Children's literature review Blog #5

The First children’s book I choose to review was Lion’s Lunch written by Fiona Tierney.

In the beginning of this story a little girl is walking through a jungle singing happily when a lion pounces from behind a bush and roars at the little girl, “What are you doing in my jungle?”

The first component I see that might interfere with comprehension is a student not knowing what a jungle is.  The second component that will affect the comprehension of this story is understanding that the lion is seen as the ‘King of the Jungle’.

The students could be shown pictures or a video of a jungle so they can become familiar with what it looks like.  They could also be given labeled pictures of some of the animals that live in the jungle, with the picture of the lion being noticeably larger, as the teacher explains that the lion is the ‘king’ or ‘boss’ of the jungle.  These two activities will help our ELL students begin to build some background knowledge necessary to understand the meaning of this text.  Irujo (2007) tells us that even for students with good educational backgrounds, culture differences can result in not enough background knowledge, which will directly affect comprehension.

As the story progresses we find out that the lion is really a bully, and wants to eat the little girl because she does not belong in the jungle.   She says, “If I can do something nobody else in the jungle can do will you let me stay?”  She reveals that her special talent is drawing; the lion orders her to draw a picture of him.  The picture she drew shows a ‘Great Big Angry Lion’, which upsets the lion because he says he is handsome and tells Sarah because she can not draw he is going to eat her.  At this point in the story the rest of the animals in the jungle find the courage to stand up to the lion.

The third component that could affect the student’s comprehension is the understanding what a bully is and how a caring majority can stand up to a bully to help to make a change in the bullies behavior. This could be a time when the rest of the class could get involved.  The students in the class could role play several simple situations where one student is bullying another and some of the other students can play the role of the caring majority.  These role-play examples will need to be planned and purposeful for the age group of the children.  

The fourth component that could affect comprehension is genre.  This is a narrative text, and if ELLs are not familiar with this genre it would be helpful to explain the organization of a narrative text. Using a graphic organizer with the features written down, and a picture next to the words if appropriate, the student could draw a picture of examples from the story as it is read.  For example under orientation (tells who, where and when) the student could draw a picture of the little girl and the lion in the jungle.  Under the heading of series of events, the student could draw a picture of each of the major events that occur.

The second children’s book I chose to review was Big Red Barn written by Margaret Wise Brown.  I use this book to introduce our farm unit to my class.  It is about the different animals you might see on a farm.

The first two pages in this text read, “By the big red barn in the great green field, there was a pink pig who was learning to squeal.”

The first component I see that might interfere with comprehension would be the concept of a ‘big red barn’ and a ‘great green field.’  There are many ELLs that would not know what a barn is, what it is used for, and why it would be important enough to write a story about.  Then, I cannot imagine coming from a country where there is no open space, and where the number of people per square mile is larger than one can imagine, and this student is to understand the concept of a great green field!

The students could be shown more pictures, and maybe a video of a barn, a field and even a farm to help them understand this concept.  If there were anything similar to this in their culture it would help to make a connection.  I do however think the best way to expose an ELL to these concepts would be to actually visit a farm.

The book goes on to talk about the different animals that live in a barn and the sounds they make.

The second and third component that would interfere with comprehension is vocabulary and understanding how the author intergraded the sounds the animals make into the text.  The names of all the animals that live in the barn might not be familiar to ELLs.  Before the student is read this book it would be helpful to show them pictures of the animals.  The teacher could name the animals as they are looking at the picture, and then make the sound that the animal makes.  The student should be given time to interact with these cards, experimenting with animal names, sounds and talking about specific attributes that make the animal unique.  For example if shown a picture of a pig, the ELL student might ‘oink’ and point to or say ‘curly tail.’  Irujo (2007) says that everything an ELL teacher does should revolve around vocabulary acquisition explaining, repeating, reading and playing with words in all areas of instruction.

While the author is telling the reader about the animals in the barn, she introduces a few baby animals and their names. 

The fourth component that might interfere with comprehension is the understanding that some baby animals have different names than their parents do. (Not to mention male and female animals often have different names as well!)  Only after the student has an understanding of the animal names would I introduce the different names for the babies.  One way to help this understanding would be to play a game of concentration with picture cards.  Students could take turns trying to find a match between the parent and baby animal.  This game could start out just matching pictures, then later if students get a match they say the name of the adult and baby animal.