What Kindergarten's reading this week

Going Someplace Special by Patricia McKissack, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

I am continuing with stories related to Black History Month this week with a fictional tale about a young girl taking a trip through a southern town in the 1950's in the midst of Jim Crow laws. The girl, Tricia Ann, encounters having to sit in the back of the bus in the colored section, a sign on a bench in a park that demands "Whites Only" and being swept by a crowd into a hotel lobby and then yelled at by the manager for being a colored girl in a hotel that does not allow blacks.
The story has a happy ending when Tricia Ann makes it to her "someplace special", the public library.
The book has an afterward from the author, which is a little too involved to read to my kindergarten kids, but explains that this story is based on her life in Nashville, TN in the 1950's.

I use this book to explain segregation and Jim Crow laws to the kids. Since they recently read books in the media center and in their classrooms about Dr. Martin Luther King , I was able to tie together what we had read about him and his work to repeal these laws and what life was actually like for someone their age living with these laws (although the girl in the story is older than my kindergarten kids, she is still a kid).

I have also suggested this book to my middle school teachers to use when they are studying segregation and Jim Crow laws, again it helps to tie together the facts and the feelings of what it was like to live during segregation.

Website: Poetry & Black History Month

I feel that one of my jobs as a media specialist is to search out websites for the teachers at my school that will make their jobs easier. One of my suggestions to them this month was for a website from Target (or Tar-jay as my daughter calls it) called Dream in Color

Target has always been a big supporter of Black History Month in the schools (how many of you got the posters of famous African Americans they provided a few years ago?) and this year they teamed up with Dr. Maya Angelou for a program that includes lesson plans, an interview with Dr. Angelou and an interactive poetry writing game called Poetry Play. The thing I liked about the lesson plans is that it takes something that teachers need to teach (poetry) and used African American Poets (such as Langston Hughes and Dr. Angelou) to facilitate the lessons. They have a PDF book of lesson plans to download for grades K-12 and also a glossary and a recommended reading list to go along with the lesson plans. Even if you are not getting to a poetry lesson until later this year, the website is worth checking out and using the lessons at a later date.

Who knew Target was good for something other than spending half my paycheck at their store!

What Kindergarten's Reading This Week

Lookin' For Bird In The Big City
by Robert Burleigh illustrated by Marek Los

In honor of Black History month I like to read some different stories to my younger students. I discovered this book my first year as a media specialist (4 years ago) and have been reading it ever since. It is a fictional story of a young Miles Davis, traveling the streets of New York City searching for his idol Charlie "Bird" Parker. The watercolor artwork by Marek Los seems to be almost smoky and vibrant at the same time and it really reflects the tone of the story. While reading this story, I put on a Miles Davis CD and turn up the music at key points in the story. The students really enjoy not only the story, but the mix of listening to music with a story. The afterward in the book provides some information on Miles Davis' life and on the back cover is a photograph of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.

After I read the story, I keep the music on while the students check out books. For many of my students, it is the first time they have ever listened to Jazz music and certainly the first time they have ever heard of Miles Davis or Charlie Parker.