Even though not all of my fifth grade students are high achievers, I am concerned even more about their need to develop positive attitudes toward learning and themselves.We live in difficult times and I continually feel responsible for providing my students with information about the risks, choices, and challenges they face now and will encounter in the future. What books can you suggest that will inspire today's students to meet challenges with confidence?
Challenges, the word alone is loaded and charged with political correctness. It wasn't when we were growing up. How amazing that one word can measure how quickly our culture has changed.
What challenges did we worry about? Failing a test, winning a race in P.E., facing a bully on the playground, getting your bra snapped at the water fountain, or worst of all, telling our parents we'd been caught chewing gum in class.
Now challenges are everywhere and the all the stakes have been heightened. A playground bully might pull out a gun and sex education includes warnings of how unprotected sex could lead to death. And then there's the term of "challenged" children...whether in behavioral , physical, or learning struggles. There's so much more children need to know about just to survive.
What about teachers' challenges? Issues as weighty as juggling the challenges of individual students in overcrowded classrooms, placating overbearing parents. Not to mention the bother of small, aggravating challenges like making your allotted paper last until the end of the year.
Books can help. They can open discussions so that children can voice the worries they have about the challenges that face them. They can show heroes and heroines who take on difficulties and persevere. Maybe most important they can provide an island of safety where for a short time, classes can forget the challenges surrounding them, and find comfort together. Warning: Be prepared for powerful feelings as these books grab the emotions as much as the mind!
Suse MacDonald, well-known for her strong graphics, unites story with picture in Nanta's Lion (Morrow, $15.00; ages 5-7). When the men of Nanta's Maasai village search for a lion, young Nanta initiates a hunt of her own. She walks through a grove of thorn trees, seeks from high atop a termite mound, and creeps through long grasses, ""but there was no lion." The book is a great teaching tool, as Masaai habitats and animals are presented within the context of story. But the best part is the fun children will have participating in the choruses and discovering the surprise buried in the book. It's cleverly designed to hide the lion in turned pages. Nanta may not find him, but here's betting your students will! Beyond Nanta's Lion: In the middle of the Lion King fever that's infected young students, this book gives fresh images and involves young children in their own search. With Nanta to lead them, students in the early grades will gain a more real-life view of the African plains. This book is a perfect fit for K-2 units on animals, habitats, or Africa and provides great departure for students to compare their lives with Nanta's. The book provides enjoyable practice with visual perception skills as well. Children can extend their delight by exploring for themselves the collage techniques, creating jungle animal puppets by using similar techniques.
Estella Condra's See the Ocean (Ideals, $14.95; ages 6-9) tells the story of Nellie, who has loved the ocean for as long as she can remember. Nellie, a self-contained child, is quiet compared to her two rowdy older brothers who jostle and compete constantly. While driving to a beach vacation, both want to be the first to spy the ocean? But it's Nellie, who quietly claims she sees the ocean despite a thick veil of fog. Her brothers accuse her of cheating and only then does she softly, lyrically, begin, "The ocean is an old, old man born at the beginning of time." There follows one of the most poetic descriptions of ocean you'll ever read. One that will stun you as much as it stuns Nellie's family. Silent for a long time, they acknowledge her truth and then another that may surprise readers... she can't see. You'll want to go back and reread immediately, watching again how the author's careful detailing adds to her story, how she's filled it with smells, sights and feelings of ocean and beach and how right it is when Nellie's mother tells her sons, "Though your sister's eyes are blind, she can see with her mind." Linda Crockett-Blassingame's soft oil colors and evocative images make this book equally satisfying in illustration.
Beyond See the Ocean Nellie reminded me of field tripping with Jennifer, a first grader who is blind. I suddenly found myself experiencing the bus trip and park in totally new ways "through her eyes". As more and more schools adopt inclusion models, it's mandatory to have books like this on hand to help classmates respect and appreciate students who are differently abled. But the characters need to be real and individual, like Nellie, and the writing poetic and strong, like Condra's, to avoid the preaching of so many books for children. If book is sensitive and unique, like this one, it's more likely to generate meaningful discussions. This is also an essential book to add to already existing K-2 units on the five senses. Try enriching the sharing of this book with a lesson on braille and sign language; better yet, invite a blind or deaf guest to your class.
New in paperback is A Boy Becomes a Man At Wounded Knee written by Ted Wood with eight-year-old Wanbli Numpa Afraid of Hawk (Walker, $6.95; ages 8-11). Wanbli Numpa Afraid of Hawk, an Oglala Lakota who lives with his family on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, has grown up hearing stories of how his great-grandfather was present at the horrible massacre of Wounded Knee. He's learned from Medicine men that this battle broke the sacred hoop of unity for the Lakota and will be mended only by traveling the path five times on five years ending on the hundredth anniversary of Wounded Knee. The book, based on Wanbli Numpa's journal, recounts the difficult travel he insisted he take with his people, moving through fear, cold, and pain to accomplish his desired goal. The forty-two page picture story book blends the telling of history through Native American eyes with the meeting of custom and current and one individual's determination to make a difference. The retelling of the battle is quite intense, but needs to be understood to create context for Wanbli Numpa's story.
This is the kind of book that will anchor down history for children. When they see through the eyes of a specific character who has attached a real meaning to an historical event, it gains significance. One of its other attributes is using a child to show how you can take action against something that angers you. Teachers could fuel discussions by comparing and contrasting Wanbli Numpa's story with biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr., Anne Frank, Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela. Less able readers in this age group can share the popular story of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese in Teammates by Peter Golenbock. Flow charts and webbing based on book comparisons will challenge and inspire students to plan and act on positive difference they can make in their own classes, families, or neighborhoods.
Challenges are seen in a more comic light in Louis Sachar's Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger (Morrow, $15.00; ages 8-12). For the unfamiliar, Wayside School was misbuilt, it's a "thirty-story building with one room on each floor, except there is no nineteenth floor." For the uninitiated, Sacher is one of the funniest, zaniest, most-loved reads for the older elementary set. In this recent release, Ms. Jewls is having a baby and her students face a string of the most bizarre substitutes you can imagine. Sacher walks a balance beam of bathroom humor and slapstick right into kids' hearts...and endears himself to teachers who love reading his work aloud.
One of the things we desperately need to provide for the children in our classrooms is the relief of humor. Coming at challenge from a comic angle is a great way to broaden the definition. This book is a model and great departure point for fun. The wackiness of this story can lead to all types of divergent thinking activities based on Wayside School's unusual mode of operation. Math and science projects could involve students in developing blueprints or 3-D models for their own versions of school designs. Another motivating option is to challenge students' creativity to write individually in their journals or collaboratively in groups to describe how they would deal with substitutes like Mr. Gorf or Miss Nogard. At this age, students will readily rise to the challenge of imitating Sachar's humorous style and originality.
Too often children think that inventions come magically and immediately. Charlotte Foltz Jone's Mistakes That Worked (Delacorte, $9.95; ages 8-12) dispels that myth. As the author tell s the story behind inventions as varied as Silly Putty and Ice Cream cones, she shows how serendipity, accident and challenge play big parts in the scientific process. All forty inventions have kid-appeal and the stories are told with animated playfulness.
Sponsor an "Invention Convention" for aspiring inventors in your classroom. Challenge students to plan, develop, and experiment with their own potentially useful contraptions (e.g. an automatic pet feeder, remote control denture scrubber, or stationery indoor roller blades). Writing brochures and/or videotaping commercials to promote these inventions will provide literacy connections for these applied science activities. Invite parents and community to participate in judging these inventions on a variety of merits: most promising, best design, most useful, most creative.
Avi, The Barn (Orchard, $13.95; ages 9 and up; young hero faces caring for his parent who's suffered a stroke)
Rochelle Bunnett, Friends in the Park (Ages 2-5; Checkerboard Press, $7.95; children of differing abilities play in the park)
Robert Coles, The Story of Ruby Bridges (Scholastic, $13.95; ages 5-9; heroine faces the challenge of integration)
Jane Cowen-Fletcher, Mama Zooms (Scholastic, $14.95; ages 2-6; an introduction to disabilities for the youngest children)
Jean Craighead George, Everglades (HarperCollins, $14.95; ages 6 and up; a positive view of how children can transform a damaged ecosystem)
Jeanne Gehert, The Don't-give-up Kid (Verbal Images Press, $13.95, $4.95; the challenge of learning disabilities)
Jeanne Gehret, Eagle Eyes: A Child's Guide to Paying Attention (both from Verbal Images Press, $13.95, $8.95; challenge of Attention Deficit Disorder)
Jill Krementz, How It Feels to Live With a Physical Disability (Simon and Schuster, $18.00; ages 8 and up; twelve children write of their challenges and triumphs)
Patricia Polacco, My Ol' Man (Philomel, $15.95; ages 7 and up, family faces the challenge of unemployment)
Bebe Faas Rice, The Year the Wolves Came (Dutton, $14.99; ages 10 and up; heroine faces dealing with her mother's death, compounded by the fact her mother was a werewolf!)
Martin Sandler, Immigrants (HarperCollins,$19.95; ages 7 and up; millions of people who "faced enormous challenges and overcame them" to find "freedom and opportunity in a new land.)
Connecting with the Past by Cynthia Stokes Brown, Heinemann, 1994. $17.00. This reference provides extensions for A Boy Becomes a Man At Wounded Knee as middle school students are encouraged to become historians by examining actual historical artifacts, investigating events, and researching literature.
Alternatives to Worksheets: Motivational Reading and Writing Activities Across the Curriculum . Grades K-4. by Karen Bauer and Rosa Drew, Creative Teaching Press, 1992. ?
Suggestions for a variety of products and activities indicate many ways for students to demonstrate their mastery of concepts and competence with skills. From constructing mobiles to writing travel brochures, students can prove their proficiencies and creativity through these multiple projects.
Everyday Science by Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone, Wiley, 1995. $9.95.
Students will enjoy creating useful items they can use every day by following the directions provided in this perfect follow-up to Mistakes that Worked. Diagrams and clear directions help students with each experiment.
Travels Across the Curriculum: Models for Interdisciplinary Learning. Grades K-6. by Steven Tehudi, Scholastic, $7.95.
Anecdotal experiences with implementing and researching integrated instruction are related by classroom teachers and researchers in education.