Amelia's Road - Questioning/Self-Monitoring

One thing I stress in talking with teachers about reading is that reading skills and strategies can be taught with just about any quality children's book as the base for the lesson. However, some stories DO lend themselves particularly well to specific lessons.

An excellent book to use in teaching questioning or self-monitoring is Amelia's Road by Linda Jacobs Altman. When children ask questions about the text, they are monitoring their understanding of it. This is crucial to comprehension. I've had children read a passage, make such significant miscues that the text makes no sense whatsoever, and yet they keep right on going. They aren't reading - they are simply calling words. That can be deceptive because they "sound" like they're reading. It is vital that children learn how to monitor their understanding of text.

So it is important to teach children to ask questions as they read. Questions such as "What does the author mean here?" "What might happen next?" "Did that make sense to me?" "What does that word mean?" and any question related to the meaning of the text are all important in comprehending.

Amelia's Road is the story of a migrant worker family. Amelia is the daughter, and the theme is roads. Roads take Amelia and her family from place to place. They take her where she doesn't want to go. She imagines a road that takes her to her dream - her own house with blue shutters and a shade tree in the yard. One day she finds an "accidental" road - one that doesn't look like it had been built on purpose. It leads to the place where she wants to be. "More than anywhere in the world, she wants to belong to this place and know that it belongs to her." She goes there each day after school and pretends she is home. In the end, the family must follow another road to go to another farm where there are crops to be picked. But this time Amelia leaves something behind and knows that someday she'll be back. It's a tender story that tugs at your heartstrings as this young girl yearns for a place to call her own.

The story is rich with possible connections that children can make, with questions about the theme of the book, about a school where the teachers might not even learn the migrant children's names because they know they'll only be there a few weeks.

A companion text could be Who Came Down That Road by George Ella Lyon - a wonderful book that also deals with roads and history.

My Dignified and Genteel Post of the Day

Here is a story - dignified and refined - and hopefully the lesson will stay with you for a long time.

Once there lived a woman who loved baked beans. She loved them, but unfortunately, they didn't love her. They always caused a very embarrassing and somewhat "lively" reaction. Need I say more?

One day she met a man and fell in love. When it became apparent that they would marry she thought, "He is such a sweet and dignified gentleman. He would NEVER go for this carrying on." Thus, she made the supreme sacrifice and gave up beans. Married life was bliss.

Some months later her car broke down on the way home from work. Since she lived in the country, she called her husband and told him that she would be late because she had to walk home. On her way, she passed a small diner, and the aroma of baked beans was more than she could resist. It was her birthday, and since she still had miles to walk, she figured that she might as well treat herself to her favorite food since she would walk off any ill effects by the time she reached home. So she stopped at the diner and before she knew it, she had consumed three large orders of baked beans. All the way home she putt-putted, and upon arriving home she felt reasonably sure she could control it.

Her husband seemed excited to see her and exclaimed delightedly, "Darling, I have a surprise for dinner tonight!" He then blindfolded her and led her to her chair at the table. Wondering what special treat he had planned for her birthday, she seated herself and just as he was about to remove the blindfold, the telephone rang. He made her promise not to touch the blindfold until he returned. He then went to answer the phone.

The baked beans she had consumed were still affecting her, and the pressure was becoming almost unbearable. So while her husband was out of the room she seized the opportunity, shifted her weight to one leg and let it go. It was not only loud, but it smelled like a fertilizer truck running over a skunk in front of a pulpwood mill.

She took her napkin and fanned the air around her vigorously. Then, she shifted to the other cheek and ripped three more, which reminded her of cooked cabbage. Keeping her ears tuned to the phone conversation in the other room, she went on like this for another ten minutes.

When the telephone farewells signaled the end of her freedom, she fanned the air a few more times with her napkin, placed it on her laps and folded her hands upon it, smiling contentedly to herself. She was the picture of refinement when her husband returned, apologizing for taking so long. He asked her if she had peeked, and she assured him that she had not.

At this point, he removed the blindfold, and was she surprised!

There were twelve dinner guests seated around the table to wish her a "Happy Birthday!"

The F-ing Friday Post

It's Friday, and here is an F-ing post about it.

I am Fortunate to have:
Friends who stand by me
Family who love me
Fun with my close ones
Freedom of our country
Fiction and nonFiction for good reading
Fragrance of Flowers
Frothy Cappucino - especially that first sip
Flirting and hand-holding
Fingers for holding, working, loving
Forests for quiet walks and contemplation
Fields and Farms for growing
a Father who loved unconditionally
Faith that gets me through rough times
Favors when I need help
Forgiveness when I make mistakes
Forefathers and Foremothers who sacrificed for all of us
Fortune of having all these F-ing things

What Religion Are You?

If you're confused with all the talk about different religions, there is a handy-dandy quiz you can take to find out what religion is the best fit for you. Here are my results. No big surprise there. I was holding my breath, hoping my answers wouldn't put me in the range of paganism or atheism. My mother, after all, reads my blog. Whew!

You scored as Christianity. Your views are most similar to those of Christianity. Do more research on Christianity and possibly consider being baptized and accepting Jesus, if you aren't already Christian. Christianity is the second of the Abrahamic faiths; it follows Judaism and is followed by Islam. It differs in its belief of Jesus, as not a prophet nor historical figure, but as God in human form. The Holy Trinity is the concept that God takes three forms: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost (sometimes called Holy Spirit). Jesus taught the idea of instead of seeking revenge, one should love his or her neighbors and enemies. Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross to save humankind and forgive people's sins. Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

Interesting Comparison of Jesus and Muhammad

I read the blog, DESIRING GOD, for the first time this evening, and the first post I read was a comparison of Jesus and Muhammad and what it means to follow each one. I found it fascinating, and I would love for anyone with more Biblical knowledge and understanding than I have to comment on this. Here are some exerpts:

The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery. . . . If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation.

I've never looked at Christianity as being based on insults. It continues:

Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim
writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of
crucifixion.”1 Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.”2 An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominy” of the cross.

So Muslims feel that they honor Jesus more than Christians do?
Some scriptural background is given for the basis of mockery in Christianity.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of
evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth
Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer
(Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the
same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will
they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25). . . .

Read on.

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese
portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise. . . . It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers.

So what do you think? Read the entire article. I started to quote more of it here, but I think it's important to read the whole post.

The Strangest Christmas Gift - A Pooping Santa Claus

I was in a meeting with several other teachers today, and after we had handled the business we had been charged with, the conversation meandered its way to the topic of the "strangest Christmas gifts." One teacher told about getting a "pooping Santa" one year from a student. Apparently this Santa poops little red and green balls of candy.

Nahhh! I thought. Who on earth would sell something like THAT? When I got home, I googled "pooping Santa" - and found it at THIS site. Amazing, isn't it? Of course, after I looked at some of the other items available at the site, I realized that a pooping Santa was comparatively mild or at least par for the course. I mean when a store has an entire category of merchandise devoted to farting items, you know that good taste and respectability are not part of their mission statement.

Everyone at the meeting laughed about the pooping Santa, and a couple of people said they wanted to find one because it would be a funny gift for next Christmas. As they were laughing, I thought about how Santa Claus is a symbol representing a religious holiday. A pooping Santa is not a very respectful thing, is it? Should we now start burning, boycotting, picketing, and killing people over this?

"Living in Fast Forward" - Kenny Chesney

In my new resolve to stop obsessing about Islamic terrorism or U.S. politics in my blog, I thought I'd chill out by listening to music. I just heard a new Kenny Chesney song, "Living in Fast Forward." Here are the lyrics:

The body’s a temple
That’s what we’re told
I treated this one like an old honky tonk
Greasy cheeseburgers
And cheap cigarettes
One day they’ll get me if they ain’t got me yet, 'cause

(Chorus)
I’ve been livin' in fast forward
Hillbilly rockstar out of control
I’ve been livin' in fast forward
Now I need to rewind real slow

My friends all grew up
and they settled down
Nice little houses on the outskirts o’ town
They work in their office
And drive SUVs
They pray for their babies
And they worry ‘bout me

(Chorus)

I’m always runnin’, son-of-a-gunnin’
I’ve had a good time, it’s true
But the way I been goin’
It’s time that I tone it down just a notch or two

Oh yeah…

(Chorus x 2)

Yeah I need to rewind real slow…
Yeah I still got some miles to go…

Just love it. "I" have been living in fast forward too much lately. I think I'll do a little rewinding.