Wordless Picture Books for Mini-lessons

I mentioned last year that one of my best mini-lesson discussions was over Bob Staake’s beautiful book, Bluebird. We had been working on the skill of conversations in our mini-lesson discussions and it seems that wordless picture books lend themselves wonderfully to that concept. I pulled Bluebird out again this year as we began our Mock Caldecott unit yesterday and the conversation unfolded just as it had last spring. Curious about why this book evoked such fabulous discussion with my students, I shared Journey by Aaron Becker today. Unreal.

If you are unfamiliar with Aaron’s amazing book, let me pause and share this book trailer with you:

I assure you, this picture book is every bit as amazing as the trailer portrays.

When I first considered using a wordless picture book in my classroom I wondered how I would “read” the book to the students. After reading two wordless picture books two days in a row, I am now convinced that the authentic conversations I witnessed as a result of Bluebird are because the book was wordless, not in spite of that.

Today we gathered on the carpet to read Journey. I shared a little on the background of the book and author and then opened the book up. Looking at the endpapers, the students began immediately talking without any prompting:

- Wow, it’s all red.

- I wonder if red is important.

- All those items are about transportation.

- Transportation, hmm – the title is Journey…

Opening the book to each page I would say something like, “What is happening here…” I loved hearing kids comment things like –

- Gasps as I turned to the forest the girl has entered along with the comment, “Now this is a journey I’d like to take.”

- Predictions like, “I wonder if she’ll meet someone else with a crayon. Harold, maybe?” Whispers from those who remember that book.

- Hands were raised to ask if they could borrow the book later to examine the castle closely.

- “Draw a parachute!” when the girl was falling, right before the hot air balloon was drawn.

- Shouts came out when the purple bird was captured.

- Comments on the purple and red colors brightening the background once the bird and girl were together.

- Shouts in recognition when they saw the door for the bird.

A quiet comment from a boy when we finished mentioning he had seen the boy with the purple crayon on the first page. We flipped back and YES, he was there! The kids asked with awe how he saw it, and then someone shouted that the purple bird was flying away. The kids were in amazed that Becker had given them clues from the beginning.

And this continued in Every. Single. Class.

As the mini-lesson wrapped up, the conversations continued. I loved listening to the kids talk about their reactions to the book. I loved hearing them extend their thinking without my prompting. I firmly believe that this is possible because with a wordless picture book, they are in charge of the story.

Have you shared a wordless picture book with your students? I’d be interested to see if you have had the same reaction. We have a few more in store for us next week. I’m anxious to see if we have similar results.

Sharing my reading life

I have Nancie Atwell and Donalyn Miller to thank for two huge changes in my relationships with my students over the past few years. Six years ago I saw Nancie Atwell speak at a conference. She talked about how she shared her life with her students – that they knew so much about her, they even knew her favorite candy. Two years ago I saw Donalyn Miller for the first time. She explained that we needed to share our reading lives with our students. We needed to explicitly teach our reading habits to help our students develop their own reading lives independent of us.

So, what am I doing with that information? Well, as a result my students know a lot about me. They know the basics – who my husband is. The fact that he is six foot seven and I am five foot two – it makes for an interesting photo. J They know about my boys and my dog. They know my “favorites”, for example the know my favorite spot to eat by myself in Champaign is Café Kopi (I can read there.) They know my favorite store is Barnes and Noble. They know I REALLY like M&M’s. They know I drink Coke Zero. They know that if the room is messy, especially my desk, I can’t concentrate. They know I am a huge fan of Apple products. They know I love to read and write. They know my dream is to write a book that would help teachers.

As a reader they know where I like to read – Café Kopi or my favorite reading chair at home. They know that I always have a reading plan and they have seen pictures of my “to read” shelf in my bedroom. They know that I try and read for a certain amount of time each day. They know I am trying to read all of the Newbery winners in order. They know I have friends that are readers just like me. They know I plan for reading when we go on a break like the past two weeks. And they know I make a goal for every year related to reading.

So, why are these shared items important? I am a big believer in relationships. In fact, almost every paper I wrote in grad school had some element of the importance of relationships with your students in it. Once the relationship is built, you can get your students to really grow because of that relationship. It goes without saying, just as I let my students know me, I work hard to really know them.

Knowing all of this I came away from this Christmas Break with three items I want to share with my students on Monday. Three new realizations about reading that I think will help them in their own reading lives.

One I have already touched on – the Book Gap Challenge. Realizing I have avoided reading “the classics.” I already have a list of books I want to tackle this year as a result. This will be important because I am teaching a non-fiction unit in January. I will be asking them each to read non-fiction books. This is a gap for about 90-95% of my students. We will discuss why recognizing our gaps and trying to fill them is important. 

My stack a few days ago. I had read the ones on the right.

Another item I want to share with them is something I realized as I read so many books over break, the first 50 pages or so are tough for me. I read really fast, but only when I’m “hooked.” Most books take me at least 50 pages to get hooked, to really understand the characters. For the first 50 pages I put the book down a lot, check Twitter, bake cookies, etc. This is when most of my students tend to abandon books, so I think this is something they will identify with. I will talk about how I do abandon books, but only have I have gone past the first 50 or so. This does not mean I will tell them they can’t abandon before page 50, just that I know myself and that’s what works for me, they need to discover what works for them.

Finally, I was reminded again last night of the importance of having friends that read. I was finishing The Raven Boys and I knew I had a friend who had read it. The book had hooked me – after the first 50 pages, of course – and I kept questioning what was going on. Because my friend is also a reader, we proceeded to text on and off as I finished the book – over the next four hours we exchanged over fifty texts. They began with questions about a character from the book and how sad I was that something had just happened. The texts then extended to symbolism in the books, connections to characters from other books, and more. I need to share this with my students so they can see why having friends who read AND discussing books with them would be beneficial.

Come Monday morning these three realizations will be shared with my students during our mini-lesson. I hope they will help my students continue to reflect on their reading lives and what their own habits are. I can’t wait to be back in the classroom and discussing books with the kids.

Interview with Franki Sibberson

Last week I was blessed to have the chance to sit down and curl up with Franki Sibberson's  new book from Choice Literacy called The Joy of Planning: Designing Minilesson Cycles in Grades 3-6. It was just a beautiful book. I felt like Franki and I were sitting and having this conversation over a cup of coffee. She made me rethink some things about planning, gave me new ideas, and left me inspired. I immediately gave a copy to both of my sons' teachers and let my student teacher borrow mine. This is a book you must have in your collection- even if you aren't in grades 3-6. There is information there for everyone. 

Upon finishing there was so much I wanted to ask Franki about this book, and so many days left until NCTE, so she kindly agreed to an interview. Hope her answers will inspire you as they did me. And I highly recommend her new book. An excellent addition to your professional development library. 

Where did the seeds for this book originate?

Well, when I left my classroom and went into a position as a school librarian, I did a lot of work with teachers, choosing books for lessons, units, etc. I had never really thought about the process of my planning until I had the opportunity to work with so many other teachers. I also never had the time to really think about the ways in which books and resources scaffold students in different ways. As a librarian, I often read a book over and over to different groups of children. Some books naturally invited certain kinds of conversations with children. So, this book is kind of a reflective journey of my planning process. I had done other work on deciding what to teach but this one really focused on the process that comes after that decision and what I discovered about how to get children from where they are to where we want them to be as readers.

If you were speaking to a new teacher, what advice would you give them in regard to planning?

I think planning has to be about thinking about your children first. We have to know where are students are and where we hope to take them as readers. Once we know that, they it is about planning a very flexible journey. My other piece of advice would be to overplan and then to be okay with not getting to everything. What I’ve learned is that when I overplan, I am able to be really flexible each day with where I go next based on how students respond. When I overplan, I have more books and ideas than I need and I can pick and choose from this menu as we move along. For years. I overplanned and then became frustrated that I couldn’t get to anything. Now, I understand that the planning process is a way for me to understand where I am going and to think through what support students might need to get there. Then I get started, knowing I won’t follow the exact plan I created.

I like how your digital reading life has made such an impression that you share it with your students. What do you feel that teachers must share about digital reading with their students?

I am all about authenticity and I realized this year that when I share my reading and writing lives with students, I can’t possibly be honest without including the digital piece of that.  So much of my reading life is the same but so much is different over the last few years. For me, it is about really sitting down before I do any minilesson work in which I share my own life as a reader and being really honest. I have to really think through my reading—how much of it is actual books, how much I read on my Kindle, how much time I spend reading blogs. So, if teachers have a piece of their reading life that is digital, I feel like that has to be part of our teaching in order to keep it authentic and grounded.

When you sit down to plan, do you plan out the next cycle only or do you have a rough sketch for the semester?

I have a sketch that never works out. I think I know where I am going for the year, then I meet the kids. And usually, they are not where I plan for them to be so I need to revamp. I wouldn’t say I have a rough sketch in a calendar, but I do have thoughts about which cycles I am pretty sure will be included each year. I know I want to teach kids to support their thinking with evidence from the text. I know I will want to do lots with nonfiction. Theme is usually important. But I am never sure where those will fit into the year until I see where kids come in to the classroom.  I try to start with the thing that will move them forward fastest and then build from there. So, I have a list maybe, rather than a calendar and even the list changes. 

What do you feel is most often overlooked in regard to planning?

I think the small scaffolds are critical and often, when we don’t plan big picture, we miss those. The things we are teaching kids as readers are very complex and without breaking them down for ourselves, it is hard to break them down for students. For me, when I am in a hurry or don’t have the time to put into planning that I need, I tend to plan without this careful attention to the scaffolds that will take kids forward in small steps.

I think that planning has gotten such a bad rap by teachers and I love how you seem to look forward to it. What is your number one recommendation to help teachers make this switch in attitudes?

I think this is really an issue of time.  So much is demanded of teachers today that planning often takes a back seat. I like to plan when I have time to plan and to plan well. I need time to sit at the bookstore or library and find the right resources. I need time to spread out at my kitchen table and think through the whole of it. Without giving ourselves time to plan well, it is no fun.  A good 2 hour block gets me to feel really good about my work but anything less than that is hard. So I think it is about not trying to plan in 30 minute chunks but to really give ourselves time to plan well if we are to enjoy it.

With Common Core becoming so important in our planning, I was glad to see that you had a balance of non-fiction and fiction lessons. I think many people see the need to increase our readings of non-fiction texts but I believe fiction will still have its place. After studying the standards, what do you feel we need to be aware of?

I feel like the nonfiction piece is really telling us that we need more reading and writing across the day.  We need to embed literacy in our science and math classrooms. So I don’t think  more nonfiction means taking time away from fiction. Instead I think the Common Core standards give students the opportunity to read and write for a variety of purposes across the school day.

Colby Sharp tweeted yesterday that reading your book may be expensive – he wants to read every book you mentioned. I had the same problem as I read it this week, so I’m going to ask you the impossible question. If you had to grab five picture books before your collection was lost in a fire – what would those five be and why?

Hah!  I have old favorites but I tend to love my newest books most. I love falling in love with new books and I am tempted to tell you about the ones I used this week with kids. However, I guess if I had to choose 7 books (5 is impossible!), books that kids have learned from over and over again in minilesson work (and I am going to stick with picture books), it would be the following.  I think these books (along with a ton of others) have lots of possibilities. They invite lots of conversations naturally and kids can grow so much as readers.

How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham

City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems

The Summer My Father Was Ten by Pat Brisson

Walk On! By Marla Frazee

Emma’s Rug by Allen Say

Twilight Comes Twice by Ralph Fletcher

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson

Note from Katherine: See what I mean? Now there are even more books I NEED to purchase! Franki, thanks for letting me interview you!