I love this school. The scientific inquiry. The diversity. The joy of learning. It felt like the most wonderful educational family I have encountered and I miss them already! Extraordinary librarian Suzanne Fox, who I’d met when she worked at another school, invited me. I also had the pleasure of making friends with librarian Frances Martindale. Her reading style is fantastic. If I were doing an audio book, I’d call her to do the voice. Head of School Ralph Wales was so supportive and welcoming. This private school is serious about their mandate to bring racial and cultural diversity into their school. They have faculty and students of many backgrounds. Their library books and major projects are chosen to open children’s eyes to the possibilities for themselves and the world.  They embrace science even at the youngest ages. The Kindergarteners, preschoolers, and I had some  brain-expanding science talks.  I just want to hang out at Gordon. The atmosphere is that joyful and stimulating.

After a quick reading of the book, a 6-year old spontaneously practices, is able to chant a section, and has made up some dance moves to go with it.   RahRahRadishesOutLoud

Here I teach the new chant to a large group, line-by-line. Rah Rah Radish youngauthorsconf. I teach word-by-word and challenge a group:  Teaching Insect Chant.  Here I perform a high speed version of the Fish Chant End . An older student rhythmically reads Bird, Bird, Bird_ A Chirping Chant.

Rah, Rah, Radishes: A Vegetable Chant is being released by Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster on June 16th, 2011 but can be pre-ordered at  most stores/sites now. Order from your local independent bookstore at IndieBound. I highly recommend that preschools and early child care organizations order from the folks at The Book Vine For Children. They are experts on books for ages 0-6 and they ship nationwide.

Another activity is to divide up into teams and have each act out a stanza of the chant. I wish I had video of what creative teachers did performing Ant, Ant, Ant: An Insect Chant during a recent inservice!

I’d just been to Seven Hills-Lotspeich. How could another school day be just as fun? Well, if you’re at the other Seven Hills Campus—Doherty. It can! This Cincinnatti school just percolates with life. If I were going to be a teacher, I’d want to work in one of the Seven Hills Schools.

Why? Because excellent schools need faculty that care for one another, that lunch together, that chat and exchange ideas.  This school has it on both campuses. Education can be joyous when staff share that passion for helping students. But left alone in classrooms, teachers can grow isolated, like stay-at-home moms who love their kids but need some grownup time now and then. Staff development makes it sound all technical. That is helpful. But the core of the best schools I have seen is a caring staff community: community that nurtures creative teachers and does not squash them. You could see it at work, hear it at work during my lunch with some of the Doherty teachers.

Seven Hills also has another community that uplifts the place. The parents. Wow. They pitch in for all kinds of things. At the whirling center of joy is librarian Linda Wolfe who I had the pleasure of spending the day with.

She is a dynamo who knows children’s literature inside out. She created wonderful activities to go with my books. Just look at what they did with Vulture View. She found some kind of scratch paper that is black with silver underneath. The students cut out vultures and scratched through to make the beautiful silvering of the feathers.

She describes how she introduces Trout Are Made of Trees to her students. To celebrate the book, she used a scale/math/art activity. She gave kids large photos of the aquatic insects. Then the children had to draw them, as accurately as possible, on the tiny pieces of paper. It’s a good thinking project. You can just imagine how many neurons fire when trying to duplicate but shrink an image.

In the halls were more art projects to celebrate If You Should Hear a Honey Guide; Dig, Wait, Listen; and other books. Penguins for Antarctica. Maps of South America. There was art of many kinds.

Among my favorites was an organizational project done by Mr. Schmidt’s class. They took my books and graphed them in various ways to show the content and relationships in the books. It’s a good way to prepare for writing books of their own.

I saw and experienced all of this in one short school day at Seven Hills Doherty. Just imagine what a student could learn in a school year of being with these hard working, creative educators.

One focus was graphing. Students researched a topic and then graphed what they learned. Sometimes it was the part of an animal’s body. Sometimes it was a fact related to the animal. Some students did this work after reading Ant, Ant, Ant: an Insect Chant.

Another strategy used by literacy coach Lee Motley at Red Bank Elementary is to have young students, right after reading, talk/write/draw about what they remember from a book. This solidifies what they have learned. It carries it from past memory into future understanding.

Still other students and one brilliant teacher took facts from The Bumblebee Queen and leapt into their own creative ABCs of bees. Beautiful! Reorganizing what you have learned solidifies it, as well.

My thanks to the teachers and librarians at the Lexington Elementary Schools.

I believe that Mrs. Huff mentioned The National Writing Project as one of the sources for her ideas. Also mentioned frequently in S.C. were workshops and books by Ralph Fletcher, Linda Hoyt, and Jeff Anderson.

Turkey Chant Using Breeds of Turkeys!

In Nov, 2008 I had a wonderful visit to Hamilton Traditional School in South Bend, IN. Curriculum leader Marcia LaBelle brought me in.  The school was decked with creative art and writing related to my books. Classrooms I visited were doing in-depth writing, using some of my books as structural models. Principal Dennis Giden and his staff were impressive. I was able to stay and work with them in a brief workshop after school. You’ll be seeing their students’ art and educational innovation in several other posts I am linking to my books. Thank you, Hamilton Students and Faculty!

BUMBLEBEE MATH 

(A mathematical look at The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre) 

BEING A MATH DETECTIVE

(Building number literacy and sensitivity) 

After a first read of the book, as a story, look through it again, as a math detective.

Math can help you notice things and connect facts that you see. 

So let’s be math detectives

What to we notice about numbers in the book?

For younger students:

Let’s look through and write down what we see.

(Write down an honor various responses from kids counting.)

(On the cover, we see:

examples that may be suggested by students:)

three flowers on the left (columbine)

six legs on a bumblebee

two wings on a  bumblebee

Three petals on each flower. Three trillium. They are named “tri” for three.

(On the first full spread we see)

Six-sided snowflakes

Four-toed bird feet. 

One chamber where she lives

You could count the number of pieces of grass

You could count the number of trees.

Do you notice there are lots of things to count on each page?

There are many  numbers to notice on each page. 

Let’s try to narrow down what we count. 

Let’s stay as close as possible to the bee and her life.

What numbers that we hear or see are important to her life? 

Let’s read. 

For older students

1) Read the book and write down any numbers mentioned in the text.  If you find them in a sentence, write down the entire sentence.

One way to look for numbers would be to scan the pages quickly for number shapes.

Try that. Does this technique find all the numbers? Why or why not? 

(No. Some numbers may be spelled out in letters. So you will need to read, not just scan. 

Some numbers may not be spelled out. You may need to look for clues to those numbers in the illustrations.)

Answers: examples numbers students may have noted

250 bumblebee species

In 5 days, the eggs hatch. 

The larvae spin cocoons 10-14 days after hatching

In ten days, the cocoons ripen. (Bees emerge.>) 

A bumblebee colony can contain 30-400 bees

Three kinds of bees: queens, workers, drones

USING NUMBERS YOU HAVE GATHERED

CARDINAL NUMBERS/ ORDINAL NUMBERS

How many places did the bumblebee look before she found a place to build her colony?

2

By number, which place did she choose?

The 3rd place she looked. 

Pause to investigate ordinal/cardinal numbers

Cardinal number….denoting quantity  one, two, three, four five.

Ordinal number . . .denoting order 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.

GENERATIONS

Take the figures you have gathered about the bumblebee’s life. Create a timeline, of the days of a bumblebee’s development. 

By the way, the Pettisville, OH kids dancing in the photo are performing their rendition of “The Ants Go Marching…”