Hello Book Bums families!
This week in the newsletter we're leaning into all the things we love best: family read alouds, novels with great word play, and building vocabulary. We also have some fun, spooky Book Bums news to share. So get reading!
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Word of the Week
plausible (plaw-zuh-bull) adjective/describing word - believable
I was surprised that the book was non-fiction because the story did not seem plausible.
Literary Calendar
• September 22-28 is Banned Books Week for 2024 with the motto Freed Between the Lines.
• This annual celebration is sponsored by the American Library Association and supported by many other book loving groups.
• The ALA reports that over 4000 titles were challenged in libraries and schools during 2023.
• Did you know that beloved children's books like Strega Nona, Charlotte's Web, The Wizard of Oz, A Wrinkle in Time, and Where the Wild Things Are have all been challenged or banned during the years records have been kept?
If you're looking for a gentle introduction to the issue of book banning, consider Ban This Book by Alan Gratz. It's considered middle grade, but the main character and her friends are all fourth graders.
Goodreads describes it this way, "An inspiring tale of a fourth-grader who fights back when her favorite book is banned from the school library--by starting her own illegal locker library!"
Tips for Readers and Writers
If your kids are practicing letter formations or keyboarding skills, you can observe what they know and what they’re struggling with by inviting them to write the following sentence. Ideally, you’d read the sentence aloud.
This sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” is a pangram (pan-all, gram-thing written) that is commonly used in classrooms today. Though I’ve often used it, I hadn’t thought about it much until I saw the following meme:
I began to wonder if there were many other pangrams, and then I found the book Ella Minnow Pea.
From our Bookshelves
4de3qb7Ella Minnow Pea is a novel written by Mark Dunn. It takes place on the fictional island of Nollop, located just off the coast of South Carolina. The book is made up entirely of letters to and from the island’s inhabitants. The island is named after Nevin Nollop who is credited with writing the sentence famed for including every letter of the alphabet and features a cenotaph (a monument to someone buried elsewhere) at the town center. Upon the monument Nollop’s words “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” are spelled out with thirty-five individual letter tiles.
You should know that the citizens of Nollop pride themselves on their extensive vocabulary and their creative use of language. And it’s a good thing, for one day letters began falling from the cenotaph and it was decided that those letters were to be stricken from the vocabulary of all Nollopians. The island of letter-writers had to find ever more roundabout ways of expressing themselves. This led to truly “fantastic word-creating and lexical acrobatics” for as the letters fell from the monument, they were also removed from the novel.
It’s no wonder author Myla Goldberg called this book “a love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere.”
It’s fast. It’s funny, and it’s oddly pertinent today. I adored this little treasure.
It’s just over $10 on Amazon if you’re interested in checking it out.
Wordology Workshop
• The two preceding sections, "Tips for Raising Readers and Writers" and "From Our Bookshelves," are full of word roots.
• Pan (all), gram (written), and log (thought, word, or speech) are all roots we've featured before.
• A new root for today is lex meaning of words.
• You find it words like lexicon and lexicographer.
• Did you notice words using all four of these roots as you read the previous two sections?
Tips for Families
We all know it’s true, but many of us all fall into the trap of having the television on for far too long, far too often. It’s so easy to get sucked into shows we don’t even care that much for.
Try turning off the tube and enjoy some family reading time. Either everyone can read his or her own books, or someone can read aloud from a book the whole family will enjoy.
Benefits of a family Read Aloud:
• It helps to nurture a love a reading.
• It increases a child’s ability to focus for longer periods of time.
• It helps to strengthen family bonds and gives you a chance to spend quality time together.
• It allows younger children and struggling readers the chance to hear stories and vocabulary that they would not be able to encounter on their own.
• It helps to strengthen a child’s imagination.
• It helps children develop language skills and literacy.
• It expands a child’s understanding of the world.
• It helps children build empathy and learn how to handle difficult feelings.
~New Berlin Public Library
Book suggestions for your next family read-aloud:
The Trumpet of the Swan, by E. B. White
The Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrop
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Practical Grammar
Do you know the difference between hoard and horde? Let’s get into it.
Tips to help recall the proper spellings of these words:
When we hoard things, we may stick them in a cupboard.
When there are hordes of people, it can be difficult to keep order.
News from Book Bums
One October my son Taylor made the Boo part of Book Bums look like a ghost on our newsletter, and I was crazy for it! Well, we’re turning a version of that design into a t-shirt. It won’t be long until Book Bums will be selling some of our best t-shirts online!
Tips for Teachers
At Book Bums, we create unique, fun-focused experiences to teach the lessons in our phonics curriculum. We also work in plenty of spaced practice for continued review. These decisions were made based upon what the research makes clear.
Nuthall and colleagues (2007) found that when a student is able to piece together, in working memory, the equivalent of three complete definitions or descriptions of a new concept, that concept will be constructed as part of the student’s long-term memory.
Students need time to process new concepts; not simple repetition but opportunities to come at material in a variety of ways.
Once the team had identified this “Rule of Three” phenomenon, it had 85% predictive power in both directions: i.e., predicting that students would learn something or would not learn it, depending on their experiences in various lessons.
Whatever you’re teaching your children, remember the “Rule of Three.”
Nuthall, G. (2007) The Hidden Lives of Learners. NZCER Press, Wellington.
Just for Fun
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