Young Children - March 2008 - (Page 35) family members for their ideas. Using the literary structure of the text in a particular children’s book as a model, the children would each compose a written piece about their chosen geometric term, incorporating the descriptive elements, and then revise and illustrate their writing for publication in a class book. Reading The Important Book Michelle selected The Important Book, a children’s classic by Margaret Wise Brown, to inspire the children’s writing. In The Important Book, Brown describes a variety of objects—snow, shoes, grass, sky, wind, an apple, and more—in simple terms, one object per page. The text is arranged in short lines, like verse (see the passage below). When Michelle read the book aloud, the children were immediately attracted to its patterned language. They noticed the repetition of lines and began chiming in as As the conversation continued, a child commented, “The book is telling you that the properties of [an object] are very important.” The children were familiar with the word properties in different contexts: they had learned about the three properties of solids, liquids, and gases and had identified properties of geometric solids. This comment seemed to confirm the project as an intellectually stimulating activity that “expands children’s knowledge of the world and vocabulary” (IRA & NAEYC 1998, 10). The talk around The Important Book helped the children to analyze an author’s purpose, her use of language, the pattern of illustrations, and the choices she made in determining what is “most important.” These insights about the craft of writing, and the examination of the structure of Brown’s text, provided helpful understandings as Michelle invited the children to compose their own poems. Creating the poems When each child had chosen a geometry word, Michelle instructed them to record its mathematical attributes and then expand their lists to include examples of the shape/ term in the real world. In this way the children could demonstrate their knowledge of the mathematical properties of a shape as well as draw upon prior experiences to make personal connections with the shape. For instance, one child noted that a cone “has one face on the bottom and has zero corners.” His real-world examples included a birthday hat, a castle top, a snow cone, and a traffic cone. Another child wrote that “an octagon has eight sides and eight corners,” and his personal associations included “a stop sign, tabletop, watch face, and a pattern on a quilt.” He also added, “Up north there was a house that looked like an octagon.” Passage from The Important Book The important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it. It’s like a little shovel, You hold it in your hand, You can put it in your mouth, It isn’t flat, It’s hollow, And it spoons things up. But the most important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it. From Margaret Wise Brown, The Important Book (New York: HarperCollins, 1949/1977). Involving families After developing their lists of attributes and examples, the children interviewed a person in their household for additional words and phrases. Michelle wanted to involve Michelle read the last line of each page. The class discussion that followed highlighted techniques authors can use to construct their writing and make it appealing. One child wondered if the book could be made into a song, and another said the pages were “sort of like poems.” Another child remarked how the placement of words was different from the longer lines in storybooks. Their observations underscore one of the important goals that the International Reading Association (IRA) and NAEYC advocate for children: “to recognize and discuss elements of different text structures” (1998, 46). One child wondered if the book could be made into a song, and another said the pages were “sort of like poems.” Young Children • March 2008 35
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.