Cooperative Learning with Brave Like My Brother

by Jacqueline Jules

As a teacher, I was thrilled to discover Brave Like My Brother by Marc Tyler Nobleman. This slim title will make a perfect read-aloud and writing model for the upper elementary classroom. Told entirely in letters, Brave Like My Brother depicts a touching relationship between two brothers writing to each other during World War II. Joe’s letters home to younger brother Charlie share a fascinating account of an American soldier’s life abroad. The portrayal of war is neither too sugar coated nor too frightening for upper elementary students. Charlie’s letters to Joe share his struggles with a bully at home in Cleveland. The book’s large font and 100 page text should make it attractive to reluctant readers. 

Letter writing is a wonderful vehicle for sharing information. After reading Brave Like My Brother, students could work in pairs, each one taking on the role of a person separated from a loved one by war or circumstance. The letters could involve research into either a historical era or geographic region. It could be an exciting cooperative project. Here are some suggestions.

Student 1: Write letters to a sister/brother/friend describing your life as you travel to a new country and build a new life.

Student 2: Describe your life at home in response to these letters.

Student 1: Write letters home to a sister/brother/friend while you are at summer camp or on a vacation.

Student 2: Describe your life back home in response to these letters.

Student 1: Write letters to a friend during a move to a state across the country.

Student 2: Respond to the letters with information on how things are going in your friend’s old city.

Student 1: Write letters to a parent/sister/brother who is away on business, deployed, or incarcerated.

Student 2: Respond to the letters, explaining your current life situation.

Student 1: Write letters to a grandparent asking what life was like for them and explaining what your life is like.

Student 2: Write letters answering your grandchild’s questions.

In an age, when most people communicate by email or text rather than speaking on the phone, the ability to express ourselves by means of a letter is more important than ever. A cooperative letter writing exercise will give your students practice in both writing and essential life skills.

www.jacquelinejules.com

MAKING THE MOST OF A FIELD TRIP

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

This week I’m sharing a book for you – the grown-ups – because it is filled with such good ideas for writing and learning.  When Uma Krishnaswami wasn’t busy writing her own children’s books, she wrote Beyond the Field Trip: Teaching and Learning in Public Places.

Uma wants students to be “actively engaged as learners, framing questions and working toward greater levels of understanding,” whether they are visiting a museum, a park or just the center of town. 

She recommends planning backwards.

“Figure out what the ultimate product of the study will be. Then work back to find all the activities you will need to use to get there. What you are doing is building bridges between what students know already, and what you anticipate they will know when you have completed the sequence of activities. The place you visit is one ingredient in this process. The visit is not in itself the objective.”

Let’s start with one of Uma’s own picture books, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! about a tree whose role and importance in the center of a village changes as the village becomes crowded, people age, roads are built and everyone is in a hurry.

For one old man, the tree reminds him of stories his father and mother and grandfather told him long ago.

“Even today, those stories are told and retold,

as the traffic rattles past

going from here to there and back again.

But sometimes the drivers of cards

and buses and trucks

and vans and tractors

                              Stop and stay a while…

                                                            and listen.”

So after you’ve all read Out of the Way, have the children think about their own town or neighborhood.  Ask them to write about or draw something that has changed – a new building, a different store, a new park. Ask the students to write some questions they could ask people who lived in the neighborhood before these changes.

Make a plan to visit a park, the library or even a nearby mall. Ask children to write a description of what they see while they are right there. Encourage them to observe carefully, soaking in as many visual and sensory experiences as possible. Try to arrange a meeting with some older residents - perhaps from a nearby senior center, older staff members at the school or family members of the students - so students can ask questions…and listen.  Record the conversations if possible. 

Back in the classroom, the children can each write their own paragraph or poem or draw a picture recalling what the older residents had to say. This can also be a group writing project combining the recollections of all the students. Uma notes that “cooperative rather than competitive activities in all phases of a place-based learning program will make for more authentic and participatory learning on everyone’s part.”    If there is time for a larger production, plan a celebration including the older residents to share the students’ stories, poems and pictures. As Uma notes, “outcome events crown your program.”

http://childrensbookguild.org/karen-leggett-abouraya

READER'S THEATER (Part 2)

by Mary Quattlebaum

In my last post (June 4, 2012), I mentioned Reader’s Theater as a great motivator for classroom reading and writing.  And since this is summer, it can also be a playful camp or family experience. Both the group performance and no-need-to-memorize aspects take the stress out of the reading/performing experience for most kids.

And they also love the writing part.

Storyteller/children’s author Aaron Shepherd offers detailed tips on adapting a picture book or story for Reader’s Theater. Here are the basic steps:  

1.  Look for a book (or scenes) with dialogue, action, and a number of characters.  Are there places where you might “create” a role to be filled by a large number of kids so that everyone might participate, not just the relatively fewer kids with bigger roles as primary characters.  A pet who makes noises, perhaps?  A crowd that repeats a particular refrain?  Or a repeating sound effect?

2.  Break kids into teams of 2 or 3 people each.

3.  Assign each team a section of the story.

4.  Have them identify narration vs. dialogue and then identify each bit of dialogue as belonging to a specific character.

 5.  Assign roles of narrator(s) and various characters.

6.  Read and have fun!

But how, you might ask, are students doing any writing if, essentially, they are adapting an already written text?

1.  They are learning to read more analytically for certain elements, in this case dialogue, narration, and gesture.

2.  They are making careful choices as to what/how/how much to include (for example, details of setting or characterization).

3.  They might take a story they’ve written earlier in the year and adapt it for Reader’s Theater, gaining insight into how to improve that first story in the process.

Adults writing for children can also benefit from #3, learning to create more dynamic picture books and stories by examining, performing, and then revising the dialogue/story in various drafts.

I recently saw a performance of a powerful book of poems, I Lay My Stitches Down by Cynthia Grady (Eerdmans 2012).  These poems are in the voices of fictional slaves of the 19^th century, which students took on at the middle school where Grady is a librarian. The resulting performance was stunning.

http://www.maryquattlebaum.com/