RESOURCES: El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day)

[Ryan Goble]

A great collection of resources around Children's Book Day from the NCTE e-newsletter.

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Helping Readers See Themselves in a Text  At its heart, El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day) is about connecting with readers, in their own languages and with texts that they can identify with. NCTE INBOX blogger Traci Gardner explores the significance of seeing yourself in the texts you read in this week's NCTE INBOX Blog.

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Free access to journal articles mentioned in this INBOX is provided for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available to journal subscribers only. Articles are intended for personal use only and may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from NCTE. Initials in annotations indicate academic level of the resource (E=Elementary, M=Middle, S=Secondary, C=College, TE=Teacher Education, G=General).

Providing Culturally Relevant Texts April 30 is El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day) (G), an event developed under the leadership of author Pat Mora that focuses on providing children with books in many languages and making reading an integral part of their lives. Plan your celebration by tapping these ideas and resources suggested in the following articles and lesson plans. In "From a Writer's Perspective: Recreating Images of Community in Mult..." (E) from Language Arts, Monica Brown, an author of bilingual children's books, encourages and models for students the opportunity to work from a vantage point that affirms their cultural heritage rather than one that tames or shames their personal stories. The ReadWriteThink.org lesson Is This the Right Book for Me? Strategies for Beginning Readers (E) seeks to empower young readers by introducing the idea of making purposeful choices when selecting reading material. Students learn to take their reason for reading into account and to use strategies to match the book to their abilities. Continue developing students' sense of choice and preference for books that they find powerful with the lesson planOpening the Door for Reading: Sharing Favorite Texts to Build Commu... (E) from ReadWriteThink.org. In this lesson plan, students focus on reading and creating classroom displays that celebrate favorite texts. After exploring a sample display, students create presentations on their own favorites. The Voices from the Middle article "'Stuck in the Middle': Helping Students Begin New Literacy Lives" (M) discusses five principles that help students succeed after years of failure. The steps include creating literacy-rich environments, connecting readers to text, and supporting readers with strategic literacy instruction. Introduce students to the work of one of the founders of Día in the ReadWriteThink.org lesson plan Color of Silence: Sensory Imagery in Pat Mora's Poem "Echoes" (M). Moving from personal experience to practical application, students use their senses to discover new ways to read and write. Pat Mora's poem "Echoes" is used to demonstrate that our senses are powerful tools for literary analysis and comprehension. For details on books that you can place in the hands of young adult readers, check out the English Journal article "The Ever-Expanding Mexican American YA Canon" (S) from the "Bold Books for Teenagers" column. The article includes reviews of several recently published novels, poetry collections, and nonfiction works. In the spirit of addressing personal and cultural relevance, students in the ReadWriteThink.org lesson plan Joining the Conversation about Young Adult Literature (S) create a persuasive case calling for the adoption of a particular young adult literature title into their school's language arts curriculum. The review essay "Learning to Read as Continuing Education" (C-TE), from College Composition and Communication,works to convince readers that college composition instruction can capitalize on (and improve) students' high school reading experiences if instructors and program administrators think carefully about where their students are starting as readers and where they want them to get by the end of the course. Read more about DÍAPALOOZA, a month-long, virtual celebration of El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day).