Text Set: Activating and Connecting (Winnie)

Danneberg, J. First Day Jitters.

The alarm rings, but Sarah Jane Hartwell just slips down deeper into her covers and announces that she doesn’t want to go. Sarah Jane slowly tumbled out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, and fumbled into her clothes when Mr. Hartwell finally orders her down to breakfast. Mr. Hartwell puts her in the car and drops her off at school. Sarah Jane is led to the classroom by Mrs. Burton, the principle. The readers are eventually led to the revelation that Sarah Jane is not a student, but actually a teacher.

Strategy Connection: This book is a great way to start the students on making connections between what they read and what is going on in their lives. This book can help create great conversations on how do we feel about first day of school? Do we have anything in common with Sarah Jane? This book can also help the students realize that they are not the only ones that feel nervous on the first day but teachers have the same feelings and fears as well.

Flanaga, A.K. Cinco de Mayo.
This book is a great way to introduce the holiday day Cinco de Mayo to students. It talks about the background and the history of how the holiday came about. The book talks about the food eaten, music played, and the dances people do during the holiday. It also shares with the students how the holiday is celebrated here in the US and what the students can do themselves on that holiday.

Strategy Connection: This is a great book for the students to practice the idea of noticing and recording down new things they learn throughout a book. This could be a great way for the students to learn about another holiday besides the ones they have been celebrating since they were little. This is also a way for the students to learn and experience different cultures besides their own.

Viorst, J. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

From the moment Alexander wakes up with gum in his hair, things just do not go his way. At breakfast, Alexander's brothers Nick and Anthony reach into their cereal boxes and pulled out amazing prizes, while all Alexander ends up with is cereal. Things don’t go smoothly throughout the day either. Alexander’s teacher doesn't like his drawing of an invisible castle, he loses his yo-yo, there is no dessert in his lunch, the dentist tells him he has a cavity, there is kissing on TV, and he has to wear his railroad train pajamas (he hates his railroad train pajamas). With all of this, it isn’t any surprise Alexander wants to move to Australia! Alexander’s mother's assures him that everyone has bad days, even people who live in Australia.

Strategy Connection: This book is a great way to teach the students Text-to-Self connections. This book can be used as a great discussion starter. The teacher can his/her students what causes them to have a bad day and how do they deal with it when they are in those situations. This can show the students that although characters in a book are not real, they can sometimes have very much in common with the students themselves.

Text Sets

As strategy presentations begin, here are my expectations for the text sets. Text sets will be posted here on the blog - you will be responsible for posting them. Elements of a text set:

* 3 books per person in the group.
* Graphic of the book cover. You can upload pictures you take yourself of the book covers. There is a button on the blog posting page that will walk you through uploading photos from your computer:

* You must link to a webpage where we could purchase the book. You can use Amazon, Powells, etc. to create this link. The link button is five buttons from the left, next to the text color button.
* There must be a synopsis of the book.
* You must connect the book with the strategy you presented on.

I've put together a text set for schema that shows you how I would like the set laid out:

Fox, M. Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Patridge.

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Patridge, a boy who isn't very old, lives next door to an old people's home. His favorite old person is Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, who he tells all his secrets to and how has, according to his parents, lost her memory. Wilfrid begins to ask various people at the old people's home what a memory is and collects objects that spark his own memories to share with Miss Cooper. He shares his box with her, his shells, puppet, grandfather's medal, football, and an egg, and she begins to rememeber her own memories.

Strategy Connection: As children begin to think about schema and strategy instruction, memories and the objects, visuals, and experiences that trigger them, become very important. This book provides a jumping off point to begin talking about experience and how our experiences shape how we interpret texts, objects, and experiences. It calls to attention that our schemas are different and may lead to different interpretations. This would be an excellent book to utilize before a strategy unit on activating and connecting previous knowledge.


Lionni, L. Swimmy

Swimmy lives in a corner of the sea with a school of little red fish. Swimmy, however, is "black as a mussel shell," which allows him to escape when a hungry tuna gulps up the school of little red fish. Swimmy is left alone and wanders the sea, finding a jelly fish, a lobster, strange fish, seaweed, an eel, and sea anemones, until he finds another school of little red fish hiding in a cluster of rocks and weeds. They hide because the big fish will see them, which Swimmy finds sad and declares they must think of something so they may play in the sea. Swimmy begins to arrange the small red fish into the shape of a large fish and they learned to swim together like a big fish, chasing other big fish away.

Strategy Connection: This book highlights how we use experiences to shape our thinking. Swimmy is the lone survivor of the Tuna fish attack on his school of friends and uses that experience to help his new friends think of a way to avoid becoming lunch for another tuna. This book is a great conversation about how do we figure out how to do things? How much do our previous experiences shape how we solve problems? Excellent questions as we begin to be more conscious of our own reading and book choices.

Yolen, J & Teague, M. How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?

This story follows a group of dinosaurs as they prepare for bed. The book starts out with the dinos doing all of the things that could be considered unpleasant: pouting, shouting for another book, and even roaring. The book concludes with the dinosaurs going to bed quietly, with just one more kiss and a hug.

Strategy Connection: The power of this book is in how children know when the dinosaurs are not going to bed in the "correct" way versus when the dinosaurs are. They are using their schema about how to go to bed to make a value judgement about the dinosaur's behavior. How have they learned these concepts of right and wrong? Probably through experience, which has influenced their schema.

As always, comment with questions.

Strategy Instruction Presentations & Text Sets

Below, you will find the schedule and groups for strategy instruction presentations. It is unfair to expect the same products from all groups given the unequal distribution of people within groups, so I'm going to amend the text set requirement. Rather than having a flat number of ten books you must have in your text set, you will need to have three books for every member of your presentation group. For example, if you are presenting alone, you will have to create a text set of three books that go with that strategy. If there are five people in your group, your group's text set will need to contain fifteen books to go with that strategy. Book sets are not due to be posted to the web until two weeks after your strategy presentation.

Connections and Background (10/6)
Winnie
Jessica

Questioning (10/13)
Samantha
Kelli
Lily
Chelsea
Carly

Visualizing (10/20)
Lauren
Kristin R.
Emily
Devon

Determining Importance (10/27)
Ashley

Summarizing and Synthesizing (11/3)
Jessica
Kristin D.
Brooke Sc.
Brooke St.
Kristine

As always, comment with questions.