Monthly Archives: March 2009

Teaching

Tutoring update

It occurred to me that I haven’t written anything recently about my tutoring student, J.

J. is now almost at the end of the Wilson Reading System Step 12, and still has a terrific, upbeat, motivated attitude.  She’s a pleasure to teach, and we’ve been having a great time starting to analyze the etymology of words (something we’ll start on in earnest in a week or two).  She’s become incredibly fluent in looking words up in the dictionary, a skill that I feel is undertaught in schools these days.  She also has developed an even keener curiosity about word origins that she used to have, which is saying something. 

There’s something very special about being able to take a student all the way through the Wilson Reading System.  My students at the elementary school only got to work with me through Wilson Step 9, which teaches the final syllable type, the vowel-team (or vowel digraph and vowel diphthong) syllable.  Standard school practice has decided that Steps 10, 11, and 12 are superfluous, since they cover very advanced concepts that are infrequently used by a typical elementary school student.

J. is only the third student that I’ve been able to teach through Step 12 (ironically, her older brother was the first, and my boss at the elementary school allowed me to keep working with him past Step 9), and I find myself discovering amazing things about our language along with her.  Words and phonology are incredibly cool things, and I love that I get to teach and learn and explore them.  I can’t wait for our detailed study of Latin and Greek roots, prefixes, and suffixes, coming in the next few weeks. 

Etc.

Met my goal…barely…

I had a goal of not getting sick at all this winter, and I met that goal.  I didn’t get sick until Friday morning; Friday being the first day of spring, I think that qualifies as a spring cold.

But now I am feeling miserable.  I’m writing this post on Monday night, while blowing my nose and having a distinct feeling that there’s a stomach bug moving in to join the head cold and brutal sore throat.  I had to cancel my tutoring for tonight, something I really hate doing, but it’s not fair to try to tutor a student while I’m operating at 30% of normal.

Now the challenge will be running a storytime (all that singing can be brutal with a cold) and a book group (luckily for a very mature group of sixth graders) on Tuesday.  Ouch.  No rest for the sneezy.  (And, yes, I keep my distance from the storytime kids when I have a cold like this.  Arms length or better.)

Feltboard, Storytime

One more time for Spot…

1 Comment

So I used my felt pieces for Where’s Spot again last Thursday, this time for a preschool storytime (ages four to seven).  I did it partly as an experiment – comparing the reactions of the toddler age group to this age group – and partly because I had a feeling it would be lots of fun.

It was a BLAST!  By age four, most kids know this story inside out, and when I brought out a new piece – the grandfather clock, for instance – the kids would start yelling “There’s a snake in there!!!!” And I would play the dumb adult, saying, “Gee, are you sure?  You really think there’s a snake in the clock?  Don’t you think Spot is in the clock?”  And the kids would holler back in unison, “NOOOO!!!!  It’s a SNAKE!!!!”  And I’d open the the door of the clock and find the snake, and shake my head while saying, “Wow, you guys were right.  There IS a snake in there.  No Spot, but a snake…”

And then we’d continue on to the next felt piece, and repeat the process.  The kids had a fantastic time hollering their thoughts to me (which, surprisingly, never once felt out of control, because I was able to moderate their comments and behavior through the whole story), and I had a great time pretending to be the not-so-bright librarian who had no clue what animal was in each of the felt pieces.

In fact, it was so much fun that I’m going to extend the experiment tomorrow morning, and try using these felt pieces with the infant storytime crowd.  Lots of babies, some one year olds, a few twos or almost twos.  It will be very, very interesting to observe this crowd and how they react to the story.

Most importantly for my own storytelling, though, last Thursday was a prime example of how the best storytimes are interactive, with the storyteller paying close attention to the reactions of the kids in the audience.  If you’re willing and able to “riff” a little when telling stories, it becomes the most incredible experience for everyone, storyteller AND audience.  I left last Thursday’s storytime smiling and with a totally happy storytime buzz that lasted me the rest of the day.  Hopefully tomorrow’s telling of Where’s Spot will be just as wonderful.

Etc.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

1 Comment

Dear Dad,

I wish I was in Italy with you to celebrate your birthday!  What a fantastic way to turn 85: attending a performance of “La Traviata” in Rome, with good friends.  I hope you’re having an amazing trip, and taking lots and lots of photos to show us when you get home.

Happy Birthday!

Love,

Abs

Blog administration

This has been a tough week for the town in which I work.  Given the sad event of this past weekend, I’ve decided to observe a few days of silence on this blog.

Etc.

Wreaths

2 Comments

Thursday morning before work, I took a nice long walk outside (something I haven’t done much of this winter, due to the constantly icy roads).  As I walked, I saw one Christmas wreath after another still hung on people’s front doors.  And those stupid little icicle lights hanging off gutters.  And ropes of Christmas greenery strung around poles and porch posts.

To quote a woman we met in Nantucket one February:  “Helll-looo – Christmas is O-VER!!“ 

Please, for the sake of incoming spring and Abby’s sanity, please take down those Christmas decorations.  Please???

Feltboard, Storytime

Where’s Spot, part 2

I meant to bring my camera yesterday and get photos of the additional felt pieces I’ve made for Where’s Spot by Eric Hill, but, of course, forgot.  But today’s post is more about the process of presenting this story in felt, because yesterday’s storytime was an excellent example of how a felt story can spark something in younger kids in a way that a story in print doesn’t.

For yesterday’s storytime, I loosened up my presentation of the felt story considerably, and did more of a storytelling/felt presentation than a precise retelling of the story.  I paid attention to the reactions of the kids, and drew out the suspense more than I do when using the book (I should note that I’ve used this book more times than I can count for storytimes, since it never seems to get stale for the kids).  It was amazing to watch their expressions as the story progressed, and to see how completely and totally involved they were in the story.  Very, very cool.

And the best part was that in the Quiet Time section of the storytime, which came right after the feltboard story, all of the kids chose to read Where’s Spot with their parents.  Every single one of them.  (Good thing I had multiple copies available!)  So seeing and hearing the story in a felt version actually inspired all of the kids to go back to the original print version of the story – who could ask for more than that?

Feltboard, Spare time - Culture, Storytime

Where’s Spot?

My longest-running felt board story project is the pieces for Where’s Spot? by Eric Hill.  I spent hours upon hours on several of the pieces last spring, and added one more piece last fall, and now have to scramble to finish off the pieces in time for the “Peek, Peek, Hide-and-Seek” toddler storytime this week.  These are tough to make because I’m trying to duplicate a lift-the-flap book in felt: it uses a LOT of felt, and requires a lot of patient gluing to keep the inner parts from sticking to the flaps.

So here are a few of the pieces from my collection – the staircase (with lion inside the under-stair closet) and the bed (with crocodile hiding under the bedskirt) are quite large and safely stored at the library, and so are not shown here.  Note that the left photo is the pieces as they are shown first (“Is he in the clock?”), and the right photo shows the pieces with the flap lifted; click on images to enlarge:

img_0245.jpg img_0244.jpg

Above are Spot’s mommy, Sally, the door with the bear behind it, the clock with the snake in in it, the closet with the monkey in it, and the piano with the hippo in it.  Still to be created are the box with the three penguins, the rug with the turtle underneath, the basket with Spot, and Spot and Sally’s food bowls.  Stay tuned for those photos!

Storytime

Funny, that

2 Comments

One more bit of proof that the way we see ourselves isn’t the way the world sees us:

Halfway through a recent Mother Goose on the Loose storytime, a mother new to the storytime asked me, “Wow – when you interviewed for this job, did you have to do a singing audition?”

Me, with a laugh, “Actually, before this job I never, ever sang publicly.”

The mom:  “But you have a beautiful singing voice!!”

Book groups, Children's book reviews

Ranger’s Apprentice

3 Comments

For last week’s Teen Book Group, we read The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan, first in the Ranger’s Apprentice series.  I’d been meaning to read this book for a while, just so I could know what the kids are so excited about (the series is extremely popular at the library), but hadn’t gotten around to it until C. suggested it as a book group book.  And now I am completely and totally hooked, and have read the first three books in the series (The Ruins of Gorlan, The Burning Bridge, The Ice-Bound Land) and am on my way to pick up the fourth book, The Battle For Skandia.

What’s so great about these books?  I’ll admit that they’re not the best-written or best-edited books ever, but that’s not what they purport to be: they’re bestsellers, and proud of it, and better written than many bestsellers that I’ve read.  Flanagan is a master of drama and plot, and also does a great job creating and developing his characters.  I love that his characters have very real flaws, like Halt, the adult who should know better, encouraging young Horace to beat up the bullies who had been tormenting him.  And his characters grow and develop and surprise even themselves (think Horace at the end of book two here).

But what I love most about this series is that Flanagan doesn’t fall into the Harry Potter trap of structuring each book the same way (i.e., each of the Harry Potter books covered one year of school at Hogwarts).  Flanagan could easily have had each of his books cover a year of Will’s apprenticeship, with each year culminating in a Big Battle of some sort, but instead he wisely chose to write the series as one adventure leading into the next.  Without giving too much away, I was pleased to see that Will and Halt are not existing as apprentice and master at the end of the third book; they are separated, and the story is the better for it.  I can’t guess where we’re headed in the fourth book, and that makes me want to read it even more (now I understand the frustration of the series’ fans who know the next book has been published in Australia, but not yet here in the U.S.).

The Teen Book Group also loved The Ruins of Gorlan, and several of the book group members have become hooked on the series.  We unanimously agreed that the books are engaging, fun, and exciting, and we all thanked C. for recommending them.  The group’s only complaint?  The cover art is too dull and doesn’t draw you in.  After much discussion, we decided that the cover art for the British versions of the books is by far the best (the Australian covers are too young, the American covers are too dark and boring).  Bad cover art, though, is a pretty minor flaw, and it was refreshing to have found a book that we could all agree on and enjoy.  And now it’s time for me to go pick up that fourth book…