Once Upon a Time...

As Literacy Week continued, so did my read-alouds. I read at least one book aloud to my classes each day this week and they loved it. My students absolutely love being read to. I read fast, fluently and with a lot of animation so they would much rather listen to me read than anyone else. Sometimes I play books on tape for my students and they ask me if I can just turn off the tape and me read it to them instead. While I find this flattering, reading aloud all day is quite a strain on my voice. All the books I was reading this week happened to be picture books, so I had to read them all "story time style" holding the book up and showing them the pictures as I read. By the end of the day, my right arm was killing me from holding books out to my side all day.

On Thursday, we focused on fairy tales which my kids really enjoyed. I was shocked that most of them had never read or even heard of most of the fairy tales we were reading. I read "Cinderella" and "Rumpelstiltskin" aloud to all of my classes and most of my students were hearing "Rumpelstiltskin" for the first time. In addition to my read-alouds, my students rotated in reading centers where they got to experience "Snow White", "Jack and the Beanstalk", and "Sleeping Beauty". One of my students even nicknamed me "The Read-o-nator" because he said that I am "a reading machine".

Friday turned out to be the best day of Literacy Week! All the 6th grade ELA teachers decided that we were going to facilitate an all day read-aloud of a book so that our students would get to see good reading modeled by all of their teachers. We chose "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss because it is a fun book and it teaches a very powerful lesson about discrimination.

In the story of "The Sneetches", there are these creatures (Sneetches) that live on the beaches. There are two types of Sneetches: the Star-Bellied Sneetches and the Plain-Bellied Sneetches. The Sneetches all look exactly the same except for the Star-Bellied Sneetches have green stars on their bellies. In the book, the Star-Bellied Sneetches are snooty and think that they are so much better than the Plain-Bellied Sneetches because they have stars on their bellies. After much chaos and commotion, the Sneetches decide that they are all equal in the end. If you want to know what happens in the story, read it or watch the animated version on YouTube.

When our students arrived at school on Friday, we handed out green glittery stars to a certain number of students at random. These students had to wear their stars all day. My students were immediately going crazy since only half of them got stars. They kept asking "what do the stars mean?", "why didn't I get a star?", "can I have a star?". During 1st period all of the teachers read the first part of the book to their class, then the students went to 2nd period and got to hear the second part of the book, and so on. In 4th period, they got to hear the end of the book and watch the cartoon version of the story. Every period my students came running in saying "when are you going to read us the next part of "The Sneetches"?!

Since the Star-Bellied Sneetches are apparently "better" than the Plain-Bellied Sneetches, we gave the kids who had stars privileges all day. It was hilarious to watch my students freak out every time I let the kids with stars line up first or go to the restroom first. My students kept saying "why do they get to go first? just because they have those stupid stars?" It was exciting to see my students slowly start to make the connection throughout the day as we read the book. As the story progressed, they slowly began to understand the purpose of the stars and the lesson behind them.

At the end of the day, my students were eager to discuss how it felt to have or not have a star for the entire day. They did a great job of connecting their feelings about the stars to what it might feel like to be discriminated against or excluded from a group. The kids really enjoyed the story as well as our little social experiment. Plus, it was really fun for us to watch the kids interact with each other in regards to the stars. I have to say that it was quite a successful day of learning for my students :)

"That day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches, and no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches."