, but I think the real power of these two books lie in what they can offer when read at the same time in the classroom. They offer a unique opportunity for students to explore and discuss how characters and plot are affected by setting. Both books feature the same problem: how to survive after the moon is knocked off course. However, the means of survival differ greatly in the two books due to the different settings. I would possibly assign Life As We Knew It to the girls and The Dead and the Gone to the boys and then hold discussions with both groups that focus on the effect of setting.

Another consideration for both of these books, particularly Life As We Knew It, is to use them as a modern-day connection to the Great Depression and World War II. What were once every day necessities become rare luxuries, and the characters have to adjust and become resourceful.

Thoughts about Reading Ladders

"Counterintuitively, but traditionally, we have expected our students to make the leap from chapter books to the oldest and most revered tomes in western civilization "'with nary a bridge to help readers cross successfully.'" 

(Blasingame 2010). 

The purpose behind using reading ladders is to provide transitional literature that scaffolds readers up through a variety of connectors: books written by the same author, books from a single genre that grow more difficult, books that share a common theme, books that share similar formats (think manga and graphic novels), and so on.

Having just subbed in a freshman English classroom today and having watched 14 and 15-year-olds struggle with The Odyssey, the need for transitional literature rings true. Reading ladders also allow for flexibility. Each reader's ladder could look quite different as teachers meet each of their students where they are and find an individualized route to get them where they need to be.

First and foremost, Teri S. Lesesne's Reading Ladders provides a great reading list for those in search of YA literature. For me, this book reiterates the importance of reading widely as a teacher. It's impossible to make book recommendations if I haven't read any books that match the student's interests and reading level. I particularly like how Lesesne suggests that the first step to creating a reader ladder is to determine the bottom and top rung. Which dearly loved story or familiar book can hook the reader, and once they're hooked, what more complex reading do I want them to build to?

I don't understand how to employ Lesesne's reading ladders structure in daily curriculum. In some ways, most textbooks seem to serve this purpose. Most textbooks are organized by units of instruction, and each unit contains various types of literature that are connected in some way.

 I see myself using reading ladders in SSR, especially as a way to stretch my avid readers and as a way to guide my reluctant readers. I especially liked the idea of using the ladder structure to teach a poetry unit. Middle schoolers make a large leap when they graduate from fun, giggly poetry in elementary to Robert Frost. A reading ladder structure seems like a logical way to help students transition into "deeper" poetry.

Reading Update: The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

I curled up with Mary E. Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox on a blustery Sunday afternoon, and I remained curled up, eagerly flipping page after page until the late, late hours of Sunday night. Yep, I read this book in a day because it's that good.

How far will a parent go for a child? This question drives the plot of the story. The book would fit well in a unit that examines how parents are people, too. In his book A Sympathetic Understanding of the Child: Birth to Sixteen (1995), David Elkind asserts that a major developmental characteristic of teens ages 12-15 is the ability to begin to see their parents as people and think critically about them despite their continued dependence on them.

Jenna Fox should have died in a car accident. Her two friends, who were also involved in the car accident, were killed. However, Jenna's father owns one of the most powerful bio-engineering firms in the world in this futuristic novel, and he is able to "save" her. The "saved" Jenna is 10% human. The rest of her is bio-engineered. The love for Jenna is unquestionable, but her parents' decision warrants discussion about whether parents can adore children too much.

The book also addresses the need to negotiate distance from parents. Jenna has always wanted to please her parents, causing her to stifle her own desires and beliefs, but after the accident, Jenna is forced to come into her own. She not only identifies what she wants, but she comes to live by her own standards. Obviously, ethics in both the technology and medical fields are also discussion-worthy topics in the book.

The book would be appropriate for grades 7-9, but I would save it for advanced readers in the 7th grade. There's no sex, alcohol, or swearing, topics which I know can be of major concern to some parents. I would recommend pairing this book with The Compound by S.A. Bodeen, which offers a male protagonist to the boys in the classroom.

Ooooh... some new discussion ideas here!

I have witnessed first-hand the power of student-centered discussion in the classroom. Kids are interested... or at least more interested... and I feel like I'm actually able to get an accurate pulse of the kids' thinking.

If you're a teacher and have held discussions in the classroom, you've probably considered a few of these questions:

• how many students are going to be involved in the discussion?
• how long do I expect the students to hold the discussion?
• what are the students going to discuss?
• what will the students who are not involved in the discussion be doing?
• how involved should I be as a teacher?
• and... the list goes on

Ariel Sacks provides some refreshing strategies to use in her book Whole Novels for the Class, and I'm going to share a few here that I especially liked. 

Saving it for the end

A major premise of Sacks' whole-novel approach is saving discussion until her students have finished reading the novel. She then facilitates a week's worth of discussion, dividing her class into two groups and allotting two-and-a-half class periods for discussion for each group. Yep, a whole week of discussion! If you're like me, you'll appreciate the stages of discussion she provides in helping teachers better envision how three days of discussion unfolds. 

Table 4.1 Stages of Discussion (Sacks 111)

• Day 1
• Focus: Students share their gut reactions to the book, opinions about characters, and favorite, confusing, and/or controversial parts. 
• Skills Practiced: Authentic response to literature; questioning; connecting; inference; voicing opinions; respecting differing opinions; turn taking
• Day 2
• Focus: Students delve deeper into questions that emerged from the first session by looking for evidence in the book, rereading sections together, discussing further and asking new questions
• Skills Practiced: Rereading; supporting ideas with evidence; challenging or revising ideas with evidence; close reading of the text; analyzing language; application of literary terms
• Day 3: 
• Focus: Students take a step back from the story and consider the role of the author in creating the novel; assess the strengths and limitations of the author's craft; and discuss the novel in the context of the world and other works of literature or film
• Skills Practiced: Drawing conclusions from evidence; analyzing the author's craft; inferring the author's purpose and intended audience; making connections across texts; connecting themes in the text to world issues; critical thinking

Transcribing the Discussion

In the past, I have separated my class into two groups and then paired my students. The partner in the inner circle participated in the discussion while the student in the outer circle typed the contributions his/her partner made to the discussion. This method provided me with an activity for students who were not participating in the discussion, and it also provided a way for all students to be involved in the discussion and noting the different thinking that arose from it. It also was an easy way to record the discussion so students could return to ideas that might aid them for a following writing assignment. I had a required format for students to use when typing their partner's comments, and I often used www.todaysmeet.com as the tool since Google Doc can become a headache when several people are trying to type at once. 

The problem? Students' typing skills often were inadequate, and students easily grew flustered, interrupting the natural flow of discussion by calling out, "Wait! Wait! Josh, what did you say?" In addition, punctuation and spelling were a challenge for some students, and todaysmeet doesn't allow a person to edit the writing once it has been posted. 

Sacks' recommends that the teacher types the transcript for the discussion. The students who are not participating in the discussion are often working on a creative writing assignment that ties into the novel that was read. Sacks prints the transcript and makes notes next to comments that could be discussed in more detail. She makes a copy, and this becomes the natural starting place to spark discussion. I love that she helps guide the discussion but that the power truly remains with the students.

Sacks includes several other worthwhile ideas for holding a student-centered discussion in the classroom that I won't address here in the blog. If interested, go check out a copy of her Whole Novels for the Whole Class. 

Reading Update: The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt had me quickly flipping the pages and laughing at the shenanigans that plague Holling Hoodhood's middle school life despite his best efforts to stay on the straight and narrow.

I would have no qualms including this YA book in my middle school classroom. There's no swearing, no sex, no drugs or alcohol... before you begin to think it sounds boooooring, I do think it addresses major tenets of teenage strife... ahem... I mean life.

A major theme of the book is identity. Holling Hoodhood, as a seventh grader, is beginning his journey of self-discovery, and in doing so, two other sub-themes form. He begins to see his parents, particularly his father, as a person. His father's actions and words no longer go unchallenged, and he begins to realize that his father has his faults. Another theme develops from his relationship with his English teacher with whom he is required to spend Wednesday afternoons while the other students attend religious services. Again, Holling's adolescent self-absorption is slowly checked as he comes to re-consider his initial perception of Mrs. Baker and her motives.

The book would pair well with a social studies unit of the 1960s. The Vietnam War, flower children, various music artists, and air raids are mentioned. The book is also a great tool to introduce allusions as Shakespeare is quoted throughout.

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A Glimpse Into the Sub Life

First, I need to admit that I have always regarded subs with disdain, the amount varying depending on the individual. I've always looked down on them... despite my 5'0 height.

As a teacher, I watched a regular sub, an elderly gentleman, shuffle into the classroom as the bell rang, scowling at the kids as he made his way toward the desk. He took a seat behind the teacher's desk... and never left. He barked orders at them after he quickly skimmed the lesson, and then he nodded off during most of the afternoon classes, his eyes closed, his head hanging low, his hands resting on his enormous stomach. This one received a major amount of disdain.

I've watched a young sub try way too hard to be the "cool" teacher, kicking up his heels and just shooting the breeze with the kids for most of the class period, the content of some of the conversations questionable at best. I listened to the teacher complain in the lounge the next day that few of his kids had their assignment done for class... I wasn't surprised.

With disgust, I listened to one middle-aged man scoff at all teachers dumb enough to take on a full-time teaching gig. He told me the amount of pay for the amount of work was ridiculous (as if I needed to be informed of this), and he was more than happy putting his teaching degree to work by subbing at different schools throughout the week. It's definitely a blessing this one didn't end up in the classroom. He clearly missed the big picture when he decided to become a teacher..

Anyway, my pride has definitely been checked as I introduce myself and explain that I'm subbing for the year. I already feel that there's a stain of incompetence because why else would anyone be a sub besides the fact that they couldn't cut it doing the real thing? To say the least, I've felt the need to prove that I'm not just any old sub.

However, I have found this to be harder than I expected. After my first two subbing gigs, there's one word that comes to mind. Boring. I can't blame the teachers though. I did the same thing on days I had a sub in the classroom. Any  actual teaching was postponed until I was back, and I assigned a lot of filler.

MRS. FERRITER, THE SUB
My first day in a rural middle school consisted of THREE HOURS OF SILENT READING. Whoofta! Then I monitored two class periods of math in which students spent the entire class period on a computer program. This evoked memories of my college math classes... times I'd prefer to forget.

My first day in a private high school included senior and junior English classes, including Advanced Placement classes. I was stoked! I showed up early to get familiar with the lesson plans, and my spirit was slightly dampened when I was directed to the library where I would be teaching all of my classes for the day. I felt a small pit begin to form in my stomach when I realized I had no computer or whiteboard (or even blackboard) to use. I felt positively sick to my stomach when I read the senior AP English lesson and it read as the following: "Open the orange textbook to page 272. Review main idea p.272-274. Have students complete response #2 on page 275." To say the least, it was a long day. I did my best to spice up the lessons... or lack of them... but with five different lessons to teach throughout the day, time was limited.

My experience so far as a substitute teacher has me wondering what a normal day in the classroom looks like for these students. These lessons weren't engaging or challenging or thought provoking. They were boring. The kids deserve better. In this age of technology and with so many resources at our fingertips, we shouldn't be confined to textbooks published in the 1980s... and reading about main idea on page 272 and answering question #2.