Posts tagged ‘empathy’
136. Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez
Retell: This is the biography of Cesar Chavez, the leader of the National Farm Workers Association who worked to organize farm workers to rally together and fight for better pay and working conditions.
Topics: family, Cesar Chavez, conflict, drought, California, farming, Spanish, migrant workers, unions, La Causa, strikes, protests, boycotts, farm workers
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Social Issues
Tribes: personal best, mutual respect, appreciations/no put-downs
Habits of Mind: persisting
Reading Skills: inference, interpretation, determining importance, synthesis, empathy
My Thoughts: Back when I taught in California this was required reading–in the Bay Area Cesar Chavez’s birthday is a school holiday. This book could fit into different types of text sets. For example, you could include this book when teaching a unit on the labor unit. You could also choose to read this book as a companion text to Esperanza Rising.
125. Under the Lemon Moon by Edith Hope Fine
Retell: One evening Rosalinda awakes to find a man stealing lemons from her lemon tree. During the theft, a branch is broken and the tree becomes sick. Rosalinda searches her village for a cure. A mysterious woman helps her cure her sick tree and help a family in need.
Topics: theft, family, community, trees, kindness
Units of Study: Realistic Fiction, Social Issues, Talking and Writing About Texts
Tribes: personal best, mutual respect
Habits of Mind: thinking flexibly
Reading Skills: empathy, interpretation, inference, monitoring for sense
Writing Skills: using words to describe sound, using interesting verbs, incorporating foreign languages
My Thoughts: This is a text that can be useful for many units and for many purposes. As I was reading this text I immediately noticed the beautiful verbs the author uses. A reader who is unfamiliar with the vocabulary in the text can easily figure out the meaning of the words by thinking about the context. It’s a great text for teaching the strategy of playing ‘fill in the bank’ when solving tricky words.
115. Tea With Milk by Allen Say
Retell: Masako is a Japanese-American who moves to Japan after spending her childhood in America. Adjusting to life in Japan is rough for Masako. She must repeat high school in order to learn Japanese, her classmates call her gaijin (a derogatory word for ‘foreigner’), and she must learn how to be a proper Japanese lady. One day she boards a bus for Osaka and finds work, a companion and a cure for her homesickness.
Topics: English, Japanese-Americans, homesickness, culture shock, matchmaking, individuality
Units of Study: Character, Social Issues, Personal Narrative, Memoir
Tribes: right to pass
Habits of Mind: taking responsible risks, thinking flexibly
Reading Skills: inference, interpretation, prediction, empathy
My Thoughts: I especially enjoy Tea With Milk because I have a personal connection to this book. I taught English for three years in a rural village in Japan. I can relate to May and her struggle to get used to sitting on the floor (women are expected to sit on their knees–it’s considered rude to sit cross-legged) and missing comfort foods. When I read this book I thought of my students who often visit the countries where their parents are from and experience an identity crisis similar to the one that May faced. I hope that this book inspires them to write their stories. Though this is technically a personal narrative (the main character was the author’s mother) you could angle this to fit in many different units including the current Character unit. It’s particularly useful for modeling how readers notice subtle changes in a character.
114. The Gold Coin by Alma Flor Ada
Retell: A thief discovers a woman who claims to be the “richest person in the world.” He ransacks her hut but fails to find her gold. He goes on a quest to find the woman and her gold. What he finds instead are people who teach him that being rich has little to do with gold.
Topics: gold, greed, thieves, kindness, hard work, acceptance
Units of Study: Character, Social Issues, Talking and Writing about Texts
Tribes: mutual respect
Reading Skills: prediction, interpretation, inference, empathy
Writing Skills: incorporating the rule of three
My Thoughts: I first discovered this story when I went to a Great Books training years ago. I’ve since used it a few times during the Character unit. It is a great text for examining how people can change because of their relationships with other people. It’s a great text to use when you are launching whole class conversation during and after read alouds.
15. Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
Retell: This is the true story of Henry “Box” Brown. After his family was sold to another plantation, Henry decides to escape to freedom via the postal service.
Topics: underground railroad, slavery, perseverance
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area Reading and Writing, Historical Fiction
Tribes: personal best
Reading Skills: inference, emapthy
Writing Skills: incorporating symbolism, using setting details
My thoughts: I can see why this won a Caldecott Award. The illustrations by Kadir Nelson are larger than life. What’s nice about this book, as well as many biographies written for young readers, is its author’s note. Reading both the story and the author’s note is a nice way to compare narrative and expository nonfiction. Though Henry’s Freedom Box is a biography, I could also see reading this book during a unit on historical fiction to examine how an author tucks in historical details.