I have been so impressed since I joined this writing community in March with the generosity of the members. I have gotten so many supportive, kind, and helpful comments on my posts. So today I'm asking for your help in recommending some books for my 4th grade class.
I'm searching for excellent biographies for upper elementary readers. I would like to use this type of book for use as both mentor texts and for research. One of the writing projects our 4th graders do each year is a research report on a subject related to the American Revolution. Many of the children choose to do a biography. Over the years I have read more biographies of people of that era, both children's and adult's, and I realize that many of the biographies for younger readers are not as engagingly written or, often, even completely accurate or complete.
When I read the post on Two Writing Teachers a couple of weeks ago about the presentation by Ralph Fletcher on teaching authentic nonfiction writing, I realized that this is the type of biography I have been looking for. The kind of nonfiction book that David McCullough writes, for example, but for young readers.
In our research project, we have the students read at least two sources for their topic. One is an
"easy" book, below grade level - a picture book if we can find one. I like the books by David Adler, the series with titles, "A Picture Book of...." This gives the young researcher a quick overview of the entire topic. The second book is generally a short chapter book, which provides more details, and also gives us a chance to teach the importance of more than one source. It's always interesting when students find discrepancies and need to decide how to handle that.
So I am looking for excellent biographies for young readers, about any person not just those from the American Revolution. I'm hoping some of you will be able to give me some suggestions! Thank you for your help!
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Monday, March 30, 2015
What I think I learned this month
I know there's still one more day of blogging, but I have been thinking about all this experience has brought to me and I wanted to reflect on that today. This was my first year with Slice of Life.
Though I have written for years and I take writing seriously, I had never written a piece every day for a month like this. Sometimes it was hard to fit it in or I had trouble thinking of something to write about. But the discipline of writing every day felt good. And mostly, it got easier.
I learned that every post is not going to be excellent. Some are going to be so-so or even less. But I realize that that's okay. You have to write a lot of lesser stuff in order to write the outstanding stuff, which I hope I do now and then. I have been telling my 4th graders that for years, and I have always believed it, but now I'm living it.
Sometimes the teeny idea that seems sort of boring turns into a wonderful post. In fact, sometimes it works better to start with an everyday, unexciting idea than to tackle a "big, important thought."
This community of writers is awesome! Every writer who commented on my posts wrote positive, thoughtful comments. I am totally spoiled now. I write two other blogs that people read, but almost no one ever leaves a comment. But besides the comments on my posts, reading other people's posts was an exciting journey every day. There are so many outstanding writers in this group! So many people shared parts of their lives, opening up their unique experiences to the rest of us.
There are so many generous teachers writing here! I came away with so many ideas that I want to try. Some I'll be trying in April, when we'll be writing poetry to celebrate National Poetry Month.
I feel empowered as a writer. I feel ready to tackle new challenges in writing. I have a friend who just wrote a book, because he wanted to. Maybe I will do that, too. And I feel even more excited about teaching writing to my students than I did before this month.
Thank you, Stacy, Anna, Beth, Betsy, Tara, and Dana for creating this challenge and this community. Thank you to all the writers who read my posts and commented. Thank you to everyone who shared great ideas.
Though I have written for years and I take writing seriously, I had never written a piece every day for a month like this. Sometimes it was hard to fit it in or I had trouble thinking of something to write about. But the discipline of writing every day felt good. And mostly, it got easier.
I learned that every post is not going to be excellent. Some are going to be so-so or even less. But I realize that that's okay. You have to write a lot of lesser stuff in order to write the outstanding stuff, which I hope I do now and then. I have been telling my 4th graders that for years, and I have always believed it, but now I'm living it.
Sometimes the teeny idea that seems sort of boring turns into a wonderful post. In fact, sometimes it works better to start with an everyday, unexciting idea than to tackle a "big, important thought."
This community of writers is awesome! Every writer who commented on my posts wrote positive, thoughtful comments. I am totally spoiled now. I write two other blogs that people read, but almost no one ever leaves a comment. But besides the comments on my posts, reading other people's posts was an exciting journey every day. There are so many outstanding writers in this group! So many people shared parts of their lives, opening up their unique experiences to the rest of us.
There are so many generous teachers writing here! I came away with so many ideas that I want to try. Some I'll be trying in April, when we'll be writing poetry to celebrate National Poetry Month.
I feel empowered as a writer. I feel ready to tackle new challenges in writing. I have a friend who just wrote a book, because he wanted to. Maybe I will do that, too. And I feel even more excited about teaching writing to my students than I did before this month.
Thank you, Stacy, Anna, Beth, Betsy, Tara, and Dana for creating this challenge and this community. Thank you to all the writers who read my posts and commented. Thank you to everyone who shared great ideas.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Knausgaard
One thing I have been doing this spring break is catching up on some reading, particularly of newspapers. Mostly I whizz through, seeing if anything catches my eye enough to read. Mostly that is music news, science and health articles, and education related articles. The Sunday New York Times magazine almost always has interesting articles. This month they published a two-part story - Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard writing about his experiences traveling across America, called "My Saga."
Knausgaard is known, especially in Norway, for his six volume semi-autobiographical novel titled My Struggle. Each volume is very long. It's now being translated into English and at least parts of it are availably in the States. His writing is described as dense, focusing on minute details of life, lacking plot. Some people can't stand his writing because it meanders with no plot or end in sight. He seems to write a lot about how he feels about dealing with the ordinary annoyances of life. A reader who wrote in to the New York Times after the first installment of "My Saga" said, "It felt like reading someone else's grocery list that I couldn't put down." That is how I felt, too, as I was reading the first installment.
The idea of Knausgaard's trip was that he would fly to Newfoundland to view the site where Vikings landed, pre-Columbus, and lived for awhile. After seeing that site, he would travel down through the U.S., ending up in Minnesota, where he would check out a possibly inauthentic runestone said to have been left in Minnesota by some of those early Viking settlers. The first of "My Saga" is Knausgaard obsessing because he lost his drivers license the previous year and never replaced it, meaning he can't drive his rental car. Much of the first part is like this, things that bother him, or strike him, but a different view than most of us would have when visiting a foreign country. However, I couldn't stop reading it, just like the person who compared it to reading someone's grocery list.
Then I had to read part 2, of course. He travels with his assigned photographer, who he would rather not talk to, through Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and into Minnesota. He is not interested in talking with any Americans, though he does finally break down and have a few conversations in restaurants. He mentions to his photographer that he actually has relatives in the States - his grandfather's brother immigrated. At the photographer's urging, he tracks them down and finds one in Minnesota.
Though I have been entranced by the story and Knausgaard's writing, at this point I became immersed. Most of my family immigrated from Norway about the same time as his great-uncle. The cousin that Knausgaard meets is about his age, and is very successful in a number of areas. Knausgaard sees an American home for the first time, and his cousin tells him that he knocked down the old farmhouse, which was full of "Norwegian stuff. Runners and tablecloths, that kind of thing." He had packed them all away. I have the twins of that Norwegian stuff, given to me by my mother, as she was getting ready to downsize.
Besides the chords of familiar family history, the observations that Knausgaard started making at the end of this saga about how people become American resonated with me. He saw his cousin as different than himself, because his cousin was American, but at the same time he felt a sense of familiarity with this cousin he had never met. After all the little details and the side trips on this saga, he discovered meaning. Or maybe, I discovered the meaning of the saga.
Knausgaard is known, especially in Norway, for his six volume semi-autobiographical novel titled My Struggle. Each volume is very long. It's now being translated into English and at least parts of it are availably in the States. His writing is described as dense, focusing on minute details of life, lacking plot. Some people can't stand his writing because it meanders with no plot or end in sight. He seems to write a lot about how he feels about dealing with the ordinary annoyances of life. A reader who wrote in to the New York Times after the first installment of "My Saga" said, "It felt like reading someone else's grocery list that I couldn't put down." That is how I felt, too, as I was reading the first installment.
The idea of Knausgaard's trip was that he would fly to Newfoundland to view the site where Vikings landed, pre-Columbus, and lived for awhile. After seeing that site, he would travel down through the U.S., ending up in Minnesota, where he would check out a possibly inauthentic runestone said to have been left in Minnesota by some of those early Viking settlers. The first of "My Saga" is Knausgaard obsessing because he lost his drivers license the previous year and never replaced it, meaning he can't drive his rental car. Much of the first part is like this, things that bother him, or strike him, but a different view than most of us would have when visiting a foreign country. However, I couldn't stop reading it, just like the person who compared it to reading someone's grocery list.
Then I had to read part 2, of course. He travels with his assigned photographer, who he would rather not talk to, through Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and into Minnesota. He is not interested in talking with any Americans, though he does finally break down and have a few conversations in restaurants. He mentions to his photographer that he actually has relatives in the States - his grandfather's brother immigrated. At the photographer's urging, he tracks them down and finds one in Minnesota.
Though I have been entranced by the story and Knausgaard's writing, at this point I became immersed. Most of my family immigrated from Norway about the same time as his great-uncle. The cousin that Knausgaard meets is about his age, and is very successful in a number of areas. Knausgaard sees an American home for the first time, and his cousin tells him that he knocked down the old farmhouse, which was full of "Norwegian stuff. Runners and tablecloths, that kind of thing." He had packed them all away. I have the twins of that Norwegian stuff, given to me by my mother, as she was getting ready to downsize.
Besides the chords of familiar family history, the observations that Knausgaard started making at the end of this saga about how people become American resonated with me. He saw his cousin as different than himself, because his cousin was American, but at the same time he felt a sense of familiarity with this cousin he had never met. After all the little details and the side trips on this saga, he discovered meaning. Or maybe, I discovered the meaning of the saga.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Reflection on Slicing
Recently we were asked to comment on our experience so far with slicing, and I forgot to. So I will comment now.
It isn't easy to think of something to write every day. I think about it periodically during the day, asking myself, could I write something about [whatever I'm doing at the time]? I also started keeping a list on my phone of things I could write about.
Interestingly, it has been the tiny moments of life that have turned into the best pieces. When I start with a big idea it's often not as interesting, and I think that is because I'm not revealing as much of myself in the post when, for example, I decide to write about a new writing project with my class.
It's a scary thing to reveal parts of yourself in writing. A young musician of my acquaintance said that "being an artist means being willing to stand on stage in front of thousands of people and share the deepest and most beautiful part of yourself." Writing is the same -- you are putting your writing - your thoughts, ideas, the way you express yourself - out for any number of people to read. You the writer are thinking, is this any good, will people like it, will it move anyone, and how much of myself should I put into this? But it won't be the best it can be unless you do put yourself into it.
And leads me to what an amazing community the Slicers are! I have tried to read a lot of different blogs so far and I'm so impressed - by the quality of writing, by the ideas, and by the sharing in the posts. I have laughed been moved, and gotten great ideas from everyone's blogs. And the comments I have gotten on my blog are so lovely! Though this is a very big group, and it's all online, I really do feel like I'm part of a wonderful, supportive community of writers. I feel like I know many of you now.
Last, the discipline of writing something everyday has been enlightening. I always tell my students they will become better writers by writing, and I always knew it was true. These 15 days have grown my writing in ways I didn't expect. I can't wait to see what happens in the next 15 days!
It isn't easy to think of something to write every day. I think about it periodically during the day, asking myself, could I write something about [whatever I'm doing at the time]? I also started keeping a list on my phone of things I could write about.
Interestingly, it has been the tiny moments of life that have turned into the best pieces. When I start with a big idea it's often not as interesting, and I think that is because I'm not revealing as much of myself in the post when, for example, I decide to write about a new writing project with my class.
It's a scary thing to reveal parts of yourself in writing. A young musician of my acquaintance said that "being an artist means being willing to stand on stage in front of thousands of people and share the deepest and most beautiful part of yourself." Writing is the same -- you are putting your writing - your thoughts, ideas, the way you express yourself - out for any number of people to read. You the writer are thinking, is this any good, will people like it, will it move anyone, and how much of myself should I put into this? But it won't be the best it can be unless you do put yourself into it.
And leads me to what an amazing community the Slicers are! I have tried to read a lot of different blogs so far and I'm so impressed - by the quality of writing, by the ideas, and by the sharing in the posts. I have laughed been moved, and gotten great ideas from everyone's blogs. And the comments I have gotten on my blog are so lovely! Though this is a very big group, and it's all online, I really do feel like I'm part of a wonderful, supportive community of writers. I feel like I know many of you now.
Last, the discipline of writing something everyday has been enlightening. I always tell my students they will become better writers by writing, and I always knew it was true. These 15 days have grown my writing in ways I didn't expect. I can't wait to see what happens in the next 15 days!
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Research, writing, and Joseph Warren
We began our 4th grade research project a few days ago. Every student picks a topic that is related in some way to the American Revolution, which is what we're studying in Social Studies. Most kids choose a person to research, but some choose another topic, like a battle, or political cartoons.
We try to have each child read an easy book on their topic first. It gives them the big picture quickly, and it's a good place to begin taking notes without getting overwhelmed. Once everyone has a grasp of their topic, they write thesis statements. It makes a huge difference later on when they start organizing their notes if they understand what the importance of their person or topic is. After that book, we look for a chapter book, still not too difficult. Our school librarian convinced me several years ago that students get more out of nonfiction when they read material that is below their highest possible level. Once all the notes are taken, students organize them and then write a seven-paragraph report, with bibliography, which the librarian supervises.
Over the years I have collected juvenile books on many of the topics that my students choose. There are so many fascinating people from this time period, as well as other interesting topics. Of course, not every interesting person has had a juvenile biography written about them. Sometimes we find information about that person in other books, sometimes we have to go to the internet. It's a less than perfect solution, but oftentimes my students are passionate about these people.
So that is how today I found myself writing a biography of Joseph Warren. One of my 4th graders is a descendant of Dr. Joseph Warren and really wanted to research him. He is a kid who definitely needs the easier reading introductory book, so the sources on the Internet were not going to work for him. I'm still checking for chapters or section about Dr. Warren in other books (anybody know of any good sources?), but to begin, I searched the Internet and compiled a fairly reasonable biography.
You might be asking, "Who is Joseph Warren?" Or maybe you already Googled him. Dr. Warren was a physician in 18th century Boston who became a leader in the Massachusetts movement that began by protesting taxes and ended by starting a new country. It was Warren who uncovered the British plan to march to Concord, and he dispatched Paul Revere, as well as the lesser know William Dawes, on their midnight rides to alert the countryside. He became a major-general in the new American army and fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he was killed. He was 32 when he died.
My biography was a quick job, though I would like to develop it into something better - better researched and more thoughtfully written. I aspire to write children's nonfiction like David Adler does. His series of picture books biographies are so well-written and engaging. We use many of them as our first easy book in this research project. As I was putting together my Joseph Warren biography, I struggled with appropriate language for the age of my reader, how to give background information that is important to understanding the what the person was doing and why, how much information to give, and how to make it interesting. I love history and I love finding out all the interesting and convoluted information that aren't included in the basic histories. But, that only confuses the typical 4th grade, so I remind myself constantly to focus on the straightforward by interesting facts. I now think even more highly of David Adler.
I ended up with a decent biography that I believe will get my 4th grade student off to a good start. Maybe this summer I can do some more research and revise and polish my little biography of this very interesting and mostly forgotten man.
We try to have each child read an easy book on their topic first. It gives them the big picture quickly, and it's a good place to begin taking notes without getting overwhelmed. Once everyone has a grasp of their topic, they write thesis statements. It makes a huge difference later on when they start organizing their notes if they understand what the importance of their person or topic is. After that book, we look for a chapter book, still not too difficult. Our school librarian convinced me several years ago that students get more out of nonfiction when they read material that is below their highest possible level. Once all the notes are taken, students organize them and then write a seven-paragraph report, with bibliography, which the librarian supervises.
Over the years I have collected juvenile books on many of the topics that my students choose. There are so many fascinating people from this time period, as well as other interesting topics. Of course, not every interesting person has had a juvenile biography written about them. Sometimes we find information about that person in other books, sometimes we have to go to the internet. It's a less than perfect solution, but oftentimes my students are passionate about these people.
So that is how today I found myself writing a biography of Joseph Warren. One of my 4th graders is a descendant of Dr. Joseph Warren and really wanted to research him. He is a kid who definitely needs the easier reading introductory book, so the sources on the Internet were not going to work for him. I'm still checking for chapters or section about Dr. Warren in other books (anybody know of any good sources?), but to begin, I searched the Internet and compiled a fairly reasonable biography.
 |
| Dr. Joseph Warren |
My biography was a quick job, though I would like to develop it into something better - better researched and more thoughtfully written. I aspire to write children's nonfiction like David Adler does. His series of picture books biographies are so well-written and engaging. We use many of them as our first easy book in this research project. As I was putting together my Joseph Warren biography, I struggled with appropriate language for the age of my reader, how to give background information that is important to understanding the what the person was doing and why, how much information to give, and how to make it interesting. I love history and I love finding out all the interesting and convoluted information that aren't included in the basic histories. But, that only confuses the typical 4th grade, so I remind myself constantly to focus on the straightforward by interesting facts. I now think even more highly of David Adler.
I ended up with a decent biography that I believe will get my 4th grade student off to a good start. Maybe this summer I can do some more research and revise and polish my little biography of this very interesting and mostly forgotten man.
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