One of my little friends and I are reading the book
A New Coat for Anna. I purchased it for my Global Literature class as part of a thematic unit on perseverance and I figured I might as well get some more use out of it. It takes place in Europe during WWII. It doesn't specify that it's in Germany, but it seems like it could be, so I thought that it made a perfect choice for my friend who happens to be a little German girl.
It's a cute story about a little girl whose family cannot afford to buy her a new coat. The illustrations show that stores have been closed down and food is also scarce. Because Anna is simply too big for her old coat, her mother sets aside 4 precious things that they can barter in order to have a new coat made for Anna. They trade a pocket watch for some wool from the farmer's sheep, but have to wait all the way until spring to get it, then they trade a lamp for a spinner to spin the wool into yarn. Next, they pick lingonberries and dye the yarn a beautiful red color. Then, they trade a garnet necklace to the weaver who weaves the yarn into a bolt of red fabric. Last, they bring the fabric to the tailor and trade him a porcelain teapot so that he can measure Anna and make her a beautiful new coat that she is proud to wear. In the end, Anna invites everyone who contributed to her coat to her house for a holiday celebration with her family.
I have mentioned before that this friend struggles a lot with reading and writing. She is in fourth grade, but I can say with confidence that many of my first graders last year read with more fluency than she does. Despite, her difficulty with reading, she is a trooper! She tries so hard and I am really beginning to notice all the great strategies she is using to help her in the reading process.
Before she attends to the text, she examines the pictures. She makes observations and asks me questions about what she sees. Once she starts reading, she rarely gets through a page without stopping to comment on something, connect ideas together, or make predictions. It's fantastic.
My husband also has Dyslexia and when he first told me that, I honestly did not believe him because 1. He never had an IEP due to growing up abroad in several different countries and 2. He is so smart. I thought he could never be so intelligent and have a learning disability.
Then, I read two great books about Dyslexia that educated me a bit further so that I now understand, individuals with Dyslexia are/can be extremely intelligent. Their struggles in reading stem from the fact that their brain does not utilize the same parts for reading and the parts they use are not as efficient. It requires a lot more work to read, yet this has nothing to do with overall intelligence.
I bet you are wondering what those two books were huh?
and
Both were excellent.
I am also so happy to listen to my little friend make connections and to see her notice parts of the illustrations that I didn't catch. I am always so focused on the words, that illustrations are just a bonus for me. I love that she uses the pictures as a tool to provide clues and to think deeper about the story.
Next time I meet with her, I am going to have her match colored photocopies of each helper from the story with their name. I want her to use the words we talked about such as
weaver, spinner, farmer, and tailor.
Then I am going to provide her with the sentence frame:
The ______ helped to make Anna's coat by _______________.
Example: The farmer helped to make Anna's coat by shearing his sheep and giving her the wool.
I am also going to have a picture of each item that was traded to see if she can recall which helper received which item.
We can use another sentence frame:
The _______ received a _________ in exchange for _________________.
The weaver received a necklace in exchange for weaving the yarn into fabric.
***Sentence frames are a wonderful teaching tool to use with students learning English because They provide them some structure for a sentence that is grammatically correct and only requires them to fill in certain parts. I always write the sentence frame out as well so they can continue to use the parts I provided as a helper when they are trying to think about their own sentence. ***
Once we do those review activities, she will use a story sequence map graphic organizer to write about what happened in the book. This story really lends itself to retelling in sequence because there is a specific order that they did each step of the coat making process. Since she already will have verbally told me sentences about the story using the sentence frame, she should be able to use those ideas for her writing as well.
I know that my friend has room for improvement in many academic areas, but I also think she has a lot of great skills and solid comprehension which will contribute to her success. I am glad we have time to read and write 1:1 during the week and I enjoy working with her so much.
***
Cute little story...
When we were discussing how certain fabrics are made, this friend pointed to her faux swede vest and asked me what it was made out of. I told her that a long time ago, Native Americans used to kill animals for food and then wear their fur or skins. She was thoughtfully considering this idea of killing animals for food and asked me if they would only kill ones that were sick or if they would kill any animals. I explained that back then, they did not have grocery stores, so in order to eat, they grew crops and hunted animals. She then asked me, if there weren't any animals left, would they kill their pets?
I am always trying to get my students involved in thinking, so I asked her what she thought? Would she kill her own pet if she had nothing to eat? (sounds so gruesome, I know, but this conversation stemmed from her curiosity, so I went with it). She then took it to a whole new level and asked me if there was nothing left to eat, if people would eat other people.
Deep conversations with a 10 year old!
When I again tried to get her to do the thinking,
she decided, she would ask her dad if she was in that situation and if he said it was okay, then she would eat another person if the alternative was dying.
