Week 2 Blog #5

The two books I reviewed are Picnic at Mudsock Meadow by Patricia Polacco and Crickwing by Janell Cannon.

These are both authors I use extensively for mentor text. Patricia Polacco for narrative writing and Janell Cannon for crafts, specifically speaker tags, e.g."growled" for "said." Though I use all sorts of strategies for reading, writing conference, math, science, and social studies I have never considered the limited learning from mentor text my teaching is providing for the ELL.

I think Polacco does a wonderful job bringing her own culture into her stories.  She writes from personal memories and there is an authenticity about the experiences that support modeling narrative personal stories. The uniqueness of Polacco's characters may support ELL connections if they can connect to the vocabulary at some level. However, the descriptive writing is high level vocabulary-for third graders. Leer, convincing, mortified not to mention the idioms such as "mad as the dickens." I do take time to clarify or check for understanding when I think that students may not understand fully but that's where my considerations end. Considering my ELL student, this year, wrote a wonderful personal narrative, I believe it was more the oral sharing of stories that directed her accomplishment. Mudsock Meadow takes place in a rural setting that may need to be explored as an authentic setting. Foods such as "wienie" for wienie roast and activities like pumpkin carving or seed-spiting-contest may be a mystery. So idiomatic language, vocabulary, setting, and even the speaker tags are decidedly challenging from a teaching perspective for mentor text. Providing opportunity for connections and oral discourse or "group talk" (Gibbons, 2002) for types of entertainment that are unique to individuals is a great way to support schema. Furthermore, depending on one's perspective such as a person with a city living experience, her books support inclusive cultural experiences (p. 10) that can be further explored among the students.

Crickwing teaches a universal moral (kindness vs self-pity) with insects. Again, as I viewed this much used mentor text from the ELL perspective, the high level vocabulary leaped out at me. Depending on the stage of the ELL "exposing them to words beyond their current repertoire" (Hill & Flynn, 2006) helps promote fluency. I do think the variety of speaker tags offers an opportunity for the students to act them out. For instance, "What does 'growled' sound like. Thus offering scaffolding for all learners and visualizing and mimicry through kinesthetic learning for ELL to boot. With this book I have the students act out mood and behavior from the text so it is a consideration for all students but a tremendous benefit for ELL students. As students' expressive vocabulary in writing builds, so does their comprehension in reading. By students acting out speaker tags, orally sharing similar feelings and experience, repeated readings and a word wall with the speaker tags listed support the ELL student.

Summing up, I view  these text in a different light that suggests I need to think about the adaptations necessary for learning and effective communication. I would not suggest abandonment of the text because of the highlighted difficulties. I think abandoning a text is problematic thinking if there is a way to connect a student to the deeper meaning found in a book.

References:
  Gibbons, P. (2002). Saffolding language, scaffolding learning: teaching second language learners in the mainstream classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
  Hill, J. & Flynn, K. (2006). Classroom instruction that works with English language learners. Alexandria,VA: ASCD.