What's in a Name?

Beginning on Paper

on paper

I write it

on rain

I write it

on stones

on my boots

on trees

I write it

on the air

on the city

how pretty

I write my name

-Ruth Krauss

I love this poem because it captures the excitement a child feels when she first learns to write her name.  The other day, one of my colleagues commented that she could teach any child to read using his or her name.  It sounds ridiculous, but it’s a trick teachers have been using for years.  The first letter most children learn is the first letter of their name, and the first word they learn to read and write is their own name, followed quickly by Mommy and Daddy.  These words are powerful because they’re meaningful to our children.  There are some things we can do at home to help any emergent reader, whether they are very young or school aged. 

First, I recommend wall decals or signs that spell your child’s name.  Pottery Barn Kids actually has a personalization shop, where you can get everything from a mirror to an arm chair with your child’s name on it, for a price.  I just googled “name wall decals,” and found 4 websites that sell personalized wall decals for much less than Pottery Barn prices.  My sister hung a “Bella” decal on my niece’s nursery wall, and she noticed it before she could talk.  She would point to her name and say, “ooh.”  And we’d say, “That’s says Bella, B-E-L-L-A.” 

You can also sing your child’s name.  Any five or ten letter word can be sung to the tune of Bingo, so if your child’s name is Colin you sing, “There was a boy who had a name and Colin was his name-o, C-O-L-I-N . . .”  If his name is Kristopher, you sing K-R-I-S-T for the first bingo and O-P-H-E-R for the second.  Three or six letter names can be sung to Jingle Bells.  “S-A-M, S-A-M, Sam is my name, S-A-M, S-A-M, Sam is my name-hey!”  Four letter names work best with YMCA and for seven letters, you should sing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain.” Eight letters gets “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” and nine letters uses “I’m a Little Teapot.” For eleven and twelve, we sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and “Ten Little Indians,” respectively.  Your child will think it is her own personal song. 

If you’ve chosen to name your child Olivia, George or Lilly, you can find books with those characters in them, and it’s very motivating to read a book with your name in it.  As an adult, I once read an entire trilogy of mediocre books, because the main character’s name was Kristin.  My niece has a series of books about two little poodles named Bella and Rosie.  She loves them.  If your child’s name is not one commonly found in books, you can make your own.  I like Shutterfly, if you want something that looks professional, but in school we print them from Word.  You take a picture of your child doing several common activities, insert them into Word, and then you type the text under the picture.  “Tyler likes reading.”  “Tyler likes swinging.”  “Tyler likes eating.”  If you are going to type your own, put two spaces between each word; it helps emergent readers understand the concepts of letters, words and sentences.  Whatever the name, learning to read it and spell it, is the first step in early literacy for many children. 

Books with Names in the Title

Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

Olivia by Ian Falconer

Curious George by H.A. Rey

Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff

Arthur’s Eyes by Marc Brown

Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats

Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant

Bella and Rosie by Michele Dufresne

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

Jake and Lily by Jerry Spinelli

   

Wishes for a Delicious Thanksgiving

This time of year makes me nostalgic for home and family and my parents’ delicious cooking.  My mom and dad have planning Thanksgiving dinner for at least a month now, and the meal will be gourmet feast.  So when I started thinking about Thanksgiving books, pilgrims weren't the first thing to come to mind.  Instead, I thought of Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti by Anna Grossnickle Hines, because my dad has always made the best spaghetti (and turkey and stuffing and potatoes).  It’s a book about the simple joys a family can find cooking and playing together.  My second thought was of Cynthia Rylant’s The Relatives Came.  You see, when those relatives from Virginia show up, “You’d have to go through at least four different hugs to get from the kitchen to front room.”  Whenever, I read that book, I find myself thinking of my cousins and aunts and uncles, because in my family Thanksgiving is about squeezing as many family members as possible around the dining room table; well, that and the fried oysters.

Some other favorites about family visits are Bigmamma’s by Donald Crews and Going Home by Eve Bunting.  Both are about kids traveling to see their grandparents.  The first shares the emotions I remember as a child, the excitement of visiting grandparents who loved me unconditionally.  The second is about two kids who come to understand a little more about their parents when they travel to Mexico for the first time. 

Cooking together and sharing a meal seems to be a universal way of bringing people together.  And many authors have written about it.  Look for Strega Nona by Tomie Depaola, Thundercake by Patricia Polacca, and The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins.  The last is not just about sharing cookies, it also teaches math.  One of my favorites is Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto; it’s about a little girl who thinks she’s lost her mother’s ring in the tamale batter.  Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack is another wonderful book about a boy who enjoys making cookies with his grandmother.  I met Laminack at a professional conference.  He’s an engaging and entertaining presenter, but when he spoke about his grandmother, he got serious.  He said, “I’m certain she knew I was gay, but loved me anyway.  And not everyone in my family did.”  When you read the book, you understand how strong the love was between grandson and grandmother.

 

I’m thankful to spend the holidays with my wonderful and loving family.  I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving, the kind you read about in story books.

Books about Food and Family

Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti by Anna Grossnickle Hines

The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant

Bigmamma’s by Donald Crews

Going Home by Eve Bunting

Strega Nona by Tomie DePaola

Thundercake by Patricia Polacca

The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins

Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto

Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack

Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin Jr.

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Our Granny by Margaret Wild

The Wednesday Surprise by Eve Bunting

Demystifying Reading Levels

Report cards will be coming out soon, and many school districts had parent-teacher conferences last week.  It’s very common for teachers to share reading levels with parents, and I think they should.  However, there’s more to a reading level than a letter or a number, and all too often the more doesn't get shared.  Reading level assessments give teachers a starting point for instruction and allow them to choose books that kids can be successful reading.  Schools also use them to track student progress, and reading levels should grow during a school year.  They should not be used to pigeon-hole students to certain books, programs or reading groups. 

Schools measure reading levels using a number of different assessments, but generally speaking they listen to a kid read a short text, notice their fluency and how they problem solve difficult words, and ask some comprehension questions.  What reading assessments don’t and can’t measure is student interest or background knowledge.  A child reading on grade level in third grade might be obsessed with soccer and, therefore, able to access a much more difficult text about his favorite sport.  Along the same lines, I’m going to struggle with a book on software development, because I don’t know or care much about it.  Some children are stronger readers of fiction, while others score higher on non-fiction.  Reading levels are like GPS systems.  They can be a very helpful guide, but you still have to use your common sense or it might take you the long way home. 

To further demystify reading levels, here’s a list of the most common systems used and their approximate grade level correlations.   

Grade Level	Guided Reading (Fountas & Pinnel)	DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment)	Lexile
K	A-D	A-4
1	C-J	3-18	Up to 300L
2	I-M	16-28	140L-500L
3	M-P	28-38	330L-700L
4	P-S	38-40	445L-810L
5	S-V	40-50	565L-910L
6	U-Y	50-60	665L-1000L

However, most books aren’t leveled in ways that parents can access them, so you’re better off looking for certain attributes.  For kindergarteners, we want books with minimal text and lots of pictures.  I like Growing Colors by Bruce McMillan.  Each page shows a photograph of a different colored plant and a color word. I also like Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola, almost anything by Eric Carle and, my favorite, Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, Jr. 

 

By first grade, kids are starting to use more visual cues, like the first letter of a word, along with the meaning of the story.  They are still relying heavily on the pictures and patterned text, and we should let them.  Look for books like, the Sam series by Barbro Lindgren, the Dear, Dragon series by Margaret Hillert, and the Little Critter series Mercer Mayer.  By the end of first grade, we like to see kids reading books that have more text and rely less on pattern, like Hattie and the Fox and Noisy Nora. 

In second grade, kids are able to read books with more text on a page and follow the meaning of a short story.  The easy chapter books I mentioned in “Chapter Books is Not a Genre” are good fits for second graders.  Also look for the Froggy series by Jonathan Londan, the Little Bear series by Else Minarik, and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (or a Moose a Muffin or a Pig a Pancake, etc) by Laura Numeroff. 

We call third graders transitional readers, because they are transitioning into books with less picture support.  If a student starts third grade with Amelia Bedelia and Miss Nelson is Missing, we want them to end the year with the Magic School Bus, Roald Dahl’s shorter novels, and The Time Warp Trio.  Also look for Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner.  It’s about a boy who enters a sled dog race to save his grandfather’s farm.  Warning – it’s sad, but beautiful. 

As you know, fourth grade is my first love, and Roald Dahl’s novels are perfect for fourth graders, because they’re a little scary, a little gross and the kids always pull one over on the adults.  But for me the quintessential fourth grade books are Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, the If You Lived . . . series, Mr. Popper’s Penguins (it was my favorite in 4^th grade), and Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.  Few things make nine year olds happier than a boy and his dog.  Andrew Clements’ books, like Frindle and The Landry News are also excellent options. 

By fifth and sixth grade, kids reading on grade level can access most children’s novels.  The challenge now becomes to make sure they appropriate for their age.  I like the Percy Jackson series, the Dear America series, and Darnell Rock Reporting by Walter Dean Meyers.  The last is about a kid who doesn’t like school all that much until he’s forced to join the school newspaper.  Some other authors to look for are Gary Paulsen, Eva Ibbotson, and Jerry Spinelli.  The important thing to remember about reading levels is that every child will make progress at her own pace, and reading levels are just a guide.  They shouldn’t be a prison cell or status symbol.  

Non-Fiction Can Be Nice

This afternoon I was in Pottery Barn Kids looking for a coffee table that I saw in The Land of Nod catalog.  I think it might be perfect for my soon to be library.  Unfortunately, Pottery Barn doesn't carry Land of Nod merchandise.  So I didn't find my coffee table, but I did find an adorable series of non-fiction books for little kids.  They’re published by a company called Barron’s, and each one in the series is a board book shaped like an animal.  They had Little Polar Bear and Little Penguin at Pottery Barn, but there are at least ten other animals available.  The text is minimal, but the information was interesting and engaging. 

Non-fiction often gets overlooked when we think about children’s literature.  Kids like stories, but they also love non-fiction; and non-fiction builds vocabulary and background knowledge that kids will need in school.  Think about it, most of the reading we do as adults is non-fiction.  We read newspapers, magazines, textbooks, professional books, blogs, gossip columns, restaurant reviews, but elementary aged children read mostly fiction.  How are we preparing them for the real world, if they aren't getting a balanced diet of fiction and non-fiction?  As a teacher, this was a hard transition for me, because I don’t really like non-fiction.  My students, however, loved it. 

Good non-fiction has photographs, color and short bursts of readable text.  This week I’ll focus on my favorite non-fiction science books.  DK Books publishes non-fiction on every topic at every level, from My First Words, a board book with pictures and labels, to Ocean, an exhaustive look at the ocean written at a middle school level.  National Geographic Kids is another series of easy reads with great pictures.  I use Penguins and Volcanoes almost every year, because kids are fascinated by animals and disasters.  Another book my students love is called Actual Size.  It’s a picture book and the illustrations show the actual size of various animal parts, like a gorilla’s hand that takes up the whole first page.  My other favorite science series is called One Small Square.  They describe the microcosm of what you would find in a square foot of the woods, a desert, your backyard, etc.

 

Science magazines are another great option for kids.  National Geographic Kids, Zoobooks and Kids Discover are some of the popular ones at my school, and subscriptions make good Christmas presents. Even if you’re a fairy tale person like me, it’s worth it to give non-fiction a chance. 

 

Great Science Non-Fiction

Little Polar Bear by L. Rigo

Little Penguin by Michael Anthony Steele

My First Words by Dawn Sirett

Ocean by Miranda MacQuitty

National Geographic Kids: Penguins by Anne Schreiber

National Geographic Kids: Volcanoes by Anne Schreiber

National Geographic Kids Almanac 2013

Actual Size by Steve Jenkins

One Small Square: Woods by Donald Silver

One Small Square: Backyard by Donald Silver

One Small Square: Tropical Rain Forest by Donald Silver

The Magic School Bus inside the Human Body by Joanna Cole

The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole