In addition, I never realized children can practice the descriptive writing techniques they are learning in the classroom with wordless books!! Tompkins (2008) discusses how children can attach notes to the pages in the book or write a dialogue on the notes… and they can utilize the notes they have written into the retelling of the book. I think this could be very powerful for our students because "children are conveying the plot and have incorporated descriptive words and dialogue” (Tompkins, 2008, p. 233).---From Meghan's 618 blog.
Reading through Meghan's blog and knowing we have the same content background gave me a lot of ideas and helped me really connect to what Tompkins' says about descriptive reading/writing and its importance in all classrooms.
In social studies, prior to this class, I thought the writing we did in my classroom was somehow different from English or Math or Science, but now I am really realizing how interconnected writing really is and how important this skill is for our students. And how important it is that I know how to teach these skills to my social studies students.
I am glad that Meghan reminded me about the wordless books. I saw this in action today while subbing in Churchville-Chili. The students were in the mist of the Cold War learning about détente and brinkmanship. The teacher wanted the students to use descriptive words to remember these vocab terms---one student made a picture and actually it made much more sense. He created an image that really conveyed the meaning of these complicated terms.
I can only speak about the connections between reading and social studies---but the idea of wordless books is one strategy that I believe really plays into this idea that history is a story---so students need to be able to create some kind of person meaning within the story. I believe that wordless books in social studies does the same thing as in an ELA classroom. Students are creating a dialogue with the history and with their notes.
I am glad that Meghan brought this up and I am class that I was able to address what she wrote about!
What more could you say about how you would use wordless picture books Carrie? What ones did you find, if any, as you were looking for your examples of the genre to bring to class? It seems there is more you could say here to share with your reader the regarding what specifically you would do in your content area instruction and what resources you now know you would/could use.
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