NightJohn

An idea for using this book in the classroom is to use it during the month of February which is "Black History Month". I would attempt to create a small Jackdaw with this book showing pictures and artifacts from both American and Canadian history and their individual treatment of the African American/Canadian people. I am not completely familiar with the Canadian history of the African Canadian people but the American history is well documented. What I do know is that in the Atlantic provinces there is a large population of the African Canadian people and from my understanding, they were treated with disdain as well by the dominate people. I would want to explore this idea fully before making more of a comment, but this is one idea for this book

Frog and Toad are Friends

This is an excellent first novel for young readers by Arnold Lobel. It has been used for a grade 2 or 3 reading level. In the story it tells of a friendship between a frog and a toad and the adventures and misadventures between the two friends.
What is unique about this story is that it can be used as a center piece of a unit on frogs and toads, which is part of the great 2 and 3 curriculum. One can explore real frogs and real toads, their habitat, and their lifecycle. At the same time this story explores the ideas surrounding what makes a good friend and why friendship is important.
Although I have not read the entire series, I am aware there is a number of different Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. Has anyone else read any of the other books and care to share their thoughts and feelings on any of the books. Please feel free to share.

A Reader's Theater Treasury of Stories

This resource book I found in Vancouver. It is by Win and Carl Braun. It is what the title implies with a variety of different levels of stories from grade 2 level to grade 6 or 7. There are 12 stories with a number of different reading parts. There is one story that has 14 reading parts, but most of them have 4 to 8 speaking parts.
Most of the stories are the "classic" stories such as "The Three Bears" or "The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg".
This appears to be a good collection to get us started-especially for someone like myself who is never sure where he/she wants to start.

This Little Piggy's Book of Manners

This is a book on manners, framed around the children's poem "This little piggy went to market. this little piggy ..." It talks about manners such as saying please and thank you, eating with your mouth closed, waiting your turn, speaking in appropriate tones amongst other manners. This would be for a pre-kindergarten to grade 1 book. The IRP's would be the social relationships of school.
Although the author, Kathryn Madeline Allen's intentions are good, I really cannot recommend this book. I found the illustrations by Nancy Wolff confusing- they are very bright and very cluttered. There are many characters in the book speaking, which makes the layout even more confusing. I also was offended because the "good pig", the pig with good manners was always the female pig, while the "bad pig" - the pig lacking manners was the male pig. At the end of the story the author refers to the readers in this manner: "At times little piggies will practice good manners (although sometimes they seem to forget them). But if they remember the piggies nearby might say they are pleased to have met them!" I am not sure if the author was saying that the readers are piggies. Not the most flattering opinion.
Does anyone know of any books that do a better job in reminding children about good manners? This could be for any age group.

Literature in the School-article review

Hello,
This article is very interesting. It has many ideas within it to help us as teachers create a literature friendly classroom. Even ideas that we may have had, such as bringing in historical documents and photographs to help us supplement our teaching has a name -Jackdaws. If we did not know the name for doing this we now do- which will help us in the future because we can search out ideas related to Jackdaws on the internet. I googled the name, and found one site www.jackdaw.com . There are a few pictures and ideas on my first glance through the site. For most of us, we will probably need to go through a variety of different sites to produce an interesting collection of artifacts.
There are other ideas within the article that bare mentioning. I find articles such as this one important because of the type of lay out the author or editor has chosen to use. At a quick glance we can gain ideas for our own classrooms. For example bulletin boards. We don't have to read the entire article to find the mention of bulletin boards, we can quickly look through and find the information. As teachers, time is precious and we may need to gain ideas quickly to help run our classrooms.
I know many of us did not have time to read all the articles for detail, but I urge everyone to glance through this article for some ideas. It's time well spent.

Young Man and the Sea

I have just finished reading this novel, and it is excellent. Not to be confused with the Ernest Hemingway classic "The Old Man and the Sea", this is a story about a 12 year old boy Skiff who must contend with an emotionally drained father (the boy's mother had recently passed away), a rich bully and the rigors of the sea to produce enough money to get the family boat Mary Rose repaired. At first Skiff traps for lobsters, but he will eventaully go after the biggest fish in the sea, the blue fin tuna. I will not tell you what happens, but it is a very good story. It is written from the first person (Skiff's point of view) and so there are some uses of slang in it.
I enjoyed it because of my fasination with boats and the sea- not having sea salt air in Prince George is difficult for me. I feel that if the author would add more detail and richness to the story he could compete with the Hemingway classic (I have not read the Hemingway story but would like to in May).
This story would appeal to many boys because of the problems that Skiff is presented with. He has to use his brains, but also is not afraid to use blunt strength to help solve the obstacles that he is faced.
This story is being used for a grade 5 novel study. I admit that the novel has been assigned as the novel of choice, it is a story that I would not have thought of until my cooperating teacher said this is the story she would like to use.
If you have not read this story and you like the "sea life", please give this story a try.