Any teacher should be able to model fluent reading for students. A  daily read aloud period could be added to the class schedule. Teachers sometmes implement this period after lunch or recess and use it as a time to bring the students back into the academic setting. Supported oral reading and repeated reading of connected texts could be very time consuming. This might be a great way to use parent or community volunteers in the classroom. Time managment is one of the primary reasons that I love the idea of readers theatre. I love dramatic interpretations of poems and narratives. I can see me using this in my classroom. It doesn’t require a lot of money, props, or extensive planning. Any teacher and her students could implement readers theatre to increase reading fluency.  There are a wealth of scripts available on the internet as well as instrucitons and tips for success.

Research shows that fluency matters….a lot. I want to help my students develop automaticity and fluency in their reading so that they can comprehend what they read and learn to love reading!

Academic language is especially hard for many students with reading and comprehension deficits. Even students who might read a fictional text with ease can struggle to understand the academic language that is required to read Social Studies or Science texts. English Language Learners who  understand English well enough to converse and interact with their English speaking peers may still lack academic vocabulary that is essential for success in the upper grades.

This article refers to “attack strategies”   that students can use to comprehend what they read. Students can be taught to break down words into their smaller parts known as morphemes. Students learn about common roots, and affixes in order to break up words for meaning. They are taught to search within a word for a segment that they recognize and understand. I believe that strong readers do these things automatically, but struggling readers can be taught to apply these strategies when they read.

In thinking about these strategies and some of the words used in this article I thought of a fun way to introduce and implement this in the classroom. Why not use the word “morphology” and the idea of “attack strategies” to interest kids in an exciting strategy that they can use? I can see a bulletin board with transformer-like machines attacking words to break them down for meaning and understanding. This action theme might engage kids and help them to remember the strategy and put it to use!

Book cover

“Peter and the Starcatchers” is an exciting book about pirates, secret treasure, and unlikely friendship. I love the humor in the book. Black Stache, the villian, is particulary able to prompt a laugh. He is is so very cunning and cruel, he is the perfect antagonist. My favorite line thus far, “Black Stache has no love for the queen, no love for women of any sort, except for his ma, and was truly sorry for the time he’s marooned her.” That cracked me up! The perfect bad guy would certainly maroon his own mother. The friendship between Peter and Molly is also intriging and I can’t wait to see how their bond strengthens and how they work together to stop Black Stache.

Wow, was this story exciting? Of course it was! It is so interesting to read prequels and see how authors imagine what came before. Black Stache is the perfect villain and it is so satisfying to see how Peter and Molly outsmart him as well as all of the other adults in this book. Children will like this book because they can see children being courageous and getting the best of the bad guys!  Not only is this story engaging, but there are so many opportunities for teachers to “teach” with this book. The vocabulary is fabulous and I love the way facts about piracy are interwoven within the fictional text. The book was also full of surprises! Who knew that Slank was one of “The Others?”

Of course this book will leave the reader wanting more! Will Peter see Molly again? Will Molly ever come back to the island? Does the Starstuff find a safe home? How do Peter and the boys fare living with the island natives? And that fairy…I bet she will provide lots of excitement and laughs! I think I might just read the sequel of this prequel, which is a prequel of …well you get the picture!

I think this book was one of the most imformative we have read! I loved the visual to show the sizes of the ships that pirates sailed. I didn’t realize that pirates wanted small ships and didn’t even want to fight. This book clears up a lot of misconceptios that people might have about pirates.

I was fascinated to learn that a pirate ship was the only true democracy between 1500 and 1750. How tempting it must have been for some men to join a band of pirates where at least they had a voice. Poor men were proably very tempted to leave a hard life on land to find adventure and freedom.

And who knew pirates got seasick? And have you ever thought about how pirate used the bathroom? Or pondered what they ate? This book answers these and many other questions!

Double Entry Diary Page 1

Double Entry Diary page 2

Double Entry Diary page 3

**My double entry diary is also hand written in my pirate notebook.

I am menacing and malicious.

I wonder if I will ever tire of villainy and violence.

I hear gulls screeching as if I have boarded their vessel.

I see an island made of gold, swimming in an ocean of buttery  rum.

I want to wade through my vast, valuable spoils.

I am menacing and malicious.

I pretend I am doing good.

I feel like I am King of the World.

I touch the silk of a maiden’s bed.

I worry secretly about dark death

I cry when I think of empty wooden chests.

I am menacing and malicious.

I understand that others find me distasteful.

I say that I deserve what I pillage.

I dream of resting among tall palms or in  dark distant caves; resting from my terrible travels.

I hope that the sea is calm and forgiving.

I am menacing and malicious.

1. Pirates did not swab the decks becuase they liked clean decks. They kept them wet all the time so that the boards would not dry up and shrink!

2. I learned that the knots on an actual rope were used to determine distance to travel. I knew sea distance was called “knots”, but had no idea why! Very interesting information!

3. Walking the plank is a myth! What?

4. Pirates liked small, fast ships, not big, fancy ships!!

5. Between 1500 and 1750 a pirate band was the only true democracy.

(More later)

The Not-So-Jolly Roger

I enjoyed this book about the infamous pirate Blackbeard!  I thought it was funny while still being informative. I liked the subtle humor and the allusions to other things (Sherlock).  These could be used to encourage students to look up information for further learning. Students could learn essential facts about Blackbeard while enjoying this fiction book.

While I appreciated this book and would not have a problem with my children reading it, I can honestly imagine some parents objecting to this book. It’s references to hell, alcohol, and murder would strike some people as too much for young children. I think this brings up the hard part of teaching a historical unit to elementary age children. It’s hard to know how much to talk about or bring out. I think it is important to be historically accurate and let’s face it, the history of pirates is not clean and neat! I like being honest with kids, but some parents might object. I know a girl (no lie) who would not say the word “dead” in from of her children when they were young. Yes, this was crazy to me, but there are parents like her! I guess I wonder how to handle parents who have very strict guidelines about what their children read.

Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter

This is a super informative book written in an engaging  journal style. While the book is fiction, it offers such great facts and details about the dangerous lives of pirates. I think the pictures are excellent and allow the reader to see inside the inner workings of a pirate ship. Children will be drawn to the story or a young boy who becomes an accidental pirate. His situation is hard and unfair, but the reader sees him persevere through very difficult circumstances.

Again, I think a amall number of parents would object to this book. I hate to keep bringing this up, but I think we need to think abou this topic and be prepared to choose and defend books in our classroom. I think the book offers a realistic view of pirate life, but it is harsh in places, showing pictures of floggings and leg amputaions. As before, we confront the issue of teaching a harsh period of history in an authentic way, while protecting children from the harsh reality of life (past and present). I think we have to know the school and communtiy where we teach, but also know how to fight for a book that we believe are beneficial to our student’s learning.

Older readers are often ready for this model of comprehension, vocabulary, text structures, and text features becuase they have moved beyond simply working hard to decode words. Teachers do not ask comprehension questions as they read; they model their own thinking as they comprehend the text. This is great for vocabulary too because teachers can show students good strategies for figuring out the meaning of words in texts. Teachers model the use of context clues, the breakdown of word parts and using  other resources for determining meaning.  Teaching students to recognize various ways that text can be organized can help students to look for patterns and realize what the writer is trying to convey. I realized some strategies that I have tried to teach my own children as  I read. Utilizing text features seems natural to accomplished, adult readers, but to children it is not so obvious. I know with my own children I would remind them when using text books to read the headings to narrow down a search for information or look at bold faced words for important ideas and answers to questions. We cannot assume that our students understand how to “think about their thinking.” It takes time to start to think like a writer. One teacher in this study stated this truth about her students, “They begin to see the connections between reading like a writer and writing like a reader. It’s very powerful.”

This seems like an obvious thing for teachers to do as some of these teachers expressed, but it seems to be more natural for some people than others. Even if we are interested in this idea, we must use these research proven steps to ensure that it is a meaningful activity for our children!