Blog #5

Blog Entry #5

The first book I reviewed was titled “Guess How Much I Love You”, by Sam McBratney.  I identified four areas that might affect comprehension.  The first area that I thought would affect the comprehension of this story is knowledge of the vocabulary.  In this story, I feel that children will need to know what a hare is.  Most children are familiar with a rabbit, but may not know that a hare is very similar to a rabbit.  Children may also not be familiar with the word lane.  Lane is a path or road.  Finally, children may not be familiar with the word tumbled.  Tumbled means to turn over or roll over and fall down.  I would allow children to practice these words, act them out and come up with examples and non-examples of the words.
The next aspect of this story that may affect comprehension would be to have knowledge of prepositions.  Prepositions can be very confusing for English language learners.  I have found the best way to teach prepositions is to have children practice by acting out the motions.  For this story, I would focus on up/down, near/far, over/under, in/out and across. 
 
I would also focus on teaching children how to identify the names of the characters.  Most early elementary picture books have characters with one name such as Sam, Owen, Rodney, etc.  The main characters in this story each have three words in their names so this may be confusing to ELL students.  The names do give clues to what the characters are like and help to describe them.  The main characters are Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare.  In their names, the reader can determine the size of the character, the color of the character and what animal the character is.  By teaching children to pick up clues as they read, they will be able to create a clearer picture of what the story is about.

I would spend a few minutes helping children to understand abstract thoughts such as love and wish.  These concepts are more challenging to teach ELL because these are concepts that are not easily represented with visual aids and pictures.  Love and wishing are two main themes in this story, so it would be important for children to have an understanding of what these two words mean.  Children would be given many examples of the two words and given an opportunity to make meaning of these words for themselves.
The second book I reviewed was titled “Stone Soup”, by Marcia Brown.  The first area in the book that I would focus on teaching would be to build some background knowledge of the time period and livelihoods of the characters in the book.  I would focus on identifying what soldiers do and what wars are.  I would also identify how a village is different from a city.  I would identify what it means to have to harvest all of your food as opposed to going to the grocery store.
Another dominate concept in this story is the concept of ordinal numbers and phrases.  Throughout the book, children will encounter words such as 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd.  The story also uses ordinal phrases such as first, next and last.  I could help children identify these words by giving examples and allowing children to put various items and topics in order using the ordinal numbers and phrases.
This story has a strong lesson or moral imbedded within the story.  I would help children identify the conceptual thinking of ideas such as team work and generosity.  These two terms can be challenging and cultural views may differ on the definition and importance of these ideas.  When stories are teaching morals, teachers have to be knowledgeable of how the different cultures may have different feelings toward stories that teach moral issues. 

I believe an understanding of vocabulary is vital to understand any story.  This story has many levels of vocabulary, but a large portion of the story is focused around the characters making soup and the various ingredients they use. I would spend time teaching the various food vocabulary words.  The story uses several food items that children may not be familiar with such as carrots, cabbage, barley, potatoes, beef, and milk.  Children will be able to follow the series of events in the story if they have a basic understanding of the food used in the story.  I would use pictures to help the children identify the various foods.

Breaking apart the stories into the various areas where children might struggle will help to allow for understanding for all children.  As I was developing the areas and strategies I would use, I realized that these strategies would benefit any child, not just ELL students.  I find myself overestimating how many words my students truly understand so I would really focus on building vocabulary.  If the strategy builds comprehension, all children will benefit from the time it takes to teach the strategy.