zombie walks, vampires and voting

Vampires can’t, we can- please do VOTE!

There- that’s my lecture of the moment!

And here are some great links- and one can’t go wrong with adding a little Edgar Allen Poe to the mix.

http://www.poemuseum.org/  The Poe Museum website in Richmond, Virginia has posted some of Poe’s best known tales- great for in class or at home reading and to set the stage for any haunted venture.

Pinterest offers numerous images to get one thinking about scary and fashionable, plus pages dedicated to carving and carved pumpkins; it even has a Pet Halloween page!

Before the cast of True Blood, who knew how to make every Sunday a spectacularly campy vampire and other “not of this world” T.V.  hour – earlier campy shows include The Munsters and the Addams Family; imagine Morticia reciting Poe’s Tell- Tale Heart – even without costumes and decorations- a spooky story ideal for young adolescents –

Halloween may not be for everyone, and certainly many wonder at the morbid front lawn decorations and the emphasis on “trick or treat”, but ghost tales remain a great way to engage students and Spooky science ‘tricks’ are perfect for this time of year.

Here are some links:

http://www.poemuseum.org/works-telltale.php

http://leftbraincraftbrain.com/2014/09/19/25-spooky-science-activities-halloween/     this site has solid explanations for how to craft-

http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=halloween  there were simply too many to pick a favorite– though I do think this cookie monster deserves special mention: courtesy of princesspinkygirl.com

YUMM -Good!

Yesterday, at the library…

or why I still love Ghostbusters the original movie.   There are simply some spots which on the surface suggest stuffy or sterile yet enter and-

do the 4:00 p.m. hustle.  Hardly a seat vacant on a Tuesday evening- my local library was booming, and representative of the multinational cultures in this city could be seen people of various backgrounds congregating in a single spot; children/seniors/nannies/parents/elementary through post secondary students/tutors/ readers/writers/ moving, shuffling, whispering and laughing- and at the odd table a little bit of pontificating too! Plus now that the regulations have changed, chomping and slurping and being careful to avoid spilling; the books, newspapers, and magazines placed just out of harm from the liquids-patrons being careful to value the space and its contents.

I sat and listened enjoying the hum; Libraries to me epitomizing the concept of “Democracy” – a public reminder that a community cares about learning, growing and changing,  this location reflecting both ties to its past and the upgrades any institution requires to continue to be relevant.  I remembered a post graduate course in which we as students were encouraged to “eavesdrop” and then to write a mini story  -the difference becoming real between actual participant observation and creative fiction  (what we produced was “fiction” not ethnography).  Actual participant observation involves the “other” ; rather than suggesting meaning, it questions meaning, and encourages communication; a give and take to produce a shared respectful evaluation of a process.  And I realized it was just this shared evaluation which I had been listening for, but unfortunately still discovered to be lacking.

I put the word “together’ in my company’s mandate before the word itself had become the latest buzzword; years of training, rigor and thought provoking examples of good teaching coming together to be expressed in the concise, yet boundless way a lesson will both contain a single purpose while opening the mind to entertain further ideas.  Good books do this- taking us out of ourselves for an instant, allowing us to enter into another’s space; strong readers know this and read for the combination of entertainment and lessons being shared which the novelist has offered.  When we “teach” reading skills we must ( me- offering a prescriptive!) – yes must remember how we as readers automatically make comparisons; almost instinctively comparing a new text to one read before, a character or plot problem to another story, a joke to a similar situation; it is the combination of novel and expected that we are searching for- the familiarity of a parallel universe- the one inside the story; the one inside our heads.  And we must (that word again!) recognize that the students we are working with may not have either the same experiences or any referents at all-

I began this blog entry with a mention of a movie- part of popular culture? perhaps…but I could wager and probably win a bet that not everyone has seen Ghostbusters the original, or would automatically recall the inside the library scene of books floating … do watch the whole movie – it may be hard for you afterwards to consider a library as a “static” space!

Experiential knowledge and Story time

Thinking of Reading Strategies and what might work best for each age group when found myself circling back to the simple concept of “story”.  We tell a story; we share a story; we read a story; and we critique a movie if the story within it lacked “substance” or simply asked us as viewers to work “too hard” to follow a plot and grow with the characters.  And readers of all ages too want to identify somehow with the characters- to be taken on a Roller Coaster Ride, perhaps, to be given a slow and steady walk from beginning to end- maybe; Readers “know” if a book appeals, even before we teach students how to formally analyze plot and character development and where to look for symbols and themes.

Had the pleasure yesterday evening of being reminded of this when a student became enthusiastic about the social issues within To Kill a Mockingbird– a modern “classic”, filled with so many nuances and options for discussion that I had to marvel anew how the book had actually been taken off of some reading lists.   The characters in this story have become near stereotypes, representing segments of society to be either admired or feared.  Racism, social conscience, economic differences within society, justice- a justice system for all?, children versus adults and understanding of “big” issues, social norms and social responsibility, individual versus society- the list of discussion topics goes on.  And though Harper Lee’s book is not the only one to call attention to the discrepancy between the way the world ought to be and the way the world often- in fact-is, this text may either make a reader grateful that it is now 2014- and issues depicted belong to the last century, or sad, that it is now 2014, and issues depicted may still be prevalent, in spite of many reasons to believe that by now, “everyone”  should know better.

Story then is what keeps a reader’s attention; the young child laughing as Mortimer climbs up the stairs “thump, thump, thump, thump”, the older child learning Greek Myths along with following Percy on his adventures, the high school student reacting to a character in The Help, or marveling at the formality within Pride and Prejudice, is absorbing how others- writers- have seen their society, and chosen to encapsulate in written form aspects of social interaction, some comedic, some tragic, some simply “as is”, that we, readers, might gain a little bit of insight and also question what we take for granted- how we interact with others; how others interact with us.

Story, oral and written, keeps us engaged. Young students require help in building vocabulary that will later be used to decipher the stories they are expected to read and make sense of through their academic years. One of our bigger tasks then is how to encourage vocabulary building, vocabulary usage, vocabulary extensions. And this task begins in preschool, where we sing songs, use movement and gesture to get at emotion, encourage play acting of various characters, and in general start the foundation for literacy acquisition. In doing so we are also encouraging the beginning of empathic relating, the ability to care about another and to feel that the other’s experience matters. Stories help us to move across artificial and real boundaries, boundaries of time and space, boundaries of religion and race, boundaries of culture and country. And while I am one who finds reading can actually transport a reader from the here and now into the story itself, I work with struggling readers daily. So I look for as many variations of story as possible, to cultivate an ability to encourage the reader to move beyond his or her own stereotype- a label possibly imposed by an academic institution- and to read first for pleasure in the story, then to evaluate the story; to read at a level that allows for absorbing the big picture within the tale, and to connect that image with what the student already has experienced. And regardless of age, to allow for the recap- the retelling of the story, the part when the student is able to say “I did this” (meaning I did the reading) for while retelling may not be the same action as summarizing or analyzing, retelling offers a strong practical reward- the student hearing his or her own voice while sharing ideas.  Isn’t this a central goal of a writing conference?

Six Words for Fall, and an image

Brilliant, beautiful, crunching! Children, jumping, glee!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving; what are you feeling grateful for?

Finding the Super Heroes

Before there was a Captain Underpants we had Captain America, and Batman, and Superman and a host of other super heroes with Wonder Woman, and some of the Legionnaires thrown in as female “role models” too. Today we are seeing a revival of sorts for these “super” heroes through a revised media, with the characters bridging the gaps between original comic stars and the ones we are meeting through the TV, internet or movie screen. The screen characters have been adapted, modified to be in keeping with modern expectations, yet maintain a quaint throwback to those original paper heroes; the ones that were featured in the comic “books” of old.

True confessions- I enjoyed the antics of Kato and the Green Hornet on TV, but rarely read comics as a child; there were so many other books, magazines and reading material to select from- we lived a ten minute run across a park from a library, in addition to having an abundance of written material in the home. Still, as an adult I read the work of Dr. Krashen, and then began to review comics to discover not only what their attraction might be, but also to find this added vocabulary challenge which Dr. Krashen wrote about. Indeed, peppered throughout a piece is a great deal of vocabulary; it was therefore such fun to watch the new Gotham series and hear two actors emphasize the following word: “lackadaisical”; lovely – the repetition of a single word bringing home those years as a graduate student and the clear learning about how reading, to be an effective vocabulary builder, must engage or appeal to the reader. Whether parent or teacher, hearing a child laugh out loud over the adventures of a nerdy character, and then wanting to read the next in a series, be it the earlier mentioned Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or The Dork Diaries, and there are more in this “reality non –superhero comic style” genre of books today is a relief to many who worry if the child will engage with a book.

Engage; as in get together with; how wonderful that we now recognize the difference between active reading and passive actions. Active readers are engaged, wondering what will happen to the character, how the adventure will unfold, whether new characters will play a major or a minor role, and, without meaning to, absorb the vocabulary built into the tale! Have you a young person around who thoroughly got into the sport of Pokémon, collecting the cards and noting the characters’ super powers? And then a few years later, when being introduced to mythology began to recognize that some of those card characters resembled the ancient characters of yore?

Today young adults and older adults glued to both the book and the television series, following along with George RR Martin and his “Game of Thrones” are not merely reading and watching humans struggle over issues of power and in combat with forces of nature- the non-human characters who also enter the story generally as a destructive and to be feared force remind us subconsciously that the ongoing struggle of good versus evil is rarely clear cut and easily defined; instead this struggle appears to be ongoing and circular, intense, passionate and ever changing. Ultimately we experience along with the characters; when the story engages, we care, hoping our “heroes” will survive once more and challenge what ever issues they are newly confronted with; we also like a story which shocks us; which doesn’t always tie up the ends in an expected fashion. Perhaps the appeal of comic book characters is that they aren’t us, we don’t have to expect to have their abilities to defend a city or “to leap tall buildings in a single bound” but we still enjoy that someone’s imagination has created them for us- that these parallel universes can exist, and that for a brief interlude, we can sigh along with princesses, challenge a fire breathing dragon, combat evil from inside a space ship, or spin a web like Spider Man, while rescuing whomever is in distress. Real and imaginary work together inside the space we label “story”. When wondering with families about books their child should read, I change the word should to could- what is the student curious about? Sometimes it is title that appeals, other times, a text a friend recommended, and occasionally, serendipity enters the scene, and a word on a page simply brings to life an emotion and for the remainder of the story- a reader is enthralled.

For the struggling readers, the individuals to whom reading is anathema please remember to include story in the everyday- and allow for on screen, tv, movies, magazines and comics to fill their imaginations with how stories are told. Such learners crave the antics of super heroes too!