Book Review: All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton

 

It's 2.23am. I have just finished reading All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton and my first thoughts are, 'What. Just. Happened?' 

After not responding to knocks at doors, scrapes on knees and fire alarms at dinner time, I thought it was safer to finish reading it after the boys had gone to bed. My head was filled with white butterflies, white bones, hope, hate, love, life and death. Just as I became Eli Bell in Boy Swallows Universe,  growing up as a too smart kid in a shut your mouth Brisbane suburb, so was I Molly Hook, head full of words and infallibly optimistic, no matter what life threw at me. Only Trent Dalton can make you loose yourself in a book like that. 

I hate snot. The hardest page of the book for me to read wasn't when the gravedigger's daughter hid with her mother's bones in an open grave, got the beating or saw the rape, it was page 173. It was also the most incredibly moving and mind blowing piece of descriptive writing that I have ever read in my life. In that moment, snot was poetic and graceful. Only Trent Dalton can create characters like that.

The same suffocating pang that squeezed the tears from my eyes when I relived my childhood in Boy Swallows Universe were shed for Molly and Violet Hook. I talked to oceans instead of skies. I spat out pills instead of seeds. I had the monsters in my bed, after I had fed and cared for them all day until they became twisted by drink and darkness. I have carried all I owned and owned all I carried. Only Trent Dalton can see inside my soul like that. 

Now, as I check on my sleeping children under the dark sky, I speak softly to it. 'Please don't let anything happen to me so my kids don't end up like a character in a Trent Dalton novel.' 

When the blue sky returns, I will ask politely if one day I could write a book as honest and beautiful as a Trent Dalton novel, and I wouldn't even care if it lied.

Highly recommended. 

The Importance of Group Story Time

The Importance of Group Story Time

It is a growing problem but a common fact that children are less interested in reading books as a single passive experience. If this is their sole experience of story time, we are in danger of them becoming disinterested in reading at all. The importance of regular storytelling in a group format has never been so important.

Children become engaged during story time because they construct mental images of the text events  while it is being read aloud. When you provide them with a story that is vividly written, they become engaged with the text and actively respond to it. The use of picture books as stimulating text, not only for pre school aged children but for those in primary levels of education, provides a starting point in terms of creating a home or school culture that fosters engaged reading and aesthetic response. The interpretive tools that children use as they attempt to craft meaningful interpretations play a significant role in cognitive engagement and creative thinking. 

One interpretative tool that has displayed for me the most cognitive engagement is when children relate the content of the text to their own personal experiences. When children are able to think about the text and make connections between the new information presented in the story and their store of background experiences, this allows them to be active and thoughtful about their interpretations.

Children often use this ability to  make connections between familiar knowledge and incoming information in order to make predictions and inferences about characters, their motives and actions, as well as story events. If they can enter into shared reading knowing that their own unique set of interpretive tools has value, they find it easier to construct a meaningful connection and learn to work well in a collaborative environment. 

We need to encourage children more often to open their tool boxes and apply those tools in ways that build team work and critical thinking. The collaborative effort of group story time means children, along with the story teller, can add pieces of information recalled from the text, earlier predictions or background knowledge to support and elaborate ideas which is a natural and organic encouragement of further reading.  Each new piece of information added to the discussion becomes a new tool that can be used to see how they all fit together as a whole, allowing them to raise their own questions and topics for discussion and learn the intrinsic value of linking the process of reading to finding answers to their own concerns. 

If you have had a similar experience with group story telling, I would love to hear from you in the comments. 

Why You Should Read Classic Children's Books to Modern Kids

A parent recently told me that her kids would never be interested in reading the books she read as a child because they were too old fashioned. It struck me that in my experience, this was definitely not the case.

I read the books I treasured as a little girl to my boys and not withstanding the gender difference, they loved them. Some were considered classics, but most just held beautiful childhood memories for me. The reason I read them to my children is because I believed in the deep resonance they had with me that must have stuck with me for some reason.  They held a truth that my heart recognised and I wanted to share with and teach that truth to my family.  If history has taught us anything, it is that stories always endure.

Here are my top 5 reasons to read your favourite books to your kids.




1. It connects you.

One of the most beautiful things in life is sharing books you read as a child. I loved the old books my mother and grandmother had from their childhood and read to me. They connected me to their lives and history.

2. Today’s kids will still understand.

If it is a good story, children with enjoy it, no matter if the writing style is not what they are used to. In fact, it is an excellent vocabulary building tool and reading extension for creative thinking to expose them to different sentence structure. Children’s books celebrate universal themes that are timeless.

 

3. You have fun reading them out loud.

Share your excitement and enjoyment by reading the books aloud. The children will respond to your joy and it is a great way to initiate open conversation about why you loved the book and what about it has stayed with you over the years.

 4. Explore other perspectives

Kids can understand whose point of view a story is coming from if you take the time to explain the social context it was written in. Balance it out, talk about it. Being able to see things from a variety of perspectives is a big step in tolerance and moral development. It can also give kids a historical context…depending on how old they think you are.

 

5. Extend the learning

Use the reading as a starting point to fire you children’s imagination and extend their learning to a trip to the museum or another place of interest that can expand on the concepts and historical context discussed in the story. Seeing how far we have come has its place. Books can be portals through time and space and the more children are exposed to the organic value of reading and the meaning it has for them in their day to day lives.

 

My favourite childhood books are too many to list here, but I will give you my top 5 series and authors.

Anne of Green Gables series

Little House on the Prairie series

Enid Blyton Books

Beatrix Potter Books

Mem Fox Books

 

I would love to know what books framed your childhood. Please let me know in the comments.

Engaging Children Through Reading to be Critical Thinkers

Engagement through reading occurs when caregivers can help children by using interpretive tools to select, connect and organise information int he text to construct real meaningful interpretations of their own lives. The context of reading and the culture of literacy on a family and social level can also influence engagement. Reading with your child, not to your child, is important on a cognitive, metacognitive and motivational level. Children who have been engaged in reading from a young age do better academically and are more attentive students. During organic engagement, attention and mental processes are focused on the book and the learner is completely absorbed in the task of reading and in a state of flow. Although a child may be looking directly at the pages in a book and may appear to be engaged, they may only be going through the motions. Engaging your child during reading means sustained and personal commitment to create understanding.

 

Children are more likely to be engaged in reading when they believe they are capable of understanding, when it is interesting and when they feel it is important to them. This is why, as I have mentioned before in my previous blogs, that engaging children with reading books must come after they have a firm grasp of the relevance of words and communication in their day to day lives. This will help them to self regulate their attention and effort, relate new information to existing knowledge and monitor their own comprehension, making them more likely to have the physical and mental ability to hold their attention long enough to be successful readers.  It also makes it easier for them to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, link familiar knowledge to incoming information and organise sequences from the story, making them critical and creative thinkers.

 

In order for engagement in reading to occur, caregivers must provide instructional conditions that support it. A family culture that provides for child interaction and caregiver modelling of cognitive processes promotes the notion of reading as a transactional process where meaning occurs as the child’s expectations and experiences are in transaction and content of the text. Reading should be viewed as an interpretive process rather than as an exercise in listening and sitting still. Children should be encouraged to use strategic comprehension processes such as predicting, relating to prior knowledge and asking questions about the text in a reader-response collaborative discussion.

 

Too often, children’s experience of human interaction emerges as an unpredictable negotiation between being an individual and being asked to fit in with the expectations of others. They are asked to be passive participants in their learning. To engage children in reading, a more active stance is required. Children should be encouraged to use their own individual interactions with the text as they attempt to make sense of it so they can craft their own interpretations. As caregivers model interpretive tools, children become accustomed to seeing them used to derive a meaning from the text and develops an inherent reflexivity in its use as a tool to nurture engagement.

If you have any other ideas on why you agree that reading is an integral part of developing critical and creative thinkers, I would love you to contact me or comment below.

www.michelleworthington.com

Top 5 Tips for Building your Child's Vocabulary

Vocabulary is extremely important to a child's literacy development. especially if they struggle to communicate. Having a broader range and understanding of what words mean and do can help even the most reluctant reader and speaker into exploring the benefits of a wide knowledge of language. Most people make the mistake of thinking that reading to them and getting them to read aloud is the first place to start, but this is in fact the end goal. When children see the purpose and priority behind where words fit in their day to day lives, they are more responsive to engaging with literacy activities that foster a love of reading.

1. Use Rich Oral Language

Children learn to speak through listening to and engaging in talk. Young children whose parents use high level, rich, meaningful conversations when not only speaking to their children, but also speaking to each other, will give the best chance of absorbing a higher vocabulary and reading achievement.

2. Use Broader Concept Words

When talking about a particular subject, instead of trying to teach words individually, use groups of words in sets that are conceptually related. For example, when speaking about a farm, use words related to life on farm, different families of animals and how those concepts relate to their day to day life.

3. Introduce New Words

By relating new words to words that children already know helps to not only expand the word in context, but helps them find congruent ways to figure out the meaning of words. Use the word they already know, like 'funny' and then add a different word in the same sentence like 'hilarious' to introduce a new word. When this is encountered repeatedly and diversely through meaningful activities, conversations and texts, the new words become part of the child's world.

4. Make It Relatable

There are so many fun and engaging ways to draw attention to the words all around us. Playing with words through songs, humour and raising consciousness can be empowering for children. They can feel like they are developing a sense of understanding and power over the part of themselves that communicates with others which can be incredibly powerful.

5. Have Fun With Words

Words should be cherished, nurtured, celebrated and loved. If children can see how much fun you have playing around with words, they will be more motivated to take the initiative and seek out opportunities to engage with them throughout the day. When children are self motivated, they learn faster and foster a life long love of reading. Reading to them and having them reading aloud is most beneficial when they have achieved this level of understanding. Then the real fun begins...forming a lasting bond with your child through sensory storytelling and amazing, empowering, encouraging picture books.

If you have any other tips you would like to share, please don't hesitate to contact me.

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Top 10 tips for Connecting with Toddlers through Reading Time

Here are my top ten tips for Connecting with Your Little Ones.

• Build a foundation of communication and word structure for your child by helping them to become familiar with common sounds, words and language that you use throughout the day.



• Introduce them to the value of books by incorporating them into playtime as well as a bedtime routine.



• Talk about what you have read. Help your children understand that ideas need to be discussed and thought about critically and creatively. This will help show them that words can be communicated to other people in different ways to pass on the message. If you have read something you don’t agree with, discuss that as well. Children need to learn that everything this is written is not necessarily the truth.

• Find ways in everyday activities to spark your child’s imagination. Stimulate curiosity and help his brain development by using words creatively. Don’t be scared about using ‘big words’. Vocabulary is key to improving communication in young children.



• Use sounds in fun ways. Make silly made up sounds and vary your pitch and tone when talking, reading and singing songs together.



• Help your child learn the difference between ‘real’ and ‘make-believe’. Imaginative play with toys and books is a great way to switch from real life scenarios to make believe world building. Encourage made up stories but be clear about when the time is needed for truth.

• Picture books can be great tools for you to use to help your child understand change and new or frightening events, and also the strong emotions that can go along with them. The library is an amazing resource for finding diverse books.



• Stop and listen when your child is trying to tell you something. Maintain eye contact. Try to stay as still as you can. Your child will develop early literacy skills like the ability to listen to and understand words faster if they feel they themselves are being listened to and understood.



• Teach your child the importance of following simple instructions by writing shopping lists together and getting them involved with easy cooking recipes or reading aloud to them as you are cooking so they can see the importance of written words.

• Foster a sense of humour by sharing laughter every day. Laugh out loud at silly jokes, something accidental or unusual that happened or silly sounds. Learning to laugh is important for a child’s communication, literacy and emotional development. Best of all, the sound of your laughter will make them the happiest of all.





If you have some great top tips, I would love you to contact me.


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Top 5 Tips to get ASD kids reading.

Here are my top 5 tips to encourage young ASD children to fall in love with reading.

1.Let them pick what to read. Our local libraries love us. We almost always leave with 10 children's books. It works for us because it allows Tom to have a choice of what he wants to read based on whatever new obsession he has t hat week. I love the idea of teaching children to choose books on their own, regardless of their reading level. I love anything that encourages independence and I work with whatever motivated Tom to pick up that book, even if it is way above his comprehension level. Books are about so much more than words and pictures. They are about forming connections

2. Focus on sight words. Do everything you can to make them fun and playful but don't worry too much if they aren't picking it up straight away. This is a long term strategy for reading that needs to start early, way before they walk into a classroom. The more letters and words they recognise, the easier reading will be. It's not rocket science, it's repetition.

3. Make books available at play time, not just bedtime. We have books everywhere at our place. We keep them in in the playroom, in the kids’ bedroom and in the car. Bedtime is a lovely time to share stories but it is more about the senso ry stimulation they receive from being close to you than a learning experience. ASD kids respond well to using books as part of extending their play time by integrating literacy into their daily routine.


4. Read aloud. Even if it seems like they aren't listening, part of their brain is responding to the sounds of your voice. Varied tone, intonation and volume are important. Most importantly of all, it doesn’t have to be from a book. Read the paper, read the cereal packet, read the instructions on the packet meal for dinner. Get older siblings, grandparents or anyone who is willing to read aloud and then initiate a conversation with them about what they are reading. This encourages critical and creative thinking and associates books as a valued resource to facilitate easy conversation and connection with others.



5. Let them see you reading. ASD kids can be visual creatures who love to mimic others. If they see you reading, they a re more likely to do the same. Talk to them about what you are reading. Find a word they might recognise. Read varied books, magazines and online articles so they can see you use reading and books in your everyday life as an adult and they will grow to understand that even though reading might be difficult now, it will be a skill they will need when they get older so they will be more encouraged to stick with it.

If you would like to contact me, I would love to hear your top tips.

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3 Reasons Why Art Matters with MyDeal.com.au

3 Reasons Art is Great for Kids

Thank you so much to MyDeal.com.au for sharing my tips on the importance of reading to kids. Check out their blog for more great reasons on why Art is Great for Kids.

https://www.mydeal.com.au/blog/post/3-reasons-art-is-great-for-kids