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Dear Mr. Henshaw, a Newbery medal-winning book by Beverly Cleary, is a great way to get students to think about some of the therapeutic benefits of writing. Of course, you don’t have to mention how helpful writing can be when you need to sort out feelings but you can let students figure this out on their own as they read the book.

Leigh Botts writes to his favorite author, Mr. Henshaw, as part of a school assignment and when the author writes back and asks Lee questions, his mother says he has to respond. Through his correspondence with Mr. Henshaw Lee learns about accepting life’s difficulties and — with the encouragement of Mr. Henshaw — starts to keep a journal.

In addition to coping with his parents’ divorce and missing his father, Leigh also deals with moving, adjusting to a new school, and having his lunch continually stolen — certainly timeless topics.

While some children may not think of writing letters to an author, they may keep a journal or know someone who keeps one. There are a lot of projects that can be added to the study of this book, including writing letters or journal entries as one of the characters. Students could also write to offer advice to the characters. Introducing students to the basic format of a personal letter (or e-mail) will provide valuable experience.

Mr. Henshaw certainly proves to be more interesting (and interested) that Leigh probably imagined. Reading this book could also foster discussion about the kinds of people your students admire (authors, celebrities, athletes) and what makes a person worthy of admiration. Ask if there are any local, “hometown heroes” that your students admire in addition to people who are nationally or internationally famous.

One of the many takeaways from the book for adults is that adults encourage Leigh to write and while he is hesitant at first, it grows on him. Students who would not write on their own may learn to enjoy it more if a teacher or parent lays the groundwork for them to get comfortable first.

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Perspective is a thing so integral to understanding a story. It can even be the reason why an author thinks to lift a pencil and write a story. Yet perspective is a difficult concept, particularly for six-year-olds.

As a first grade teacher, I have found that teaching about a character’s perspective is at times an easier task than having students contemplate an author’s purpose. I have come to the conclusion that somehow characters are more tangible to students. They feel more real. They are living, acting, speaking things in the story, so of course they must think something too! Right?

Authors, however, are an abstract people for them. Although they create a book’s very words and images, they are removed from the story. For an elementary school child, understanding that this person has a message to get across is not only an exceptionally high level skill, but it can also be downright confusing.

Luckily two authors came to my rescue as I attempted to undergo teaching this comprehension skill. These authors have a clear purpose and point of view. Their stories carry with them important messages and ideas —and these messages come from the most unlikely of places: informational texts.

Typically, when teaching students how to uncover an author’s purpose, I have thought strictly in terms of how they write. Do they write to entertain, to persuade, or to teach? This year I found that some authors can do a little bit of each.

Suzanne Slade and Martin Jenkins are two of these very authors. They write stories that are not only instantly engaging through their images and diagrams, but informative. Most importantly, embedded within their facts and illustrations are persuasive messages they are trying to convey.

Suzanne Slade’s, What If There Were No Bees?: A Book About the Grassland Ecosystem, captures readers through its cause-and-effect plot. Students begin by learning about pollination, ecosystems, and food chains. Then, in a clever twist, Slade describes what would happen to these ecosystems if one animal, the honey bee, were simply removed. This text helps scholars learn about ecosystems and food chains, but there is also a message in this story: Bees are important and should stick around.

Similarly, Martin Jenkins creates a beautiful picture book detailing the background and history of extinct and endangered animals. In Can We Save the Tiger? students are exposed to stunning illustrations of tigers, emus and other animals. They learn facts about these animals, yet, they also learn how to prevent the extinction of current endangered species. Like Slade, Jenkins has a purpose: tigers (and other animals!) are in danger, but are worth saving.

When Slade’s and Jenkins’ books are paired with more traditional informational texts, such as textbooks, or books in which facts are simply stated, their perspective becomes all the more clear and refined.  I found these pairings integral to the teaching of this reading skill this year. Students were immediately able to discover the distinction between the tones of the texts and thus — the authors’ perspectives!

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“That sounds just like my dad!” one of my students exclaimed. “That must be a grown-up saying that!” offered another. We were in the midst of reading Antoinette Portis’s Not a Box and my second graders were bursting with excited insights about just who the off-page narrator might be.

On its surface, Not a Box seems simple — a young rabbit repeatedly advocates for imagination by reiterating that no, his box is not a box, but whatever he wants or dreams it to be. The seeming simplicity of Not a Box, however, is extremely deceptive.

As a teacher interested in cultivating curiosity and creativity in my students, I am always on the lookout for books that deviate from the standard idea of “book” that my students hold. Due to its intriguing off-page narrator and its clever illustrations, Not a Box certainly differs from the usual elementary school fare.

The off-page narrator, whom we never see, drives the book with constant interrogation about what the rabbit is doing with the box. My students knew right away that the questions were not coming from the character they saw on the page, but from a source outside the book. They also knew that the rebuttals were coming from the rabbit and cheered its increasingly adamant responses to the off-page narrator.

My students’ insights and understanding of the book spilled over into the illustrations, which are also outside-the-box and pull a lot of weight for this word-sparse text.

On each page where an inquiry is made about what the main character intends to do with the box, the illustrations show what a narrator (presumably an adult) sees: a boring, old box.

With each increasingly incensed rebuttal, the illustrations mutate slightly to show what that box can become with just a little bit of imagination. Due to the relative simplicity of the illustrations, my second graders had no trouble catching on to how they worked and what they were trying to convey.

The spontaneous and sophisticated understandings that my students demonstrated surprised me; I had actually selected the book not to analyze its structure, but rather to discuss its message — that childhood curiosity is both valid and exhilarating, even if adults don’t understand it. And, that the book resonated so strongly with many of my students highlights that they do, perhaps, feel like adults don’t understand their imaginings.

Nicole’s students are inspired by Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

Following the reading of the book, my students channeled their creativity to make their own “not-a-box”-es. Their ideas ranged from body armor to a laptop to a castle. Clearly, Not a Box inspired my students to think outside the box. I can only hope that it will also inspire them to keep thinking innovatively, even as a culture of standardization and testing in schools threatens to undermine creativity. Now more than ever, it is essential that teachers seek out books that showcase the wonder and joy of thinking outside of the box.

Readers, if you know of a creativity-sparking book, please mention it in a comment!

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My school uses a play-based approach to teaching math, which is advantageous because as an early childhood teacher, my students still love math and they love to play games. They enjoy learning and working with numbers and I can build on this through math games.

For me, teaching math is often challenging because my own mathematical background emphasized “doing” math over understanding with drills, formulas, and math algorithms rather than reinforcing why we use specific math procedures. Add to this the new Common Core Math Standard’s focus on conceptual understanding, fluency, and application and you get a recipe for highly reflective lesson planning!

One way to bridge this gap between doing and understanding math is with picture books. They provide purposeful ways to ground students intuitive use of math and easily get them using and talking about the most effective strategies.

There are so many wonderful math concept and picture books out there, yet selecting books that effectively support mini lessons and launch play requires a bit more searching. The books need to interest students, embed rather than simply present math concepts, lend themselves well to differentiated extension activities, and of course, be fun!

Some books I’ve successfully used and that meet these criteria are:

I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean — This is a Kevin Sherry’s story about a giant squid who thinks he’s bigger than everything in the ocean. He’s very big, but is he the biggest? This book is great for introducing relative size, comparisons. This is an alternative text for introducing standard measurements as well as scale when students are challenged to rank by size or to think of reliable ways to determine how much bigger he might be than other animals.

Rooster’s Off to See the World — This classic Eric Carle book can help launch math activities about number sets. In the book, Rooster seeks company as he travels around the world. Along the way, he encounters different types of animals and invites them along. The best part of this book is that every time he meets a new animal, the number of them increases. It’s a great way to introduce students to counting in groups and helps students to distinguish between total numbers and sets of numbers. With this book, students played sorting games and counted number sets.

Pigs Will be Pigs — This is the hilarious tale of a family of pigs who need to find enough money to pay for dinner at a restaurant. The author Amy Axelrod wrote this book to teach explicitly about money and she does a fabulous job. I especially love this story because it can also be used across the curriculum. I’m connecting this to a social studies unit on access to healthful food. Grocery store or restaurant math games using coins are natural extension activities with this book.

Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday — Judith Viorst’s Alexander tales normalize my students’ every day experiences and emotions. This one is no different. Alexander has just spent every cent of the money his grandparents gave him. As he recounts how he spent it, students add up how much he spends or can subtract from the initial total. I love this one because a few of the items have prices that some students might find awkward to work with. As with Pigs Will be Pigs, it also lends itself well to cross-curricular connections, especially the basic economic principle of scarcity: Alexander had to learn the hard way about saving versus spending his limited income. For this book, a game to help Alexander save is also a next step for money.

When using picture books to teach math, pre- and post-assessment of student understanding can easily get lost. Talking to students about the math concepts in the books before sending them off to play math extension games can give you a sense of their thinking. For post-assessment, reviewing student work and requiring them to either to write or share out their strategies for success on the games lets them talk about their math knowledge and provides natural entry points for correcting misconceptions or pushing learning.

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