Developing Sensitivity to Language
Children's appreciation of the writing of others increases as they listen to many fine stories, read widely themselves, and have many opportunities to create their own stories and poems. A teacher can help children develop their skills in
descriptive writing by helping them to become aware of the power of words in conveying sensory images. After a story has been finished, the teacher and children might reread and relish particularly enjoyable words, phrases, or paragraphs.
Children's
use of sensory language in their writing requires many firsthand experiences of
touching and feeling and savoring textures, sounds, colors, shapes, rhythms,
and patterns. Literature, too, can sharpen sensitivity to nature, people, and relationships. Rich sensory imagery helps children "see" the world around them in new perspectives.
In
George Ella Lyon's Come a Tide, the family stands on a bridge and
watches parts of the neighbor's gardens, livestock, and household wash away as
a spring storm makes the creek rise. When they return to their Kentucky holler, "Soggy furniture and mud-mapped rugs made mountains in front of each house." Lyon describes the noises, sights, and smells as people see their possessions emerging from the muck. When someone asks, "What do we do now?" it is Grandma who says, "If it was me, I'd make friends with a shovel." By asking primary children to notice how Lyon's choice of "mud-mapped" and Grandma's pithy statement create pictures in our minds, teachers help children appreciate the ways authors work.
A child's interest in words begins in the cradle and proceeds into adulthood. A 3-year-old memorizes and repeatedly chants, "Crash and clang!/Bash and bang! And up in the road the jazz-man sprang!" simply because he loves the way Eleanor Farjeon's words sound. Older children read to each other the outrageous descriptions and wordplay of such Daniel Pinkwater titles as Borgel or The Hoboken Chicken Emergency.
Teachers
can support children's natural fascination with words, wordplay, and word usage
in many ways. A third-grade teacher read aloud and discussed William Steig's Amos & Boris with the children. Then they wrote diary entries as if they were Amos the mouse or Boris the whale. This was a typical entry on that first day:
Dear Diary,
It was Tuesday two days after I saved Amos. We are just starting to be
getting acquainted. Amos told me all about land, how I wish I could live on land. I wish we could meet sometime again.
by Boris
A participant-observer in the classroom then shared favorite expressions he had copied from the book. The next day children wrote a second diary entry. The contrast between their first writing and the second shows the influence of simply calling attention to Steig's rich use of language:
Dear Diary:
Well it's Tuesday and Amos built a ladder down the great tunnel, well, at least that's what Amos calls it. It really is my spout.
One day we had a feast. We had a fat juicy lobster, some plump juicy sea cucumbers, some meaty clams, and some sand-breaded fish. After that we were so full and tired we talked and talked and finally we went to sleep happy.
Well, Bye. Boris
Barrington Road School, grade 3, Upper Arlington, Ohio, Carolyn Fahrbach, teacher, Roy Wilson, Ohio State University participant-observer
All of the children showed a richer use of language in their second entries. Children seemed to use the first day of writing to master the diary form and to practice taking another point of view. The second day, however, they were ready to consider using language more succinctly and colorfully.
Certain
books invite readers to play with language. Kindergartners were eager to make their own two-word rhymes after hearing examples like "Tan man," "Pink drink," and "Stuck truck" from Bruce McMillan's One Sun: A Book of Terse Verse. After reading Mary Ann Hoberman's A House Is a House for Me, first graders listed other possibilities for houses, including "Arms are houses for hugs" and "Buns are houses for hamburgers." Ruth Heller explores parts of speech in imaginative ways in books like Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives, while Jim Arnosky's A Kettle of Hawks and Brian Wildsmith's Birds call particular attention to collective nouns.
Idioms,
similes, and figurative language contribute color to the language. A group of 7-year-olds who were studying the human body traced an outline of a classmate on butcher paper and wrote on this poster idioms about the human body they had collected, such as "broken-hearted," "down in the mouth," and "a green thumb." Marvin Terban explores idioms in two books, In a Pickle and Mad as a Wet Hen. Other of his titles examine palindromes, homonyms, and double words such as superduper. Tom Birdseye's Airmail to the Moon is full of the colloquial expressions of Ora Mae Cotton as she describes losing her tooth: she was "popcorn-in-the-pan excited" when it fell out, but when she thought somebody had stolen it, she vowed that if she caught them she would "open up a can of gotcha and send 'em airmail to the moon!" Teachers who expose children to the curious and colorful ways the English language conveys meanings will see children's writing change as they notice the use of colorful language in the books they read.
Children who have had experiences that sensitize them to figurative language and rich descriptive writing are much more likely to recognize the way fine writers such as Katherine Paterson, Russell Freedman, Virginia Hamilton, Bruce Brooks, or Nina Bawden use words.
Arnosky, Jim. A Kettle of Hawks and Other Wildlife Groups. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1990.
Birdseye, Tom. Airmail to the Moon. Illustrated by Stephen Gammell. Holiday House, 1988.
Eleanor Farjeon. "Jazz-Man." In Noisy Poems. Collected by Jill Bennett. Illustrated by Nick
Sharratt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Heller, Ruth. Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives. Putnam, 1989.
Hoberman, Mary Ann A House Is a House for Me. Illustrated by Betty Fraser. Penguin, 1982.
Lyon, George Ella. Come a Tide. Illustrated by Stephen Gammell. Orchard, 1990.
McMillan, Bruce. One Sun: A Book of Terse Verse. Holiday House, 1990.
Pinkwater, Daniel. Borgel. Macmillan,
1990.
______. The
Hoboken Chicken Emergency. Prentice Hall, 1977.
Steig, William. Amos & Boris. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971.
Terban, Marvin. In a Pickle and Other Funny Idioms. Illustrated by Giulio Maestro. Clarion, 1983.
———. Mad as a Wet Hen and Other Funny Idioms. Illustrated by Giulio Maestro. Clarion, 1987.
Wildsmith, Brian. Birds. Oxford University Press, 1980.
Single Books as Springboards
Stories with strong organizational patterns often free children from being overwhelmed by the complete set of writers' problems—what to write about and how to begin, organize, sustain an idea, and end. Teachers who invite
children to borrow patterns from literature often help especially reluctant
writers simply to get started, while they challenge more-able writers to go
beyond what an author has created.
In Rodney A. Greenblat's Uncle Wizzmo's New Used Car, a used-car lot sells outlandish cars such as the "Fluffy," which looks like a bunny on wheels. This spurred one 6-year-old to design three cars and the advertising to sell them. Using this same book, a group of second graders designed their own mural of a used-car lot, drew cars, and wrote descriptions of what their cars could do.
Judith
Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day has
long been a favorite of children from first grade through middle school. Older children especially are masterful portrayers of all that can go wrong in one day. Charlotte Zolotow's ironic Someday inspires children to consider the future both seriously and humorously with such ideas as "Someday...my brother will introduce me to his friends and say 'This is my sister,' instead of 'Here's the family creep.'" Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book describes
what is essential and important about things such as flowers. Young children have written their own definitions of the essence of certain things after hearing this read aloud; older children in fifth grade interviewed each other and wrote descriptions of what they thought was significant about each other. Each illustrated essay was bound in the class's "Important Book."
Byrd
Baylor's The Table Where Rich People Sit helps readers consider the
priceless gifts of the natural world. Children enjoy assigning monetary value to things that money can't buy, such as twenty thousand dollars to "feel the wind and smell the rain an hour before it really rains." Baylor's Everybody Needs a Rock gives the reader serious rules to consider in selecting favorite rocks. Children have added their own rules for rock selection, and others might follow the pattern, creating rules for selecting a special tree or shell. Children delight in marking their own special days after reading Baylor's I'm in Charge of Celebrations. A group of 9-year-olds listened to Baylor's Your Own Best Secret Place and talked about the many kinds of secret places people have. After the class discussion, one boy wrote a version of "My Own Best Secret Place" that described how he got to the place, what it felt like to be there, and how it looked:
My Own Best Secret Place
To get to my secret place you have to go down the basment [sic] steps turn right go in the door on the southwall turn left go up the ladder. Crawl in the big hole in the wall and there is my secret place. It feels good to be in my secret place becaus [sic] the cool air washs [sic] away all my troubles into the back of my head. I have a nice soft carpet that I sit on so the hard tough rocks on the floor don't irritate me. When I go in my secret place I turn on my light and read a book with my troubles tucked in the back of my head.
Barrington Road School, Upper Arlington, Ohio Marlene Harbert, teacher
Sometimes
a particular book suggests a unique writing experience. When a group of fourth graders finished reading Sid Fleischman's The Whipping Boy, they wrote about other practical jokes that Prince Brat could play on his father, the king. One child devised this scheme:
Prince Brat would get a mouse and put it in the royal soup. First he would hide the mouse in his pocket. Then he would go up to the royal cook and say, "May I smell the soup?" The cook would back away so the prince could smell the soup and slip the mouse into the soup. Then when the soup was served, one unlucky person would get a dead mouse in his or her soup.
Nathaniel Jencks, grade 4, Martin Luther King, Jr., Laboratory School, Evanston, Illinois Barbara Friedberg, teacher
Tightly patterned or highly formatted stories make it easier for teachers to plan writing extensions. But the example of asking children to invent another of Prince Brat's pranks shows how an alert teacher can plan a writing experience that lets children enter into the mind of a character while at the same time calls attention to a humorous aspect of the story that appeals to children.
Baylor, Byrd. Everybody Needs a Rock. Illustrated by Peter Parnall. Scribner's, 1974.
———. I'm in Charge of Celebrations. Illustrated by Peter Parnall. Scribner's, 1986.
———. The Table Where Rich People Sit. Illustrated by Peter Parnall. Scribner's, 1994.
———. The Way to Start a Day. Illustrated by Peter Parnall. Scribner's, 1978.
———. Your Own Best Secret Place. Illustrated by Peter Parnall. Scribner
's, 1979.
Brown, Margaret Wise. The Important Book. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Harper & Row, 1949.
Fleischman, Sid. The Whipping Boy. Illustrated by Peter Sis. Greenwillow, 1986.
Greenblat, Rodney A. Uncle Wizzmo's New Used Car. HarperCollins, 1990.
Viorst, Judith. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Illustrated by Ray Cruz. Atheneum, 1972.
Zolotow, Charlotte. Someday. Illustrated by Arnold Lobel. Harper & Row, 1965.
See the listing of "Books That Serve as Writing Models" on page 679 of the textbook for additional resources.
Expanded Classroom Dramatics Suggestions
Pantomime
Pantomime is a useful form in beginning creative drama. In preparation for
acting out Leo Lionni's story Frederick, a group of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds pantomimed the role of the mice. They scurried and scuttled about the room, busily gathering their winter supplies. Later, the role of Frederick was added, and again all the rest of the children played at being mice. Only after the children had thought about their roles as mice was dialogue included. Children might also pantomime small portions of a scene in order to understand and feel a character more deeply. For example, a group of 9-year-olds pretended they were the evil witch from "Snow White." They pantomimed waking up in the morning and then standing before a mirror to ask the well-known question, "Who is the fairest in the land?" Pantomime can be an essential step in the development of believable creative drama with children.
Story theater is a form of pantomime in which a narrator reads a story aloud while children take the role of characters and act out the unfolding tale. Books that have a lot of action or emotional reaction make the best candidates for story theater. The teacher or librarian might read aloud The Turnip by Katherine Milhous and Alice Dalgliesh, while six children pantomime being the old man, the old woman, the little granddaughter, the dog, the calico cat, and the mouse. As the children gain confidence with this kind of drama, the teacher can stop at appropriate points when the old man calls to his wife and invite the designated child to create the dialogue. Moving from pantomime to the extemporaneous dialogue is an easy transition to more complex forms of story reenactment.
Improvisation
Improvisation takes children beyond a story to the creation of a new situation. For example, in one kindergarten, children heard several versions of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." The teacher assumed the role of a neighbor reporting that
Goldilocks's mother was very concerned because her daughter hadn't come home. The children said they knew where she was and then retold the story. The next day, the teacher became a detective and said she had been hired by Goldilocks's mother because the child still hadn't returned home. In the role of detectives, the children brainstormed what information they would need to create missing-person posters for the lost girl: name, picture, age, and birthday. The children paired up to make their posters. At their third meeting, the children created a map of the forest on which they placed imaginary clues such as an apple with a bite out of it, or a trail of pebbles, which Goldilocks could have left. The teacher provided a letter saying, "I am looking for a block parent," and a willing parent played the role, saying yes, indeed, Goldilocks had come to her house tired and hungry. But she knew her own phone number, so her mother had come for her and all was well. The next day, there was a thank-you note from Goldilocks to the detectives. The teacher reported that the children extended their play through this drama for weeks (Jean Sperling, "And She Jumped Out the Window Never to Be Seen Again," Literacy Matters Ohio State University, Martha L. King Language and Literacy Center, 1, no. 1, Winter, 1989: 4-8).
Improvisation
had allowed these children to imagine an event beyond a story and play it out. Improvisation can be used in all curricular areas. It could involve a meeting between Columbus and a native spokesperson, each reacting to the other, for instance. Dorothy Heathcote, a British educator, has been most successful in using improvisation to help children expand their understanding of life experiences, to recreate the past, or to imagine the future (Dorothy Heathcote: Collected Writings on Education and Drama, ed Liz Johnson and Cecily O'Neill, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1984). She frequently "frames" a situation, suggesting, for example, that children who are in the midst of studying pioneer life have just been given a large sum of money to establish an outdoor museum devoted to portraying life in a frontier village. The children then must plan what they will exhibit, how to make it authentic, where to obtain artifacts, and so forth. This invariably sends them back to books to find answers to the questions they have posed.
Improvisation
also allows children to explore the point of view of characters who may be
underrepresented in literature. Older children might take on the roles of the Native Americans who appear in several scenes in Pam Conrad's Prairie Songs. An improvisation would allow them to create a dialogue with the white settlers, explaining their views and feelings at being displaced by this new culture. The two groups might then come to some understanding about ways to live together peacefully, an outcome that did not occur in reality but that is made possible through creative drama.
Constructing Puppets and Stages
Numerous books are available that tell children how to make puppets, arionettes, and stages. Young children enjoy making simple cardboard figures that can be stapled to sticks or to tongue depressors. Paper bags stuffed with old stockings
or newspaper can be tied to represent a puppet head and body. Ears, hair, aprons, and so on can be attached to create animals or people By placing a hand in a sock or paper bag, the child can make the puppet appear to talk by moving fingers and thumb.
Finger puppets can easily be made with bodies of finger-sized cylinders stapled at the top. Faces may be glued to the cylinder top or painted on the cylinder itself. These simple puppets make fine storytelling aids for younger children.
A stage can be made by turning a table on its side. The puppeteer sits or kneels behind the tabletop. Another simple stage can be created by hanging curtains so they cover the lower and upper parts of a doorway. A table, cardboard, or side of a large box can also be placed in a doorway. This type of stage is particularly good because children waiting their turns at the side of the stage are hidden from view. Older children or parents can construct a framework for more durable puppet stages. The educational values of planning and creating a puppet show far outweigh the time and effort required to produce it.
Selecting Stories for Puppetry
The techniques of puppetry are most appropriate for certain stories. For example, a group of 7-year-olds presented a puppet show based on Rudyard Kipling's The Elephant's Child. At the appropriate moment, the crocodile pulled the elephant's short stocking nose into the familiar elongated trunk. Such action would be nearly impossible for live actors to portray. Another group of 10-year-olds used marionettes to capture the hilarious action of the laughing-gas birthday party described in P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins. Again, this scene would be difficult to portray in any other dramatic form. Other stories that lend themselves to interpretation through puppetry are The Amazing Bone by William Steig, The Fat Cat by Jack Kent, The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone, Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins, and Frederick and Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse by Leo Lionni.
Conrad, Pam. Prairie Songs. Harper & Row, 1985.
Galdone, Paul. The Gingerbread Boy. Clarion, 1975.
Hutchins, Pat. Rosie's Walk. Macmillan, 1968.
Kent, Jack. The Fat Cat: A Danish Folktale. Scholastic, 1972.
Kipling, Rudyard. The Elephant's Child. Illustrated by Lorinda Bryan Cauley. Harcourt Brace, 1988.
Lionni, Leo. Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse. Pantheon, 1969.
———. Frederick. Pantheon, 1966.
Milhous, Katherine and Alice Dalgliesh. The Turnip: An Old Russian Folktale. Illustrated by Pierr Morgan. Philomel, 1990.
Steig, William. The Amazing Bone. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976.
Travers, P.L. Mary Poppins. Illustrated by Mary Shepard. Harcourt Brace, 1981.
Literature Discussion Groups
Bringing children together in small groups to discuss the books they are reading is a powerful tool for facilitating learning and love of literature. Literature discussion groups are referred to in the professional literature by many names, most commonly, Book Groups, Book Clubs, and Literature Circles. Students who participate in these groups have a chance to share their responses, questions, and ideas in a student-led group. The conversation is natural and free flowing, not constrained by a pre-developed set of questions or guided by a teacher's agenda. The teacher's role during group meetings is that of a facilitator, monitoring process, and occasionally helping to keep conversation focused or flowing. Student choice is important in literature discussion groups. To heighten their engagement, it is important for children to opt into a particular discussion group, reading a book that they have selected from several choices framed by the teacher. Students do need clear modeling and much practice before they are able to effectively participate in a book discussion group with minimal intervention from the teacher. We recommend the following professional resources to you as you work to establish discussion groups in your classroom.
Campbell, B.H., Johnson, N., and K Schlick-Noe. Literature Circles Resource Guide. Christopher Gordon, 2000.
Daniels, Harvey. Literature Circles: Voice and Choice Book Clubs and Reading Groups. Stenhouse, 2001.
Daniels, Harvey and Nancy Steineke. Minilessons for Literature Circles. Stenhouse, 2004.
Davies, Katharine Samway and Gail Whang. Literature Study Circles in a Multicultural Classroom. Stenhouse, 1995.
Harste, Jerome, and Kathy G. Short with Carolyn Burke. Creating Classrooms for Authors: The Reading,Writing Connection. Heinemann, 1996. Chapter 2.
Sloane, Glenna Davis. The Child as Critic. 5th ed. Teachers College Press, 1991.
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