Montego Bay High School Book Club

While at Bookland on October 6, I met the President of the Book Club of Montego Bay High School. Since not many club members had come to my book reading and signing, she invited me to a meeting at her school. On Monday, October 24, I was warmly welcomed by an enthusiastic group of girls. They told me that their favourite books are romance novels and Stephanie Meyers’ titles.

Book signing.

Because of time constraints, I gave them a shortened version of my usual reading from Delroy in the Marog Kingdom, but they heard enough to know that they want to read the book! I signed the copy which they had purchased for members to read, after which they will donate it to the school library. I took the opportunity for a photo with the group.

Book Club members pose with the frog and the pot!

We had very little time for discussion, so I have accepted and invitation to attend another meeting, next term, when we will talk more about the writing process.
In the meantime, girls, please put your comments and questions on my blog. Click where it says ‘comments’ and a box should pop up for you to write in. You will need to identify yourself with an email address. You will also need to copy the strange sequence of letters which comes up. If it doesn’t work, it’s the system’s fault, not yours. Try again the next day! I’d also like to know what you’d like to see on my blog. Would you like competitions, puzzles or writing tips? Or would you like a forum for discussion with other students, in Jamaica and abroad?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Books for boys at Bookland will continue in my next post.

Books for Boys at Bookland, Part 1 - Caribbean Books



Reading at Bookland


Bookland is well-stocked with ‘reading books’ for children, teenagers and adults. They do not sell school text-books. Bookland is located at 34 Union Street, Montego Bay, on the right between the intersections with East Street and King Street. There is extra parking at the rear.

After my book reading and signing there on October 6, 2011, I browsed the shelves in search of books which would appeal to boys.



Caribbean books

I have to start with the Island Fiction Series, a mix of fantasy, folklore and science fiction, set in the Caribbean, written for 10-15 year-olds, but appeal to children as young as 9. The stories move at a fast pace and are easy to read. The series includes my book Delroy in the Marog Kingdom, which is set in an imaginary village in Jamaica, and features River Mumma.

Other books in the series are:

1. The Legend of the Swan Children by Maureen Marks-Mendonca, set in Guyana.

2. The Chalice Project by Lisa Allen-Agostini—science fiction set in Trinidad.

3. Escape from Silk Cotton Forest by Francis Escayg—fantasy and folklore set in Trinidad.

4. Time Swimmer by Gerald Hausman—a boy travels through time on the back of a turtle, throughout the Caribbean.

5. Night of the Indigo by Michael Holgate—science fiction set in Jamaica. This book appeals to older readers who are lovers of science fiction.



Other Caribbean Books

For 9-12 year-olds

6. The Cay by Theodore Taylor—an adventure story set in Curacao and a small island in the Caribbean in 1942, but still relevant today.

7. Blue Mountain Trouble by Martin Mordecai—an adventure story set in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.

8. The Boy from Willow Bend by Joanne Hillhouse.

9. Hurricane and Earthquake by Andrew Salkey. Both these books were written in the 1960’s but are still popular.

10. A Cow Called Boy and other books by Everard Palmer. Most Jamaican readers are familiar with these books, set in rural Jamaica.

For younger children, suitable for reading aloud or for them to read by themselves.

11. Mauby’s Big Adventure by Peter Laurie

12. Mauby and the Hurricane by Peter Laurie (I didn’t see this on the shelves but it was used by the Jamaica Library Service in their reading competition so should be available.)

13. Tales of Immortelles—A Collection of Caribbean Folk Tales by Norma McCartney

14. A Goat Boy Never Cries by Hazel Campbell. Her book Bernie and the Captain's Ghost won the Book Industry Association of Jamaica’s Best Children's Chapter Book Award for 2011. (I didn’t see this book on the shelves, but it should be available.)

Part 2 will focus on non-Caribbean books.

Do you do your children's homework?

   I've edited my original post, in which I confessed to doing an assignment for a seven-year-old 2nd grader, I help from time to time with homework. The assignment was to draw a skeleton. Being given no other information, I assumed this to be a human skeleton. In my thirty plus years of teaching biology, I never attempted to draw a human skeleton, nor did I ask my students up to and including 6th formers to do so. Individual bones, yes. A whole skeleton, no. Drawings and charts of skeletons, seen from different angles sufficed to understand the working of the skeleton. To my shame, I drew one, so the child would get a grade.

However, it turned out that the homework was not to draw a skeleton but to make a model of a skeleton. Experimenting with a ping-pong ball and some straws, I realised that the child could cut the straws, and staple them at the joints and to the rest of the skeleton, so they can move.

I gave 'drawing a skeleton' as an example unmanageable assignments which are given every day. Why did I condone cheating, which is what it is? The assignment was non-negotiable. Teacher set it and it had to be done. The teacher had set it because skeleton is on the syllabus for grade 2 term 1, specifically, the student should draw or make a model of bones… using the material provided. Fortunately, in this case, the assignment was not unmanageable and I was able to provide materials from which the child could make the model. I have also learnt that assignments can be negotiable.

I’m not for a moment suggesting that homework shouldn’t be given. I think it’s important for parents to be involved with children’s school work, and for them to supervise homework is one of the ways this can be achieved. Appropriate homework for parents to supervise include

• committing to memory such things as spellings, definitions, and multiplication tables.

• Doing practice exercises to consolidate what has been taught in the classroom.

• Listening to the child reading.

• Age-appropriate research.

All of these can be supervised by a parent or caregiver who has little or no knowledge of the subject matter. What is important is the interest they show and the attention they give to the child. The homework routine is an opportunity to teach self-discipline. Ideally, homework should be done at the same time every day, in a quiet place, free of distractions. (Certainly no TV on). There is a danger of homework becoming a battleground, so it may be necessary to offer some incentive, such as allowing the child to watch some TV programmes when the homework is satisfactorily completed.

The length of time children spend on homework is another bone of contention. Recommended times are

20 minutes for grades 1and 2;

30 minutes for grades 3 and 4;

a maximum of one hour for grades 5 and 6.

Of course these times will vary, as some children work more quickly than others. The top homework scholar in the U.S.A., Harris Cooper of Duke University, concluded that homework does not measurably improve academic achievement for children in grades 1 to 5. He also found that children in grades 6-8 who do up to 90 minutes, and from 9-11 who do up to 2 hours do better on standardized tests than those who do more.

I put out a call for teachers to give manageable homework assignments, with clear, unambiguous instructions. When somebody other than the child does the homework, it’s sending the wrong message, i.e. that it’s okay to cheat. We have to remember also that unmanageable homework penalizes the many children who are already at a disadvantage because they have nobody to help them.

HiLo Books

Hi Lo books are so called because they have high interest and low difficulty. Typically, the subject matter is suitable for the age-group of the children who are reading it, but the reading level is easier than the usual material for that age-group.


While researching this topic, the author Michael Dahl attracted my attention. He is the Editorial Director for Stone Arch Books based in Minneapolis, where his books have won national design awards and been selected by the Junior Library Guild.

He is the author of more than 200 books for children and young adults. His nonfiction books get kids excited about reading. His fantasy series, The Library of Doom, is the most-read series by hi-lo readers across the US. Some of the titles in that series and the one that followed include The Book that ate my Brother, Sea of Lost Books and Cave of the Bookworms. Mr. Dahl himself lives in a haunted house! (Does that help him to write these scary stories?)

Apart from these, most of the books classified as HiLo are geared towards children described as reluctant readers. They are older children reading at grade 3 level or above. I didn’t find much for beginning readers, particularly for boys living in Jamaica. Do you know of any?

Boys' Reading

I’m following Hazel Campbell and Diane Browne in a discussion on why boys don’t read fiction, sparked by a NY Times essay ‘Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?’ by Robert Lipsyte (August 19, 2011). The article focused on boys who can read but don’t. The bigger problem we have in Jamaica is so many boys not learning to read at all, or reading far below their level.


Boys find the early stages of reading to be a chore, not enjoyable activity because of the circumstances in which they are taught. Classrooms are often overcrowded, boys are punished for making mistakes and are hardly praised for effort. Not liking to read, they don’t try, so get stuck in the slow lane.

The content of reading material for children is geared to a reading age which corresponds to chronological age, so is too childish for boys who learn to read late.

Their role models are not reading, so reading is considered by boys to be a ‘girl thing’. Boys would prefer to be outside playing football, or if they are inside, playing video games, computer games, or watching TV, but they do like to read comic books.

As long as boys are reading something, I don’t see that preferring non-fiction to fiction should be frowned on. They often step up from comic books to computer magazines or other magazines suited to their interests.

A more fundamental question to be answered is whether boys are uncomfortable with the feelings which reading fiction arouses. It’s okay for girls to have these feelings, but not boys. Is the inability to deal with these feelings a reason for antisocial behavior? Robert Lipsyte explained that discussing fictional character allowed freedom to express feelings the way girls do. If they can’t read, should we read to them and discuss?

Useful stories for discussion, especially ‘Slater Minnifie and the Beat Boy Machine’, and ‘The Man Who Loved Flowers’ are in FLYING WITH ICARUS by Curdella Forbes. Two other Caribbean boy’s books are LEGEND OF ST ANN’S FLOOD by Debbie Jacob and THE BOY FROM WILLOW BEND by Joanne Hillhouse.

Link to Hazel Campbell's blog:

http://jambooks-fiction.blogspot.com/

Celebrating International Literacy Day

      I celebrated International Literacy Day on Thursday, September 8, by reading to students at Chetwood Memorial Primary School.
 To each of 4 grade 1 classes, I read 'Beautiful Blackbird' by Ashley Bryan. This delightful story, with its rhythmic prose and adequate repetition, is adapted from a tale from 'The Ila-speaking peoples from Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)' by Edwin Smith and Andrew Dale, (1920). The bold illustrations could be seen by the children at the back of the class. (Thanks to Pam Witte for sending me this book.) Several children asked me to read the story again, and I got a big hug from some of them as I was leaving.

       To a grade 5 and a grade 6 class (all boys!), I read excerpts from 'Delroy in the Marog Kingdom' preceded by my usual introduction with the frog and the pot. As usual, the students listened attentively.

      

Chetwood Memorial Primary School, Montego Bay, Jamaica

Class Size and the Teaching of Reading

There is a common misperception in Jamaica that the high pupil teacher ratio is the main reason why some children don’t learn to read. I too was of that opinion until I read the results of the Grade 4 Literacy Test published in The Daily Gleaner, in 2010, when I was surprised to see that the average ratio for Region 4 (St. James, Hanover and Westmoreland) was 31:1. A closer inspection of the data revealed that the ratio in St. James varied from a high of 37:1 in urban schools to a low of 13:1 in deep rural areas. The latter would seem to be ideal. Which teacher would not want a class of 13? Each child would be able to get individual attention and excellent performance should be expected.


However, this was not the case. In that particular school, out of an enrollment of 7 children in Grade 4, only 4 sat the test and none achieved mastery. The total enrolment of the school was 40, indicating that there were 3 teachers, each teaching 3 grade levels, as this was an All Age school.

In another All-Age school, with a ratio of 15:1 the total enrolment was 45, indicating 3 teachers for grades 1-9. In that school, 11 children were enrolled in grade 4, but only 6 sat the literacy test, and only one achieved mastery.

At the other end of the scale was a school in the heart of an urban area, with a total enrollment of 1,720 and a ratio of 37:1. This school has a 6-stream entry, with about 48 children per class, for which 36 teachers would be required. With the stated ratio of 37:1, the school could employ 46 teachers. Why not a 7-stream entry? Because there is no space—all the classrooms are occupied. 268 of the 277 students enrolled in grade 4, sat the literacy test and 62% of them achieved mastery in 2010 (down from 86% in 2009), meaning that more than 100 children had not achieved mastery.

In contrast to these, there are schools in which 100% of the students in grade 4 sat the literacy test and achieved mastery. These schools are not limited to either urban or rural areas, they vary in size and in pupil: teacher ratio. Perhaps we should focus on these schools and follow their best practices.

My own opinion is that the system is capable of performing much better even with existing limited resources. The teaching of reading should be the priority. For children who have problems with reading at the end of grade 1, the emphasis in grade 2 should be on basic literacy and numeracy skills, until they are sufficiently competent to embark on the grade 2 curriculum.