Bullying Books

Yesterday I read to my third graders the story by Kevin Henkes Chrysanthemum.  The story is about a little mouse who loves her name.  When she goes to school, the other children make fun of her.  They call her names, make fun of the number of letters, etc.  She really begins to dislike her name but her parents encourage her and she goes back to school.  Finally, the students meet the new music teacher who has a name with the same qualities as Chrysanthemum's name.  The kids adore the music teacher and then begin to leave Chrysanthemum alone.  I read the story to the students once and then on the second time we took a nice clean picture of her and passed it around.  As the kids in the story were mean to her, we crinkled the paper.  By the end of the story, the paper was in a ball.  When the kids finally begin to act with kindness towards, Chrysanthemum we unfold the paper and relate it to saying sorry.  Once the wrinkles (or words are said) are put on a person's heart, the person's heart is never the same.  It is a great lesson.  Today though, my teaching partner introduced me to a new book titled, Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun: Having the Courage to be Who You Are  by Maria Desmondi.  It was a wonderfully illustrated story with a great lesson on kindness and how to handle a bully.  She gave me a cute worksheet that went with it that I would love to share on here but I do not know yet where it came from.  After the book, we made Venn diagrams using the questions on the worksheet to compare two students in the room.   The kids had a great time with this activity.  Here is one of our Venn's.

Fun Math Literature!

My favorite books for that down-time/extra two to three minutes before lunch or between classes are the Greg Tang books. My students love them. I first came across Grapes of Math at Wal-mart! It was a Scholastic book and it looked nifty so I picked up a copy. I LOVE it! Grapes of Math shows the students pictures of objects along with a riddle. The objects are grouped so that they are easy to count quickly. The goal is for the students to not count one by one but to find the pattern or grouping situation. I like to put my book under my document camera. There are several Greg Tang books that follow this same concept. Math Potatoes, Math-terpieces: The Art of Problem-Solving, and Math for All Seasons: Mind-stretching Math Riddles are a few of his others.
                                                                   

Read Alouds: Holocaust in third grade??

I have a wonderful parent who comes in every Friday to read to my students.  She read Frindle, Harriet Tubman, and Number the Stars.  My students have taken such an interest in the books, especially the last one about the Holocaust.  I was a little nervous about her reading such a touchy subject to third graders but the book was written in such a tasteful manner.  I have personally read the book Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen and would love to now read it to my students, but I am nervous that it may be too much.  It is about a young girl who is transported back to the time of the Holocaust.  She  takes on the persona of a young girl from that time but has all of her memories from the future.  It is an amazing story!  I am having a hard time finding my copy of it though so I am going to trek to the library and see if I can get it there. I did find it on Amazon, but I really want to read it now. I'm not very patient. LOL