Author Biography
The author I have chosen to spotlight in my author biography is Patricia Polacco. Patricia was born on July 11th, 1944 in Lansing, Michigan. Her parents’ families were from Russia and Ireland and they worked to keep their cultures alive through their storytelling. She is a very educated woman and has earned her Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. in Art and Art History. While earning her degrees, she studied in the U.S., England, France, Russia, and Australia. She is a very accomplished and knowledgeable author and public speaker. She has been a guest lecturer in multiple universities and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees in Arts and Letters. More interesting information about Patricia, her life, and rights that she advocates for can be found on her website at http://www.patriciapolacco.com/#author. ("Patricia Polacco.com", n.d.).
Patricia Polacco has written and illustrated over 115 books for children and I want to focus on just two of her amazing works. The first book, Thunder Cake, is a realistic fiction book about a grandmother helping her granddaughter overcome her fear of thunderstorms. Together the grandmother and granddaughter bake a “thunder cake” and while doing so, the grandmother is able to distract her granddaughter and making the cake becomes a race to complete before the storm arrives. (Penguin Random House Network, n.d.). The second book I chose by Patricia Polacco is, Oh, Look! this book is a children’s literature fiction and is great for engaging young readers. In the book, the famous Polacco goats are back and have to find their way back home through the gate, (squeak, squeak, squeak), over a bridge (click, click, click!) etc. The cute goats turn around and return back over the path they traveled until they are back home again safe and sound. (Goodreads, Inc., 2020).
The two books are by the same author and are also on two different reading levels. This can be very beneficial for teachers in a classroom setting. The first book, Thunder Cake, has a Lexile level of 630, while the second book, Oh, Look! is at a Lexile of 350. Teachers are able to offer a variety of literacy learning by dividing their classroom into smaller “reading groups” and enabling students to work with teachers, peers, and individually. According to Fountas & Pinnell Literacy: Elevating Teacher Expertise (2020), “small-group instruction is more powerful when nested within a variety of instructional contexts with varying levels of support” (para.1). By putting students into groups that start with high teacher support, and then gradually move to medium teacher support, and low teacher support, and then further down to a level of high student-centered groups that allow for very low teacher support, educators are able to focus on students who need extra help with lower-level books and then gradually elevate them to higher-level books in a group setting. (Fountas & Pinnell Literacy: Elevating Teacher Expertise, 2020). Furthermore, when teachers are able to use multi-level books by the same authors and illustrators, they are able to bring those small groups back together in discussions on book similarities in the storytelling and in the way the books are illustrated. Patricia Polacco’s books are great for this reason because their illustration styles are very similar as are her themes for her books. I would highly suggest using many of her books at varying levels in a single classroom setting between readers at varying levels.
Author Study on 2 Levels
This literature unit focuses on the author Patricia Polacco. Students will be reading Thunder Cake and Oh, Look!, both books have very detailed sequencing and character reactions to major events that happen throughout each story. Students will easily be able to identify different major events and give great details as to how each character reacts individually and with each other throughout each book. Thunder Cake has a Lexile level of 630 while Oh, Look! has a Lexile level of 350. Since second grade has an average reading level anywhere between 355 - 735 or 545 at its middle, these books offer a great range for higher and lower readers.
Other Content Area Options to Consider
One other content area that could be addressed with these books is art through the illustrative work presented in both stories. Patricia Polacco writes and illustrates her own books and they all have a very similar theme and feel to them when it comes to their artwork. Any teacher could easily use this author as a way to show how art is created in different ways but with the same or similar “feel”.
Summative Activity Option
The main purpose of conducting an author study is to have students compare two different books by the same author. The summative activity will begin with dividing the students into two groups depending on which book they read and studied. The teacher will provide a bingo-style worksheet and require the students to interview others from the opposite group in order to learn about the other book and then be able to compare and contrast the author’s writing and illustrations. For example, students will have to answer each other’s questions regarding; main characters and their traits, were they good or bad, what was the main plot of the story, what was one or two major events that happened, how did event #1 make the characters feel, etc. This is a great way for students to not only learn about the other book but to also share what they know and learned from the book that they read. At the end of the activity, the teacher may have students share similarities and differences that they found when interviewing their classmates.
Benefits of Author Studies in the Classroom
The benefits of conducting author studies are many but the one that I want to focus on is how they allow students to work together to become a community of readers that support one another and celebrate each other’s love of reading. Woodard (n.d.), “Questioning what students notice and wonder invites you into their minds and helps you understand how they make sense of the world. Inquiry can send you all off into a world of discovery and discussion as you build your classroom culture and establish community together.” (4. Build your community together.). By celebrating reading and allowing students to share their thoughts and opinions about books and stories, we are opening them up to the ability to have an opinion on what genres they like and don’t like, and even authors that they love and those that they’d rather skip. We are allowing them to choose, share, explore, and discover a new world of reading for themselves.
References
Fountas & Pinnell Literacy: Elevating Teacher Expertise. (2020). The Importance of Guided Reading Within a Multi-Text Approach. https://fpblog.fountasandpinnell.com/the-importance-of-guided-reading-within-a-multi-text-approach
Goodreads, Inc.. (2020). Oh, Look!. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/443622.Oh_Look_
Patricia Polacco.com(n.d.). http://www.patriciapolacco.com/#author
Penguin Random House Network. (n.d.). Thunder Cake. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/354021/thunder-cake-by-patricia-polacco/
Utah Education Network. (n.d.). English Language Arts Grade 2. https://www.uen.org/core/core.do?courseNum=4220
Woodard, S. (n.d.). Building a Classroom Community of Readers. https://ww.greatminds.org/community-of-readers