How Do We Explain Difficult Topics?

Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember tells the story of September 11, 2001 in Arlington, Virginia through a tapestry of poems. Each narrative poem discusses the terrorist attack on the Pentagon from the perspective of a young person. The narrators all have their own story of that day and its aftermath.  

Seven-year-old Henry waits for his mother. Almost all the other children have been picked up early from elementary school. He’s confused and aware that the adults around him have been crying. Henry says, “Grown-ups talk to each other, but not to kids.”

Read Henry's poem and discuss: How should adults explain frightening news events? Should they be direct with kids or should they try to protect them? What can adults do or say to make kids feel safe when current events are disturbing?

Sixteen-year-old Calista is taken aback when the little boy she is babysitting tells her he saw a hole in the Pentagon. Calista doesn’t know how to explain to a three year old something she doesn’t really understand herself.

Writing Prompt: Imagine someone younger asks you about a frightening news event. Would you explain it? Or change the subject? Write a dialogue between Calista and Dylan about what happened at the Pentagon on September 11^th. Or if you prefer, write a dialogue between yourself and a younger sibling to explain a troubling news event.

For more activities and ideas for using Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember, please visit my website to download the full Teacher’s Guide.

BIO: Jacqueline Jules is the author of fifty books for young readers including the Zapato Power series, the Sofia Martinez series, My Name is Hamburger, The Porridge-Pot Goblin, Never Say a Mean Word Again, and Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence. The resources page of her website has many activities for educators and parents. Visit www.jacquelinejules.com 

TAG YOUR DREAMS!!

 

Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence celebrates being active, reaching goals, and learning limits. The poems employ figurative language devices such as alliteration, simile, metaphor, repetition, personification, and onomatopoeia. Each poem tells a story about a young person discovering skills, strengths, and dreams through activity. Team sports are included along with playground games, biking, sledding, swimming, hiking, and simply twirling in the rain.  

To help teachers use Tag YourDreams as a classroom resource, I have developed a teacher's guide with questions to discuss, ways to examine the poetry, and writing prompts. 

To give you a taste, please see the poem and questions below:

TAG YOUR DREAMS

Discuss!

What are your dreams for the future?

Examine the Poem!

Identify verbs which refer to the game of tag, e.g., chase, running, reaching.

Do dreams have strong legs? Is this personification— attributing human characteristics to something that is not human?

Write!

Write about your dreams. Does anything stand in your way? Are you confident you will succeed or are you afraid of failure?

The entire teacher’s guide can be found on my website. 

I am available for virtual visits with students. Please contact me through my website at www.jacquelinejules.com

 

Happy Reading!

 

Finding Your Own Forest

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

This is the season to take a sketchpad or journal outside, walk a trail or just lie in the grass. Watching. Writing. Drawing.

That’s what Lulu Delacre did before writing ¡Olinguato De la A al la Z! Descubriendo el bosque nublado (Unveiling the Cloud Forest) . She traveled high up in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador to find the elusive little mammal, the olinguito. Lulu’s book was inspired by a Washington Post article about the discovery of the olinguito . Her journey to the cloud forest of Ecuador resulted in a fascinating, elegant bilingual book filled with a whole alphabet of wildlife – and many ideas to spark summer writing and drawing.

1.    Look at a newspaper and find an article that inspires you to write a short story or a poem. Illustrate your story.

2.    During your own walk outside, try to find something that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Take the first five words on your list and write a story using all the words. It might be a very silly story!

3.    If you are in a place where you can pick up leaves or twigs from the ground, bring some back to use in your illustrations. Lulu used real leaves to get the texture just right for the background in these pictures (now on display at Strathmore Mansion in Rockville, Maryland.

4.     Find the zoologist hiding on every page of ¡Olinguito!  Go to the library or use the Internet to find other people who work with animals. Choose one and write a paragraph about what that person does.  Maybe you can even interview someone who works in your community.

Need more ideas?  Here’s the Lee and Low Teacher’s Guide for ¡Olinguito!

You never know where an outdoor adventure could lead on paper and in your heart.  Lulu says she “came back from my trip amazed at the interconnectedness among all the life-forms in the cloud forest, and with a deep respect for what these rich places mean to humans and the earth.”

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

WRITING FROM PICTURES

 by Jacqueline Jules

Young writers can be inspired by their own illustrations. Many primary writing curriculums instruct students to draw a picture first and then write a story to go along with it.

In my picture book, No English, two girls overcome a language barrier by drawing pictures of their families and labeling them. They learn to talk to each other through pictures after a misunderstanding. 

While I had not originally intended to create a model suitable for writing instruction, No English does provide a fictional example of using pictures to communicate.

A teacher’s guide is available for No English on my website. This graphic will give you an easy template to use after reading the book to your students.

Before using the template, do a little brainstorming with your students. Ask them to draw their family in a group activity such as walking the dog or building a snowman. Make a list of activities families might do together. While a simple picture labeling family members can be an effective prompt for kindergartners, encouraging second and third graders to depict a family scene will produce more interesting stories. Students can be encouraged to add an emotional response to the family activity and other details of the experience. You may also want to ask your students to create a first draft of their picture in pencil and then color it in after their story is completed. Happy Writing!

www.jacquelinejules.com