Every summer, I think back on my author visits from the previous school year, and many highlights come to mind. Usually one stands out in a slightly brighter typeface than the others, and this past year it was the kindergarteners of Michelle Schaub's class at Grayhawk Elementary School in Scottsdale, Arizona. They had read my book Where In the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed...and Revealed, and they decided that when I came to town, they would have a surprise for me: their own performance of a poem from the book. It was the poem about the coyote.
Wary eyes...
Ears are keen...
Sniff the air...
Seldom seen...
Crouching low...
In the brush...
Standing still...
Watching, hush...
Darkness falls...
On the prowl...
Rising moon...
Yip and howwwwwllllllll
One thing led to another and soon they had a plan to do it on Grayhawk's schoolwide TV network while I was in the studio and the entire school was watching in classrooms. And there was to be a surprise at the end, when each child lifted a beautiful coyote mask to cover his or her face. They had worked for days on the masks; each one was beautiful and unique. The overall result: spectacular.
You can probably imagine what fun this was for the children, their teacher, the whole school and me. But here's the important point: Those kinders are not going to forget this poem or facts about this animal (detailed, in prose, later in the book) because they turned what I wrote into something of their own.
I could produce a lengthy resource book about ways that classes have extended my books into projects of their own. Some classes have explored individual statements from my books (perhaps to confirm or dispute what I wrote). Some have created books of their own, modeled (closely or loosely) after mine. Some have performed sections of my books in various ways, or even enacted episodes of my life. Think of the differences in learning opportunities between simply reading a book and extending it into something of one's own, something to be proud of. "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime" goes the saying. "Read a child a poem a coyote poem, he'll learn about coyotes for a minute. Give a child a coyote poem to enact, she'll learn about coyotes for days."
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