Point of View With a Twist

 There are so many great books out there for teaching Point of View and perspective. When I talk to my students about point of view, I always read to them numerous picture books to show them that  a creative story can come from changing around the point of view of a familiar story, or writing a story from an unusual perspective.

I always read to my students, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka. This is a story of the three little pigs from the point of view of the big bad wolf.  They love this story!

I then have my students read the original version of Little Red Riding Hood. In groups of four they pick a character (the mom, little red riding hood, grandma or the wolf) out of a hat. They then have the re-write the story from the character’s (that they chose) perspective.

To share, I have break into groups and have all the grandma’s share, all the little red-riding hoods share, together. They enjoy hearing how other people wrote their story form the same character’s point of view.

Other good picture books I use for point of view and perspective:

The Fourth Little Pig by Teresa Celsi

Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School by Mark Teague

The Great Gracie Chase: Stop That Dog by Cynthia Rylant

The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry

Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg

Wolf Who Cried Boy by Bob Hartman.

Point of View Poem

When teaching my student’s point of view and perspective, I always read to them Shel Silverstein’s Point of View Poem:

Point of View

By Shel Silverstein

Thanksgiving dinner’s sad and thankless

Christmas dinner’s dark and blue

When you stop and try to see it

From the turkey’s point of view.

Sunday dinner isn’t sunny

Easter fests are just bad luck.

When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck.

Oh how I once loved tuna salad pork and lobsters, lamb chops too.

‘Til I stopped and looked at dinner

From the dinner’s point of view.

Then I have my student’s write their own point of view poem. I tell them to be creative and write from an interesting point of view. For example, a pencil(as the lead is being used, it goes down and it gets eaten in the sharpener), a sports ball (basketball, soccer, football, hockey puck etc..), animal (Iditarod dogs). When they share their poems it is always fun to hear their perspectives!!

Students Sharing Books (The reading continues!)

Kids listen to kids, and are very influenced by each other. With that in mind I have two ways to get kids excited about reading, talking about book they have read, and sharing books that they like!  I find that so many times my students say they don’t like reading, but in fact they really just don’t know good books for them (and I believe that there is a book for everyone!)

After my students have read an independent book, there are a few ways that I have them share the books that they read with each other.  One is a Book Bistro. In a book Bistro, I put a 2-3 desks together into little groups. I then have the students sit around in small groups and  talk about their book. I always have them take the book they just finished reading so that others can see it, and look through it. I also have them take their books to read list, so that they can add interesting books to their “to read” list.

Another way I have students share is Book Dating. This is like speed dating, except with books and kids! The goal is to match up a kid to the right book. I place the desks in twos in a circular shape.  I have my students  bring the book they just read. I give each person 2 minutes to talk about their book, when I ring the  bell, one student  stays at the table and the other person moves around to the next person and the talking and sharing continues.

I find that the students really listen to each other and they want to read what their peers have read- so the reading continues- even without it being assigned!

Everybody Needs a Rock

I recently read Everybody Needs A Rock by Bryd Baylor (he has many  books that are great read- alouds).  This is a story in which a girl tells the reader the ten rules for finding a rock. “Not just any rock, Baylor is careful to note, but ‘a special rock that you find yourself and keep as long as you can–maybe forever.’

I did this for a writing spark and had my kids write their own rules. Some of the ideas I gave them were write ten rules for choosing a friend, parents, teachers, pet, a house, or a vacation spot. The kids loved writing their ten rules and especially they loved fantasizing about their ten rules for finding a teacher that doesn’t give homework and lets them sleep and play games all day and a parent that lets them go to concerts alone and sleep over with their friends on school nights!

To expand on this book, you could have the students bring in a special rock and write about how they chose it, you could supply the rocks and they could personify it in their writing, or you could do a esteem boosting activity where you bring in paint and have them paint the letter U on the rock. Eventually someone will figure out that it means U Rock! You can tell the students to keep the rock someone special and always remember they rock when they need a boost.

Persuasive Picture Books

This week we have been working on persuasive writing and speaking skills. Some of the picture books I use are explained below.

I read to my students are Earrings! by Judith Voirst. This is a cute book written in which a young girl tries to convince her parents to let her get her ears pierce. I read it to the students and we talk about good persuasive techniques that the girl used, and what she should have done to let her parents pierce her ears.

We also read Hey Little Ant by Phillip Hoose . This is a great book about a boy who just before he is about the squish an ant, the ant talks to him! The story proceed with the ant and the kid talking and the ant trying to get the kid to not squish him. The neat thing about this book is that  on the last page, the author leaves the end of the story up to the reader! I have my kids write persuasively to convince the kid to either save the ant or squish it. I use this as a great warm up to writing persuasively.

Another picture book that you can have students write persuasively is Old Henry.

I talked about this book in an older post ( to see that click here). The gist of the book is that, Henry leaves his house because he was grumpy to the neighbors and he doesn’t keep it clean enough for the neighborhood. At the end, Henry writes a letter back to the neighborhood to ask if he can come back to his house. I  have had students write back to Old Henry from the town persuading him to come back, or stay away.

My student’s favorite activity we do with persuasion is I have them create a product and then create a persuasive commercial to sell it using two of the techniques we study in class. I video tape the commercials and then we spend a class period watching them and picking out the persuasive techniques.   They love coming up with a new product and then keeping their commercial a surprise until the class sees them.

Working with Wordle

If you haven’t seen or played around with Wordle, you may want to check it out! It is a simple site in which you insert text into a box and  it creates a word cloud.

The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text.

You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with others.

I made a Wordle on the left with Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. I just copied the text and then played around with some layouts, fonts and colors. You can see the same speech portrayed in two different ways.

I have my students at the beginning of the year make Wordle’s on themselves so we can learn about them. You can have students create Wordle’s on a book reviews,characters in a book (the more important the characters are, the more frequently they put them into the text ( so that they appear larger), review a historical document, or have them write their own speeches on a topic being studied and create a Wordle- the possibilities are endless!**

** Keep in mind that the Worlde gallery is not censored, and there may be inappropriate content found in the galleries. Hope this doesn’t hinder you using this in class!

Good Reads!

Books, Books, Books!

I just updated the Books, Books, Books  and What I Am Reading Now pages.

If you need some good winter reads, check out those pages!!

Writing Gallery~ sharing student writing in a new way!

WrItInG GaLlErY!

Just before break, I had my students finish a choice piece. I decided to have the students share in a new way. We moved the desks into one big circle. I had the students take a few minutes and pick out the Golden Lines they wanted to share with the class. We then went around and each of us shared what genre we wrote in,  a very brief explanation of the piece, and then read our Golden Lines ( for example: I wrote a poem about being at the beach). I wrote a piece to share with them to show them that I am a write too!

Then we had a Writing Gallery (this was the new way to share). The students placed their writing on their desk, or somewhere around the room. I then had the students grab a handful of post it notes (that I cut up into strips). I had them walk around our “Writing Gallery” and read each other’s writing. With their post it notes they wrote positive comments about the writing they were reading and stuck them in the margins of that paper. Before we walked around ( I also walked around and commented on their work), we talked about types of comments and I told them that Golden Lines are good things to comment on, or they could Hold their Thinking.

I also printed some writing from Teen Ink and other sources and placed them around the room so that the students could read some published pieces and have something to strive for.

The students LOVED reading each other’s writing! Sharing our Golden Lines at the beginning gave us a taste of what was to come. At the end of the period, the students left with a paper that was loaded with post it notes of positive comments about their writing! They felt so proud.  I will definitely do this type of share again.

What Do Teacher’s Make???

Since it is Winter Break for many teachers (or will be soon for some) I thought that all the hard working teachers out there would appreciate  reading the poem below. It makes you remember why we spend all those hours planning lessons, worrying about the well being of our kids, working hard to get them to succeed, and having the lesson you thought would be the best ever- flop!

Here’s to all the teachers out there…. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(I’ll be in Sunny Florida for break, so I won’t be posting as much-

but I will resume after break!)

WHAT TEACHERS MAKE

A poem by: Taylor Mali

The dinner guests were sitting around the table
discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain
the problem with education. He argued:
“What’s a kid going to learn from someone who decided
his best option in life was to become a teacher?”

He reminded the other dinner guests that it’s true
what they say about teachers: “Those who can…do.
Those who can’t … teach.”

To corroborate, he said to another guest: “You’re a
teacher, Susan,” he said. “Be honest. What do you
make?”

Susan, who had a reputation of honesty and frankness,
replied, “You want to know what I make?”

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they
could. I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal
of Honor and an A- feel like a slap in the face if the
student did not do his or her very best.”

“I can make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence.”

“I can make parents tremble in fear when I call home”

“You want to know what I make?”

“I make kids wonder.”

“I make them question.”

“I make them criticize.”

“I make them apologize and mean it.”

“I make them write.”

“I make them read, read, read.”

“I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful, and definitely beautiful over and over and
over again, until they will never misspell either one
of those words again.”

“I make them show all their work in math and hide it
all on their final drafts in English.”

“I make them understand that if you have the brains,
then follow your heart…and if someone ever tries to
judge you by what you make, you pay them no
attention!”

“You want to know what I make?”

“I make a difference.”

“And you? What do you make?”

(The poet also has a video recording which is also powerful on you tube. I can’t get it downloaded to this page, so click on the link  here)

Why Do Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears? Writing and Discussion Activities

Why Do Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears?  is a clever West African Tale on cause and effect and inference. It is also a good book to look at taking responsibility for your actions. There is so much to discuss.

The book has really unique, rich pictures that capture the attention of many (it is a Caldecott Winner). I read this as a writing spark today and then had the students write. I gave them the following ideas to get them started:

–Have the mosquitoes go in front of the council and try to explain his actions. What do you think he would say?

–Write about why animals do certain things (why are bats out at night? What does a Salmon swim upstream? Why does the sun go away at night?)

–Throughout the story, one animal blamed another animal for their actions. Do you think this was right? What should each animal have said? Do you think that only the mosquito was to blame? Why or why not?

–What is the moral of the story?

–How does one misunderstanding become a big problem?

–What do you learn about the lion from the way he handled the problem?

–Have you and a friend ever had a misunderstanding? What happened?