Wonderstruck in class

By: Elias Stenersen

Wonderstruck is a book written by Brian Selznick. In the book we see a combination of a written story and an illustrated story. The author describes the book as “a cousin to graphic novels, picture book and cinema”. In the book, the two stories start 50 years apart and then towards the end of the book they follow the same timeline, which is quite unique.

When a teacher is looking for a book to use in class some novels might be too complex and long, and some picture books might be too short and easy to read. In Wonderstruck there’s a good mix of text and illustrations: there is Ben’s story told through more than 140 pages of text and Rosa’s story told through more than 460 pages of illustrations. The fact that the book consists of two stories told in two different ways makes it special and unique and this makes it very interesting and fun to read. The book is therefore great for extensive reading (reading for pleasure). Not only can it be an entertaining book to read but also, as a picturebook it can help readers further develop their English reading skills without having to understand all of the words.

Wonderstruck cover by: Brian Selznick

“By telling stories just as much through picture books as through verbal text, they can open the door to multiple constructions of meaning and engage and challenge readers across the boundaries of age and reading skill.”

 – Anna Birketveit¹

As mentioned  there are two parallel stories in the same book, which means there is a lot of material to analyze and discuss. This can be done after the students have read the book.  Here are a few examples of tasks that can be given to the students:

-        Discuss whether the text depends on the illustrated story, and vice versa.

-        What are the central themes of the book?

-        What are the different settings in the book?

Tasks like these will help students develop their oral skills and their understanding of for example: the structure, context and the culture displayed in the book. Because the book has one written story and one illustrated story, the tasks can also help students understand more about the significance of setting, character development and perspective in literature such as novels and picturebooks. 

To summarize, Wonderstruck is a great book to use in class because there is a good combination between text and illustrations, meaning readers will read longer texts and at the same time connect what they read to illustrations. The book is also great do further develop oral skills as the book is perfect for class discussions. Wonderstruck is therefore a good book to use in the classroom. 

Sources: -      -         ¹Birktweit, A., & Williams, G. (2013).Graded readers and the joys of extensive reading. In Literature for the English classroom - theory into practice. Page 17. Fagbokforlaget Vigmostad & Bjørke AS.
-        Selznick, B. (2011). Wonderstruck. Scholastic.

Using Picture Books To Teach English

by Eskil Løkke

When teaching English it may seem difficult to find books that are appropriate to the proficiency of the students. If the students are just starting to learn English it might be even more difficult. This is where picture books come in as the knight in shining armor. Picture books are ideal for new English learners because they make it so that the learners don't have to rely solely on the words to understand the content.

Gorilla by Anthony Browne Cover

In books such as Gorilla by Anthony Browne the readers can look at the pictures to associate the words with what the story is trying to convey. The visual reference can help learners understand words quicker because they can visually see what the words mean. For example, in the previously mentioned book, it says "The gorilla took Hannah to see the orang-utan, and a chimpanzee. She thought they were beautiful. But sad" (Gorilla by Anthony Browne, p.17). Beginner English learners probably don't know a few of these words, which is why it is convenient for them that they can look at the photos on the page to understand more. If the learners didn't know what the word sad meant, they could look at the photos and see pictures of sad animals. If the learners didn't know what a orang-utan or a chimpanzee is, then they could look at the photos and see exactly that. The point which this part is trying to make is that learners can get direct references to the things they don't understand so that they have an easier time making connections between the word and its meaning.

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick Cover

Even though picture books are perfect for English learners, there is a tiny little drawback.

Many English learners find picture books to be for small children and are therefore not suitable for them. This is almost expected because picture books are usually written for children, and picture books are also the type of books parents use to teach their children language. Given this problem there is a simple fix. The way to remove the stereotype that picture books are for children, is to introduce them to more adult picture books. Some good titles in the picture book genre is Wonderstruck, The Lost Thing, The Wolves in the Wall, etc. Something many people don't know is that there are picture books for all ages. Gorilla by Anthony Browne might be slightly too childish for older English learners, which is where titles such as Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick come in. Wonderstruck is a picture book that has two converging stories, one told in pictures and one told in text. This adds a new layer of complexity to the text, which makes it perfect for an older audience. With picture books like this one, the stereotype of them being childish is almost immediately broken, thus removing one of the only problems that teachers and learners seem to have with picture books. According to Anna Birktveit, picture books have the merits of authentic texts but not their drawbacks (Literature for the English Classroom by Anna Birketveit and Gweno Williams, p. 17).

To sum up, picture books have examples for all ages making it easy for teachers to select works that are appropriate for their students. Also picture books make it easier to understand individual words and complete sentences in English because they have the pictures to clarify or explain them. Picture books should therefore, based on the things that have been mentioned here, be actively used as a tool for teaching English in schools and in other learning environments.

Reading; for what purpose?

Importance of reading with the right purpose

Sigve Guttormsen; Reading for different purposes

When reading the title, you're maybe getting the feeling of boredom. Why do we relate reading with boredom? Probably because of the obliged school years where we as kids are forced to read, therefore forming bad relations to the term. Depending on what content you are reading and for what purpose the reading is serving, there are different ways of acquiring the information. We have intensive and extensive reading, skimming and scanning.

Extensive reading: This is the form of reading serving the purpose of pleasure. The typical content is naturally found in novels. During this reading process you're enabling yourself to be engrossed in the story without paying your full attention to every word. Reading a good book can enable your ability to read sentences instead of words. This way your brain can subconsciously provide the right context, even without including the most difficult words and phrases.

Intensive reading: Intensive reading includes really paying attention to what you're reading. It's the type of reading you use when you're reading a textbook in school, or making food based on a recipe. The overuse of forced, intensive reading can often affect pupils in a negative way. It's like any bad experience; you automatically relate the main component of the experience to something of a negative nature. However the skill is severely needed for learning purposes, therefore it's important to retain a balanced education between the use of intensive and extensive reading. 

Skimming and scanning: Both types include reading fast, and they are methods regularly used on a daily basis. Skimming through a text is when you're reading a newspaper or an article, just to get a basic idea of what the text is about. Therefore without paying too much attention to every word, or even every sentence, you can still acquire the main context. When you're scanning through a text, you have certain information required to be obtained. If you're solving a task and don't bother reading the whole paragraph, you can scan for the term in question and find the answer quickly. Not necessarily a good method when reading textbooks, because you'll maybe miss the context and meaning of the text. Thus a great way of obtaining important information from bus schedules, exam lists or when reading through a TOC (table of contents).

Research about Norwegian pupils' reading skills in English has shown that they're not able to adapt their reading to the purpose, because they are paying too much attention to every word. Research has also shown that textbooks are the pupils' main source of reading material. So like mentioned, reading gets a bad reputation because of the uneven distribution between extensive and intensive reading. Secondary source: (https://fronter.com/uit/links/files.phtml/55e6e15277a7b.1768679684$965779575$/Arkiv/Didactics/Basic+skill_prcent_3A+Reading/Reading+and+Understanding+Texts+LRU-1300.pdf) first source :( Helleskjær: 2005, 2008)

I like comparing reading to the physical exercise we all wish we were investing more time into. It's all about getting routine and seeing results as a motivation for further effort. Likewise with reading, you experience difficulties through the pages, however it all comes down the material you're reading, does it interest you or can you create and retain interest?

Picture books -Gorilla

By: Maja Berntsen

Picture books is something that most people do not think about as a vital part of literature, when in fact, it can be used in many different ways!

In this blogpost I am going to talk about how you can use the book Gorilla in your lessons.

Gorilla is a picture book by Anthony Browne, first published in 1983. The story is about Hannah, a little girl who loves gorillas. We follow her one mysterious night when she goes on adventures with a gorilla to all the places she wants to go with her dad.

Looking at the book, you might think that it is not much to it and that it just looks like a silly children’s book. That is where you are wrong! There is a lot you can do with this book when it comes to teaching. You could obviously just read the story to your pupils and show them the pictures, or you could spend some more time on it by using pre-reading strategies, discussing the pictures, looking at colours, discussing the story and the meaning of it.

Discussing the front page before reading the story is a good pre-reading strategy. You could start a discussion by asking questions such as “Why do you think there is a gorilla in the picture?”, “Who is the girl?”, “Where do you think they are going?”, “What are they doing outside in the middle of the night?”. There are lots of questions you can ask to make the pupils start to think.

Further on after the pupils has gotten to know the story you can compare different images. A good example to use is the picture of Hannah and her Dad at the breakfast table in one of the first pages and the picture of Hannah and the gorilla at the table with all the cakes and sweets later in the book. 

In the picture of Hannah and her dad, the colours that are used are cold and blue whilst in the image with her and the gorilla consists of warmer colours like orange and red. How does the use of colours connect to Hannah’s relationship with her dad?

Making the pupils go treasure hunting after gorillas in the images is something that the pupils might find fun, depending on how old they are. The book is filled with hidden gorillas throughout. You could do this whilst you read the story out loud to make sure that they are actually paying attention to the images.

After we have been working with picture books, I am now aware that they can be very useful when it comes to teaching and I will definitely be using them in the future!

Sources:

Browne. A (1983) - Gorilla – Walker books Ltd

Gorilla in class

By: Karoline Lilleberg

Use of Gorilla in primary school

In 1983 Anthony Brownes book Gorilla was published for the first time. It is a children’s book about

… a lonely girl, a friendly gorilla and their amazing night out

(Browne, 2008).

It is a young girl, and children will easily relate to her story because of that. The gorilla is not a type of animal you see every day, possibly making it more interesting for children. Some might find it kind of exotic and fun. The text in the book is easy for everyone to read, and it is not much of text for each page either.

When the pupils has read the book, there is also difference types of tasks they can work with, here is a list of after work:

Could you write a similar story, but based on a different animal?

Can you rewrite the story from the point of view of the gorilla? Where did he come from?

Try to write a sequel to the story... what other adventures did Hannah and the gorilla go on?

Source: http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/library/books/gorilla.htm (20.09.15)

This kind of tasks will be easy for the pupils to work with. They tend to have a great imagination and from my own experience many like to continue on a story, for example answer on where they think the gorilla came from. I myself prefer to have none, or only few boundaries if needed. Let the pupils mind bloom and not setting any limits for their thoughts.

After working with this book ourselves, I have gotten several good ideas for my own classes in the future. I would very much like to work with this with younger pupils, and perhaps with the kind of tasks I mentioned earlier. Another tool used well in this book, is the use of pictures. There is at least one picture on each page, and it will take a whole class to go through every picture by detail. For example, look for all the gorillas on each picture, or the easter eggs hidden in the pictures. This kind of activity will keep the pupils full attention and hopefully their interest as well.

I find this book very relevant for working with at school, and for every class as well, from first grade to university students. 

Comparing cultures in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
By Helene Lundberg

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a novel written by Sherman Alexie, it tells us the story of an Indian boy challenging his own culture and transfering school to a not-Indian school. This text will compare the two cultures of the Indian reservation and what we are presented to at the town of Reardan outside the reservation.

Junior lives with his family at the Spokane Indian reservation, where he is seen as a retard, and bullied all the time. This reservation is generally poor, the health conditions are bad and they have a huge problem with alcohol (as you can read about in the previous post). The people living at the reservation seems to not do anything about it. Junior says that almost no Indians go to college or move out of the reservation, and the ones that do so are seen as traitors. For Junior the reservation is beaten at least twice a month, he only has one friend, and his father is an alcoholic. Juniors life also conatins a lot of funerals and deaths. During this one year we follow him in this novel, Junior experiences three deaths, and all of them by someone he was very close to. Family is the most important thing for Indians. Indians are people who seem to not have any hope for a brighter future, when asking his parents "Who has the most hope?", Juniors parents automatically says "White people". So Junior then finds the courage to transfer to Reardan high school, a school outside the reservation, at that school there is only "white" people attending.

In Reardan Junior disover that the people and the culture are different, they don't have the same unwritten laws as in the reservation. He is still being bullied, but after winnig a fight against the gang leader, he slowely starts to gain respect. People here are not as poor as the Indians, most of the students will contine to college and try to get a scholarship. After Junior makes the varsity basketball team, he also becomes more popular. He gains more selfconfidence because he also gets better at playing basketball. "Overnight, I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good, so I wasn't. But in Reardan (...) they expect me to be good. And so I became good." (Alexie, 2007: page 180) The most popular girl in school sort of becomes his girlfriend and the coach is cheering on Junior and believes that he can become an all-state basketball player in college. But Junior also discovers that family is not as important in reardan as it is at the reservation.

Overall he starts to feel like he has a more hopeful and brighter future when he is more influenced by the white people, allthough he still lives with his Indian family. So there are both similar and different things about the two cultures he is living in.

Sources:
Alexie. S (2007) - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Theme of alcoholism in The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian

Theme of alcoholism in The absolutely true 

diary of a part-time Indian

By: Runa Elisabeth P. Nesje

The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie is about an Indian boy named Arnold Spirit Junior who lives in a reservation with his family.  They are extremely poor and live under terrible conditions.  Additionally he has to deal with being bullied and beaten up at school every day, and an alcoholic father. This text will focus on the alcoholism and how it’s a big theme in the book.

p.107

In the novel, Sherman Alexie writes about the true problems Native Americans have with alcohol. That alcohol is one of the biggest reasons for death among the Native Americans. It was the reason for three of the deaths in the novel, his sister Mary, Grandmother Spirit and his father’s best friend Eugene.  In the novel, he tries to explain that most of the people are trying to drown their miserable lives with alcohol and to forget all their problems.  Even after some of the deaths, they would instead of mourn in a way that they would be crying and laughing and telling stories about the newly dead, they would get drunk and be unhappy. “How do we honor the drunken death of a young married couple? HEY, LET’S GET DRUNK” (Alexie, 2007, p.212)

We also get to know how some of the characters behave when they get drunk. An example can be Rowdy’s father, who becomes a mean drunk and beats up Rowdy and his mother. And Arnold’s father who would run away whit the little money they had left when they started to run out of it, and be gone for weeks to drink the money away. However, he was still a kind drunk. Likewise with his best friend Eugene. “He was drunk all the time. Not stinky drunk, just drunk enough to be drunk. He was a funny kind drunk, always wanting to laugh and hug you and sing songs and dance.” (Alexie, 2007, p. 70)

p.170

In the novel, Sherman alexie has portayd the real life struggle with alcohol for many Native Americans in a very  good and realistic way. 

Sources:

Alexie. S (2007) - The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian - Hachette Book Group Inc.

Analysing the illustration in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Junior

Analysing the illustration in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Junior

By: Tim Eriksen




The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie is about Junior, a budding cartoonist living in an Indian reservation. Born with a range of medical problems he is bullied a lot because of how he looks. Using humour and wonderful illustrations, Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney gives the reader insight in how Junior feels and how he copes with the harsh life in the reservation.

How does Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney with the help of illustration portray Junior and his predicaments?

Junior in all his glory

p. 5.

The first illustration in the novel is a drawing Junior made of himself: A stuttering, lisping, skinny and big-headed guy with glasses. Being born with fluid in his brain, did not bless him with good looks and because of this he is frequently being bullied. Noticing that one eye is drawn a little bigger to show that he has a black-eye from getting punched.

To be or not to be

 

P.57.

In this illustration the dilemma of Junior is quite clear: Being a native American wishing for a better life; Junior must decide if he wish to stay at the reservation or abandon it and enrol to a whites high-school. One has the harsh and neglected life and the other a promising future and a chance at a higher education. Here the reader gets a clear view on the pros and cons according to Junior.

Dealing with poverty

 

P.128.

This last illustration shows some different responses to a question most who are poor dread to answer. Poverty is not an easy thing to explain and for Junior who comes from a poor background, the problem lies within the wish of not to be found out. Not to be able to hang out with your own classmates because you can not afford it is not a pleasant thing.

With funny and clever illustrations Ellen Forney does an excellent job of portraying Junior and the hardships and challenges Junior goes through. It also makes it easy for the reader to visualise and understand what  kind of predicament and how Junior feels; with clever use of details like the black-eye in the first photo to comical aspects in the others. 

Sources.

Alexie. S (2007)-The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Hachette Book Group, Inc.