For the Love of Books Nesson, Jennifer
School Arts,
10/2021, Volume:
121, Issue:
2
Journal Article, Trade Publication Article
Many of Nessons's lessons have been inspired or introduced by picture books. She enjoys reading to her students, who are often not read to at home, and many of them have academic, behavioral, and ...emotional issues that hinder their learning. Reading out loud to her students is beneficial on so many levels. They immediately begin to settle down to focus on the story, which makes the transition to art class much easier. More than twenty years ago, she used Lois Ehlert's book, Color Zoo, for a first-grade collage lesson on geometric shapes and had it published in SchoolArts. Here, few of her all-time favorite literature-inspired lessons are offered. It includes Crockett Johnson's classic Harold and the Purple Crayon and Eric Carle's TheMixed-Up Chameleon.
Picture book reading is an enjoyable everyday activity for many young children with well-known benefits for language development. The present study investigated whether picture book reading can ...support young children's social-emotional development by providing a learning opportunity for the usage of emotion regulation strategies. Three-year-old children participated in two waiting situations designed to elicit negative affect. Between these waiting situations they read a picture book. In two experimental conditions, the book depicted how a protagonist (same-aged peer or young adult, respectively) waited for a desired object and distracted herself with toys while waiting. Children in an additional control condition read a picture book that was unrelated to waiting. Use of distraction did not differ between conditions. Parents often read picture book interactively with their children. Therefore, in an additional condition (Exp. 2), the experimenter read the picture book featuring the same-aged peer protagonist in an interactive way intended to facilitate transfer. Apart from the reading style, the design was identical to experiment 1. Experiment 2 intended to test whether changes in reading style lead to differences in three-year old children's social-emotional learning from picture books. When controlling for the children's picture book experience, children in the experimental conditions exhibited an increase in distraction in contrast to children in the control condition. In sum, results suggest that picture book reading could be an ecologically valid and versatile method for supporting 3-year-old children in their use of an age-appropriate adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as distraction.
•Brief picture-book interventions may improve adults’ fraction understanding.•Parents’ fraction performance benefited from both number lines and circle area models.•Caregivers were aware of their ...learning over time.•Caregivers may play a significant role in children’s fraction understanding.
Playful fraction picture books, together with math instructional content called “back matter,” may promote fraction learning, which is crucial because fractions are difficult and often disliked content. However, open questions remain regarding how different types of back matter may affect caregivers’ ability to use fraction picture books as a teaching tool. The current study offers a novel investigation into how back matter affects caregivers’ (N = 160) fraction understanding (i.e., equivalence and arithmetic) and subjective beliefs about math using a pretest/posttest design. We contrasted existing back matter text with research-informed back matter text crossed with either circle area or number line visual displays. Caregivers’ performance improved from pretest to posttest in the Researcher-Generated + Circles condition (fraction equivalence) and in the Existing + Circles, Researcher-Generated + Circles, and Researcher-Generated + Number Lines conditions (fraction arithmetic). In addition, caregivers were aware of their learning; they predicted improvements in their fraction arithmetic performance over time. These findings suggest that brief interventions, such as back matter in children’s picture books, may improve adults’ fraction understanding.
This enriched reference guide offers a unique overview of more than 200 picture books published by Canadian publishing houses between 2017–2019. The authors cover key themes in contemporary Canadian ...titles that match broad curriculum trends in education. Response activities are included in the text, for example frameworks for critical literacy discussions, along with annotated bibliographies that specifically recognize titles by Indigenous authors and illustrators. The book also contains original interviews with a dozen rising stars in Canadian writing and book illustration. While the book is specifically geared for educators, it also supports public libraries, Education researchers, and future picture book creators, as well as families who are interested in learning more about reading development and related literacy activities for the home setting. Readership: This book is a welcome contribution to education research and practice. It has a market among all those professionally interested in Canadian children’s literature, and also for families interested in literacy development.
There are many students experiencing homelessness in the U.S. school systems. However, homelessness in children's literature has been studied little. This article discusses how homelessness is ...portrayed and illustrated in children's picture books published in the U.S. A total of 25 books, written in English and published in the U.S. from 1990 to 2016 for pre-k to 3rd grade readers, were selected for analysis. Drawing on the perspectives of post-structural lens of discourse and critical literacy, the analysis revealed that homelessness has been addressed in stereotypical ways, centering on mainly male adults living in public spaces. People experiencing homelessness were described as passive recipients of help from others with pathological view and subjects with no voices for their situations. The solution for homelessness was limited, temporary, and seasonal in the books. Homelessness was also portrayed as an individual matter rather than being caused by structural social inequities.
Comprehension of texts and understanding of questions is a cornerstone of successful human communication. Whilst reading comprehension has been thoroughly investigated in the last decade, there is ...surprisingly little research on children's comprehension of picture stories, particularly for bilinguals. This can be partially explained by the lack of cross-culturally robust, cross-linguistic instruments targeting early narration. This book presents an inference-based model of narrative comprehension and a tool that grew out of a large-scale European project on multilingualism. Covering a range of language settings, the book uses the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives to answer the question which narrative comprehension skills (bilingual) children can be expected to master at a certain age, and explores how such comprehension is affected (or not affected) by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Linking theory to method, the book will appeal to researchers in linguistics and psychology and graduate students interested in narrative, multilingualism, and language acquisition.
Picture books are often part of children's socialisation processes, contributing to the children forming images of the world, including ideas about (categories of) people, such as nurses. The study ...aims to explore how nurses/nursing are portrayed in children's picture books in a Swedish context. Through a systematic search, 44 books were included for analysis using thematic analysis and a theoretical lens inspired by Goffman. The results were presented in three themes: ‘The costume characterised and designated nurses’, ‘Nurses and nursing were defined through specific activities and accessories’, and ‘Nurses’ role as caregivers and decency practitioners'. The results showed that nurses were depicted/described in varied contexts, performing their roles mainly front stage in ‘hands‐on work’ in close contact with patients and relatives. Nurses were attributed different accessories and personality characteristics. Nurses/nursing were generally set within a healthcare context, oftentimes within an overarching medical logic. Historical depictions of nurses' uniforms still appeared as a signifier for nurses/nursing. The presentation of nurses/nursing might have potential implications on children's understanding of and for reputations of nurses/nursing in the long term as primary socialisation and related understandings of the (sub)world(s) are deeply rooted in humans.
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