A Summer Assortment
By Sandy Meagher

Teacher ingenuity continues to inspire me. Sue Short, first grade teacher at Stourbridge Elementary School in Honesdale, PA has created "A Handful of Reading Strategies" to help students decode texts by referring to the strategies printed on the hand shown at right.

The thumb has a pair of eyes on it and says, "Look at the pictures." The index finger has lips and says, "Get your mouth ready." The middle finger features an alternating pattern of shapes, as well as words such as "cat" and "hat," to remind children to "Look for spelling patterns." The ring finger shows the word "wind" with the "in" highlighted, so children know to "Find little words in big words." The pinky shows a picture of a skipping boy and says, "Skip it then try it again."

While Sue does a guided reading lesson with a small group of students, the rest of the class works independently. If they have difficulty while reading, they can try to help themselves by referring to one of the paper hands on their reading table.

For information about purchasing Sue's "Handful of Reading Strategies" materials, call her at 570-253-1107.

Fiction and nonfiction series
To support these lessons, the library has recommended many series such as "Power Phonics" from the Rosen Publishing Group. These nonfiction books have a word list at the end and include activities. The Kane Press series, "Let's Read Together," uses a phonetic approach with fiction.

Out in the world
Another helpful series is "Green Light Readers" from Harcourt, which includes the title Todd's Box by Paula Sullivan (2004, ISBN: 0-152-05093-0). Todd takes a walk and fills a box with his findings; a pine cone, a leaf, etc. Students can reenact the walk on a nature trail.

A great series for grade two is "Where I Live," from Weekly Reader Early Library. The titles include I Live In the City, by Gini Holland (2004, ISBN: 0-836-84126-3) as well as books about the country, desert, mountains, ocean and town. Students can act out where they live and have their classmates guess. The books mention the website www.citycreator.com where students can select roads, buildings, vehicles and people to create a city.

Searching for meaning
Switch now to language arts and some basic grammar. Third grade teachers will enjoy introducing punctuation with Punctuation Takes a Vacation by Robin Pulver (Holiday House, 2003, ISBN: 0-823-41687-9). Punctuation leaves the class and nothing the students read, say or do makes any sense without it. Challenge your students to read paragraphs with no punctuation, then invite them to work in small groups to punctuate a paragraph.

A picture is worth a handful of well-known words (in this case, "Grin and bear it.") in Mervyn Peake's Figures of Speech.

Students in grades four and five had fun with Figures of Speech by Mervyn Peake (Candlewick, 2003, ISBN: 0-763-62176-5). The book contains wordless drawings, and you have to guess the figure of speech depicted in each drawing. Small groups of students tried to guess the figures of speech; teams that got the most correct won a prize. The teams then made a drawing and had their classmates guess the figure of speech. To support this activity we provided books of proverbs and maxims.

Reading list picks
It's time to come up with reading lists for the summer. For early grade or emergent readers try Kate McMullan, Susan Meddaugh, Tomie dePaola, Cynthia Rylant, Patricia Reilly Giff, Alyssa Capucilli, Paula Danziger, Donald Crews and Lois Ehlert. For nonfiction, try HarperCollins' "Let's Read and Find Out" science series, with such titles as My Pet Hamster by Anne Rockwell (2002, ISBN: 0-060-28565-6).

Chapter book readers (middle grades) might try Andrew Clements, Kate DiCamillo, Ann Rinaldi, Marion Dane Bauer, Peg Kehret, Gary Paulsen, Joseph Bruchac and Jerry Spinelli. The Dorling Kindersley "Eyewitness" series is great for nonfiction at different reading and interest levels, from mummies to gems to volcanoes.

Picks for parents and teachers
Two excellent titles for educators are Craft Lessons (Stenhouse, 1998, ISBN: 1-571-10073-3) and Non-Fiction Craft Lessons (Stenhouse, 2001, ISBN: 1-571-10329-5), both by Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi. These are great resources for teaching writing in grades K-8, with one-page activity lessons for each type of writing. For parents we recommend The Hurried Child by David Elkind (Perseus, 2001, ISBN: 0-738-20441-2) and we encourage them to read children's books.

Reading fun, all summer long
A fun summer activity involves having students and teachers exchange letters about the books they've been reading. At the beginning of the school year, the letters can be posted on a bulletin board called "Hot Summer Reads." If your district has e-mail for staff and students, the exchanges can be conducted that way, with the book picks posted on the school's website.

Ask students to brainstorm a list of ways they can have fun reading:

• Take a book to the beach, in the car or on the plane
• Read to your babysitter, grandparents or neighbor
• Keep a journal
• Act out stories with your friends
• Read poetry and put it to music
• Make note cards with a poem on the cover

The ideas go on and on – and so does the reading. Have fun!

Sandy Meagher is the Library Department Chairperson and School Librarian in the Wayne Highlands School District, Honesdale, PA.

May 2004, Vol.35, No.8