A Funny Thing Happend When a Friend Recommended Big Nate: The Power of Peer Book Recommendations



     My eight year old son has loved graphic novels, particularly the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, since he was six.  He devoured what he could of the text and pictures, laughing, sharing, enjoying.  He even started writing his own ‘Diary of a Wimpy Max’ books, emulating Kinney’s style.
     Being the avid reading advocate I am, I naturally noted his interest and brought him to the library to check out other graphic novels.  He read the Flying Beaver Brother series by Maxwell Eaton III,   Smile and Sisters by Raina Telgemeier, El Deafo by Cece Bell, The Bird and Squirrel series by James Burkes and many others.  He pretty much loved them all, reading several of them more than once.  (I silently curse my own poor parenting when he’s up at 10:00PM on a school night and I can’t get him to close a book.)
     Near the beginning of this school year, I brought home several of the books from the Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce.  Students at my school like them, so I figured Max would, too.  I talked to him a bit about them and showed him the covers, but for some reason, he didn’t pick them up.  Over the course of a week, I mentioned them several times, but nothing sparked his interest.  I collected the books and took them back to school.  


Then, a funny thing happened.


     A few weeks ago Max asked me about Big Nate.  I replied, “Remember, I brought home several of the books from the series, but you weren’t interested.”
     “Well, I’m interested now.”
     I wanted to check some out from the library, but he insisted he wanted his own copies.  Strange…how did we go from no interest to “I’ll die if I don’t have my own copies?”  Come to find out, a student in Max’s second grade class gave a book talk on one of the Big Nate books.  The teacher has a simple routine: every student has a day of the week for “Share a Book.”  They give quick book talks, sharing favorite parts, reading a bit aloud, etc.  Max’s classmate shared a few funny parts from Big Nate and OH!  From that point forward, Max was convinced he had to get his hands on these books.
     Since the books arrived from Amazon, Max has been furiously reading.  He can’t put them down.  In fact, I just spoke with his teacher today and he’s been in a tad bit of trouble for trying to read them while his teacher is teaching.  In trouble for reading!  Ha, imagine that.
     The point of this post is this:  REVERE THE POWER STUDENTS HAVE IN THEIR HANDS!  They can be extremely influential in the reading lives of their peers.  Imagine, me, full-time teacher, writer of books, book-talk extraordinaire, unable to convince Max to pick up a book, but a classmate did the job with little to no effort.  A few questions you might consider:  Do you take advantage of the power of peer-to-peer book recommendations?  Do you have any simple routines in place that allow for student book-sharing or informal talk about books?  I presented on this topic at the IRA annual convention in 2014 and wrote a post with some suggestions you might find useful.  You can find it here:  http://janielwagstaff.blogspot.com/2014/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html  I’d love to hear your stories and ideas, as well.


Happy reading (and, we’re going to bed early tonight—books closed, lights out!)!
Janiel
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Perfect Timing for Some Purposeful Writing: Thank-Yous for a Winter Holiday Gift



My second-grade son is working on his letters now!
Hi there,
     I hope you've had a wonderful holiday!  Just a quick idea for some purposeful writing as we go back to school tomorrow following the break.  Our students undoubtedly received some type of winter holiday gift while away.  Wouldn't it be nice to have them write a thank-you and send it off ?  We can teach the conventions of letter writing, transitions, voice, description and more with this authentic assignment.  More significantly, we're teaching the importance of  expressing appreciation.  Many teachers invite children to bring in one gift they received to show to the class or to a small group.  This is perfect for working on speaking and listening standards and, having the object in front of students as they write their thank-yous will help them with description and to recall details related to the gift.  Students' motivation soars when we make writing purposeful!
    Having students talk prior to writing is one of the best scaffolds we can provide them for success.  Even if they don't bring in an object to share, allow them time to talk to peers about a gift and what they might write in a thank-you before they write.  Share some examples aloud with the class and discuss them--this will go a long way toward promoting success for everyone and diminish "I don't know what to write!" or the two sentence 'Thank you for the ___________. I really like it.' problems!
    One of the themes in my newest book from Corwin Literacy is purposeful writing.  I can't emphasize enough the difference this makes in the effectiveness for student learning and in the writing climates of our classrooms.  Another theme of the book is integration:  integrating standards to save time AND help students use literacy in authentic ways.  In the simple assignment above, we can integrate writing standards, language convention standards and speaking and listening standards (and more:  Consider the letter recipient's point of view, for example.  What might s/he like to know in the letter?  Why do you think this?)
   Here's wishing you a great week!  Thanks for stopping by.  Happy reading/writing/thinking!
--Janiel
http://www.corwin.com/books/Book245335
Click the picture to check it out.  Corwin is offering it at a great discount.

 P.S. Thanks to Krista, from Creative Clips, for the fun clip art.  Max and I used her sets to create some personalized stationary!

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Poetry Friday: Boy Of Eight Year's Time

Hello!  It's Poetry Friday!
Still in draft form...needs something (suggestions welcomed!) :

Boy of Eight Year's Time
  
Nose to nose
that boy
he grows,
eight years old.
Skinny boy
Drama boy
Stubborn boy
Humor boy
Boy of mess-making.
The house,
an unlimited playground.
Yesterday,

an airline,
from living room to
dining room to
kitchen.
Little cardboard planes
flew to exotic destinations,
like Phoenix.
Today,
a mine of gems,
rubies and emeralds,
exhumed
from beneath the couch.
The brown berber carpet
holds a paradise of promise
for this
boy of imagination.
Boy of eight year’s time.

                         
© Janiel Wagstaff


For the life of me, I can't find where he put Phoenix!




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