SHARING CULTURES WITH BOOKS

by Karen Leggett

The 2014 winners of the Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA) have been honored this month in Washington, D.C., for writing the best children’s and young adult books on Africa published in the United States. The awards were started by Africa Access and the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association in 1991.

This year’s winners are:

• Desmond Tutu & Douglas Abrams, A.G. Ford (illus.) Desmond and the Very Mean Word  (Candlewick)

• Anna Cottrell & Agbotadua Togbi Kumassah, Kwabena Poku (illus) Once Upon a Time in Ghana (Afram)

• Monica Edinger, Robert Byrd (illus) Africa is My Home:Child of the Amistad (Candlewick)

• Mubina Kirmani, Tony Siema (illus.) Bundle of Secrets: Savita Returns Home (Create Space)

In social studies and language arts classes for any grade level, these books and the many previous award winners offer a perfect opportunity for cultural immersion and compare/contrast writing exercises on a very personal level.  

Ask each child to select one of the award-winning books - encourage your school library to begin collecting the CABA winners - or use other titles that focus on children or families in another country. As they read, children should keep a 3 x 5 card with notes that will enable them to answer three questions. The notes may simply be single words that will jog their memory later.

1.     How is your daily life similar to children in the book?

2.     What is different about your ordinary days and theirs?

3.     If you went to the country portrayed in the book, what would you most want to see or do?

Children may discover different ways of cooking a meal or cleaning clothes but they may also find what they have in common.  During a Skype session I moderated with American and Egyptian fourth graders, an American boy asked, “What is your favorite food?”  An Egyptian girl answered without hesitation, “pizza and hamburgers,” bringing surprised giggles and a palpable sense of connected-ness between children thousands of miles apart. 

If you want to expand the experience, find authors in other countries who want to do the same by visiting Skype in the Classroom or Global Friends.  The Africa Access website also has many teaching resources.

http://africaaccessreview.org/lessons/

Fables Teach Writing Lessons in Purpose, Clarity

by Mary Quattlebaum

Aesop’s Fables is a classic that should be part of every home and school library, not only for its centuries-long influence upon literature but for its ever-timely, pithy points about life.  When used as writing models, these stories can inspire new versions of old favorites, help writers learn to revise for purpose and clarity, and connect with Common Core standards.

* Have available in classroom or share one or more collections of Aesop’s fables.  What do students notice about the writing and illustrating style of each?  Depending on publication date, some collections will be more overtly didactic than others.  For an especially fine version that eschews the tacked-on “message,” you might share the picture book Aesop’s Fables (minedition, 2013), which includes 13 favorites and quirky, intriguing illustrations by Ayano Imai.

* Share several tales with students and talk about their history, as being credited to an ancient Greek storyteller named Aesop.  Discuss the nature of fables as being stories, often with animal characters, designed to teach a life lesson.  Have students figure out the purpose or point of each tale.  What is the “life lesson” being taught?  How does the author convey that without tacking on the moral or telling the reader what it is? What do the animals do?

* Ask students to find examples of these tales, either as book re-tellings or as used in popular culture (advertisements, decorations on clothing, etc.).  Ask students why they think these tales continue to be re-told or referenced.  Why do they still speak to us?

* Have students write their own short fables, following this process:  (1) write down the life lesson you are trying to teach; (2) choose one or two animals that might help you to show this and jot down their personalities; (3) write a fable in which animals “act out” this life lesson, with action and dialogue; (4) revise, asking yourself if you showed how the animal learned the lesson; (5) share with a peer writer for feedback on word choice, clarity, etc.; (6) revise again; and (7) draw a picture, which can be as funny, surreal, or straightforward as you like.

* Compile the individual fables/pictures into a class booklet or display on bulletin board.

* Teens and adults might enjoy take-offs on the animal-fable form, especially David Sedaris’s hilarious Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary (2010).

 www.maryquattlebaum.com

HISTORY WITH A HISS (AND A BARK AND A SQUEAK)

by Mary Quattlebaum

Playful prompts can help students to explore history and writing in ways that reinforce lessons in both.  Applicable at any time during the year, this exercise can be especially appropriate for Presidents’ Day.

1.  Tell kids about the pets owned by U.S. Presidents.  George Washington had a favorite horse, Nelson, whom he rode when the British surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown in 1781, which ended the Revolutionary War.  Abraham Lincoln’s sons kept rabbits, goats, and a turkey named Jack at the White House.  Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon, and Theodore Roosevelt’s six kids happily tended dogs, cats, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, a badger, and a bear during their father’s administration.

2.  Read and talk about First Dog Fala by Elizabeth Van Steenwyk, illustrated by Michael Montgomery (Peachtree 2008).  Fala was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s beloved Scottish terrier.  She lived with him during his presidency from 1940 to his death in 1945; and her bronze sculpture sits beside that of her master in the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC.  Ask the class what a presidential pet like Fala might notice.  How might he describe the president and an important historical event? Would a pet’s perception be different from what people might notice?  Why or why not?

3.  History/Writing Prompt #1:  Choose a President or ask students to choose a favorite to research.  Have children research the particular President’s important accomplishments as well as worries, mistakes, or low points of his term(s).  Ask students to take the point of view of the President’s pet and, as that pet, to write about what they notice/feel about the President and about that historical event.  Or they might write from the perspective of a “hidden” animal (spider, mouse).

4.  History/Writing Prompt #2:  Choose a historical event and discuss its importance with the class.  Talk about what happened.  Then ask students to become an animal witnessing that historical event or living during a certain point in time (an ox pulling a wagon West, the horse of a Pony Express rider, a dog welcoming his soldier master home from a specific war).  Have students write from the point of view of that animal and describe what the animal saw, heard, smelled, and felt. 

http://www.maryquattlebaum.com/Mary_Quattlebaum/Welcome.html

IF YOU ELECT ME

by Laura Krauss Melmed

Last week I worked with a sixth grade class of about twenty students in a single session poetry workshop.  When I introduced our topic, Hurricane Sandy, some of the boys said they wanted to write about the election instead, since after all, it was the morning of November 6.  The students even started calling out some spontaneous, funny rhyming lines on the subject.   But feeling rather tense about the possible outcome of the election and also wanting to stick to my lesson plan, I had them stay with the topic of the storm.

Once the election was over, I began playing with the question of how it could have become the focal point of a lesson in creative writing.   What if the students were presented with a set of election rivals, but instead of real politicians like President Obama and Mitt Romney, they were funny combinations of rivals such as Cat and Dog vying for Best Pet, or Moon and Sun competing for Best Celestial Body, or Broccoli and Candy Bar facing off for Best Food.  Students could break into two teams, each tasked with preparing materials for one of the candidates.   It would be each team’s job to convince the “voters” that their candidate should win by producing materials such as a campaign slogan, a stump speech, a poster and maybe even a (non-negative!) TV ad.  To accomplish this, students would have to combine creative thinking with humor and the art of persuasive writing.  To conclude, each team might present their materials to another class to be followed by a mock election.  

But getting back to last week’s workshop on the storm, here is the poem my group produced together: 

Loosen the twisting, powerful drops that splash

Loosen the monstrous gale of the wolf

Loosen the sound of the drums

Let the shredding winds go free!

www.laurakraussmelmed.com