Hello Book Bums families!
This week in the newsletter we're thinking about beginnings. We have ideas for new books to read, new hobbies to try, and new strategies for spelling. Dr. Christy also shares the beauty of offering fresh starts to the kids in our care. What are you beginning this spring?
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Word of the Week
rife (rife) adjective/describing word - prevalent, especially to an increasing degree
Dandelions and clover are rife in my spring lawn.
Literary Calendar
• April 16 is the birthday of poet Tracy K. Smith.
• She served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-2019.
• During that time she created the poetry podcast The Slowdown, where you can get a short, daily poem and reflection.
Pause for Poetry
The Good Life
by Tracy K. Smith
When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.
From our Bookshelves
For my birthday, I received a membership to Book of the Month (BOTM) and Wild, Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy was the first book I selected.
Here’s how it works: Each month, an editorial team selects five to seven books from the best new hardcovers and audiobooks available. Sometimes the books they list haven’t even been released by retailers yet. A brief description is provided, and BOTM members select the one they’d like to read for that month. My book arrived in the mail just over a week after I submitted my order. I thoroughly enjoyed the process, and I loved the fact that I probably wouldn’t have discovered this book on my own. A three-book membership is $59.99, and if I had ordered Wild, Dark Shore on Amazon, the cost of this book alone would be $25.99. Not bad, though it’s definitely more expensive than a visit to your local library.
Wild, Dark Shore is a romantic and almost dystopian mystery about a girl who washes ashore on an island located not far from Antarctica. The water level is quickly rising around the world, and so are tensions. The island inhabitants—a father and his three kids—are tasked with caring for a seed bank that houses seed specimens from all around the world until they, the family and the seeds, are safely retrieved.
Note: Lots of reviewers referred to this book as "atmospheric." Evidently, an atmospheric book is one that “skillfully creates a strong sense of mood, feeling, and place through evocative language and details, immersing the reader in the story's environment and emotional core.”
I did feel immersed in the environment.
I found this book to be an absolute page turner, though I did roll my eyes a few times. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking that maybe that was the “emotional core” part.
Tips for Families
Do your kids love Easter egg hunts? Maybe they’d enjoy orienteering! Orienteering is a competitive sport in which participants find their way to various checkpoints across rough country using a map and compass. This weekend, April 13th, from 11:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., you can take some kids you love to the Cummins Shelter at Rentschler Forest MetroPark (5701 Reigart Road, Hamilton Ohio) to enjoy some outdoor fun that’s a bit of a scavenger hunt. Park staff say this is an activity everyone can enjoy, regardless of age or experience.
Participants will get detailed maps and will be challenged to locate a series of control points that are shown on that map. They can take a leisurely pace or race to compete for the fastest time. There are five different courses with varying degrees of difficulty. For this event, kids will get eggs at each checkpoint, and they’ll select a prize when they finish the course. The cost is $4 with a maximum fee of $10 per family. There is no charge for accompanying adults. Older children and adults may also choose to try one of several more difficult courses; the fee is $10 per person, and you may do multiple courses at no additional charge.
Registration for advanced courses is coming soon.
Tips for Raising Readers and Writers
This may be a strange tip for readers and writers, but I have noticed that many, many children do not know their parents’ phone numbers. You might be surprised to learn just how many kids do not have even a phone number or two stored in their memories. Perhaps it’s because, with no land line, younger kids aren’t communicating via phones like we did in the past. Also, once kids have called someone, they (like us) simply press the name of the person they’re calling, and there is little incentive to commit a phone number to memory.
Having served in three after-school programs this year, I can tell you that when parents do not arrive to pick their kids up, more times than not, the kids do not know a parent’s phone number to call. I had to dig through paperwork to find a number with which I could contact kids’ parents. These are bright, English-speaking kids ages eight and older.
In truth, I do not know my family members’ phone numbers by heart. Do you? Let’s commit to learning an important phone number this week—and encourage and equip your kids to remember yours, even if you’re the grandparent. Kids who know their grandparents’ phone numbers can feel confident that if they need you, you’re only a phone call away.
Practical Grammar
Over the past couple of years, in the newsletter, we’ve shared each of these commonly confused English words. Do any of these words still make you think twice?
News from Book Bums
In next week’s podcast, I’ll be sharing lots of information about an instructional tool I created called the Dynamic Dictionary. Admittedly, it’s only a dictionary that offers spellings of words—not definitions or etymologies—but it is certainly dynamic in that it’s characterized by constant change.
The reason I created the dynamic dictionary was to reinforce the phonics lessons I was teaching my students. I never bought into the idea of just “taking your best guess” for spelling. I felt like the writing part of our day should reflect the same phonics lessons I was promoting in the reading part.
My solution was the Dynamic Dictionary.
It began with my Grandma Jean sewing twenty-six small red pockets of felt onto an enormous blue piece of felt. Each red pocket, big enough for a stack of index cards, displayed the letters, a through z.
When my students wanted to know how to spell a word, they would bring a blank index card to me. Together we’d stretch out the sounds in the word and then we’d represent those sounds with letters and letter combinations. When the students had their words written correctly upon their index cards, they’d take them back to their tables, record the words in their writing as they made the sounds aloud, and then they’d place their cards in the pocket featuring the first letter of their word.
Students were not permitted to request a word from me until they’d visited the Dynamic Dictionary to see if the word was already in a pocket.
As they sifted through the words, the students had to think about how they’d spell the sounds in the word they were looking for.
If the word was not already in the pocket, I addressed the student-requested word with the child. I promoted an awareness of phonemes (the sounds we hear in words) and phonics rules (the letters and letter combinations that represent those sounds).
Here is a video clip of a student using a Dynamic Dictionary.
Whether you use this tool in a classroom or at home over summer break to reinforce good spelling skills, your kids’ spelling skills will improve! Use this method of sharing word spellings with the kids you love.
I have a few kits for sale at Book Bums in West Chester for $30 each if you’re interested in purchasing one. It would make a great teacher appreciation gift!
You will need the following materials:
• Pocket chart (I fold the top part under and use only the letter pocket part.)
• Blank Index Cards
• Black Sharpie Markers
Tips for Teachers
What teacher doesn’t enjoy fresh starts? Don’t we all love the beginning of each new year? Beginnings are rife with possibilities—for us and for our students!
When talking with 15-20 teachers about teachers who’d made a difference in our lives, I asked, “What qualities were most impactful?” The comments included things like patience, kindness, enthusiasm, etc. All good qualities.
The one that struck a chord with me was fresh starts.
Teachers, we simply must be teachers of fresh starts.
When we have a bad day, we don’t want someone holding a grudge about it and making us feel guilty—constantly reminding us about how we fell short and made a mess of things. And we’re adults.
We simply must offer kids that same grace and kindness of fresh starts.
Sometimes those fresh starts will need to be offered just minutes after a misstep—even when we’re not feeling like a fresh start is deserved.
Imagine how powerful a kind word, kind eyes, a fresh start can be to children who need someone to see great things in them and actually expect great things from them.
Kids need fresh starts too.
Let’s be that teacher.
Just for Fun
I first met the word diminutive a long while ago on a price tag for an antique cupboard. I had no idea what that meant, so I looked it up. Isn’t it ironic that diminutive is a big word that means unusually small?
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