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Reader Response: Sketch-to-Stretch with The Dreamer

by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, University of Texas, Austin

Here are my graduate students’ responses to The Dreamer in sketch format. Each of these sketches is unique and they represent a range of meanings and interpretations reminding us of how we as readers bring to reading our own experiences and histories (Probst, 1990; Rosenblatt, 1976) as readers and individuals.

As it is reflected in the responses to the first two blogs and in these sketches, the Father figure in the story impacted my students’ reading in different ways. Continue reading

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Reader Response: The Dreamer Part II

by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, University of Texas, Austin

The DreamerThis week we aim to have an online discussion of The Dreamer. A small group of students from Teachers College participating in a course on Latino literature, will share their responses to the novel. Please, join our discussion. One of my favorite scenes was the interchange of gifts between Neftalí and an unknown child through the hole in the fence of the backyard. Continue reading

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Reader Response: The Dreamer

by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, University of Texas, Austin

During the month of July we want to invite readers to respond to the 2011 Pura Belpré Award winner, The Dreamer (2010), written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Peter Sis. Based on events of Pablo Neruda’s childhood and inspired by his poetry, Pam Muñoz created a fictionalized account that offers adolescent readers the opportunity to meet one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century: Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Book cover for The Dreamer Book cover for El Sonador

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Responding To Literature as A Community: Transactions with When You Reach Me

By Andrea García, Hofstra University

Book cover for When You Reach Me

Happy summer to the kids of New York City.
Read for joy.
Write for yourselves.

Rebecca Stead (http://rebeccastead.blogspot.com/ )

It is officially summer! As the school year comes to an end, and teachers pack up their classrooms, I have selected to focus my last blog entry for the month of June on sharing examples of a multimodal response project created by teachers to the 2010 Newberry award-winning book When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. This book was one of the choices I made available to teachers in my Children’s Literature course this past spring, and since it is a book that invites us to consider the possibility of time travel, why not use Stead’s work as inspiration as we imagine what we will do, what we will read, and what we will write this summer.
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Responding To Literature as A Community: Transactions with Pictures of Hollis Wood

By Andrea García, Hofstra University

I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people’s thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people’s stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I’d like my books to provide that connection for them. — Patricia Reilly Giff

Book Cover for Pictures of Hollis WoodsFinding stories that help readers become aware of themselves as they get to “discover other people’s thoughts,” like award-winning author Patricia Reilly Giff describes, ensures that readers have the opportunity to entertain multiple perspectives on life and consider multiple possibilities for what it means to be human in today’s world. Patricia Reilly Giff’s achieves these goals through her remarkable storytelling and her impeccable character development. As the author of over 80 books, including Newbery Honor Books Lily’s Crossing and Pictures of Hollis Woods, Giff’s stories remind us to stop and consider the power of our daily experiences, as we go about our lives meeting people who help shape our identities. Continue reading

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Responding To Literature as A Community: Transactions with Feathers

By Andrea García, Hofstra University

Hope

 

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

– Emily Dickinson

Book cover for FeathersThere are authors whose words stay with us long after we have turned the last page and placed the book back in our shelves. For me, Jacqueline Woodson is one of those authors, whose writing stays in my mind, as I revisit the emotions evoked by the experiences of the characters in her stories. In her book Feathers we meet Frannie, a six-grade girl who is growing up in a segregated town during the 1970’s. Frannie’s teacher introduced her to Emily Dickinson’s poem Hope, and Frannie is captivated by the words in the poem. She copies them down in her notebook, and is determined to find out their true meaning. Is hope supposed to feel as light as a feather? Continue reading

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Responding To Literature as A Community: Transactions with Tofu Quilt

By Andrea García, Hofstra University

Our business seems usually to be considered the bringing of books to people. But books do not simply happen to people. People also happen to books. A story or poem or play is merely inkspots on paper until a reader transforms them into a set of meaningful symbols. When these symbols lead us to live through some moment of feeling, to enter into some human personality, or to participate imaginatively in some situation or event, we have evoked a work of literary art. (Rosenblatt, 1956/2005, p. 62-63)

Book cover for Tofu QuiltReading books together and discussing them within a community of readers is at the heart of the process of constructing meaning and negotiating the multiple dimensions that literature has to offer. This month, the focus of my blog is in sharing the literary transactions of a community of elementary teachers, who were invited to document their interpretations to different books through engaging with multiple response strategies while exploring the use of children’s literature in the elementary classroom. Since one of my goals as a literacy educator is to bring books to people Continue reading

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Text Sets: An In-depth Look

By Lauren Freedman, Western Michigan University

For this last Monday in May, my blog provides examples of text sets created by teachers from various grade levels and content areas. The topics are insects, weather, shapes and angles, amazing animals, and artists. The text set lists include 30 titles and for each book the following information is given: the bibliographic data, a brief summary of the book, what makes it useful within an inquiry, and special features that it may have. Continue reading

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Students and Scholars Respond: Text Sets & Inquiry Deepens and Strengthens Learning

By Lauren Freedman, Western Michigan University

Children and teachers, mired in narrow curricula and “say this now” instruction geared toward raising achievement scores on standardized tests, are hungry for interesting, engaging, and filling content to be reading, writing, speaking, listening, thinking, and learning about. In a 5th grade Social Studies classroom, the students engaged in an inquiry built around the American Revolution and used a tree as a graphic depiction not only of what they were learning, but also as a metaphor for their learning process and the ways in which inquiry and text sets facilitate learning. Along with the content learning depicted in the photos, the students also engaged in a metacognitive discussion about the ways in which “…a reader is like a tree.” The students’ responses quoted below clearly demonstrate the growth possible when the literacy diets of our children are varied and nutritious. Continue reading

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Learning Centered Classrooms: Where Inquiry and Text Sets are Essential for Literacy and Learning

By Lauren Freedman, Western Michigan University

An inquiry framework provides both teachers and students with a flexible structure that can be used for learning prek-12 within any content area and perhaps most effectively when integrating content areas. An inquiry framework requires careful planning keeping both the learning goals and each student’s strengths and needs in mind. The importance of students’ choice and voice is honored and the use of text sets provides the tools for students and teachers to reach more deeply and broadly into and across concepts. Continue reading