I really love how wordless picture books can bridge gaps between things like language barriers and different reading levels.  It is one of the only reading activities in which all kids can share the same experience and be on the same “level.” It made me think of my Hispanic students who are brilliant and write excellent stories, but are inhibited by their second language. I also thought it was important that the teacher made sure to scaffold by doing several whole group activities before letting the kids break off into partners and individuals.  Things that students seem to learn from wordless picture books: story structure, complete sentences, tenses, dialogue, etc.  Wordless picture books also inspire creativity, as there is no wrong story (as long as it makes sense with the picture).  It also draws kids in to pay more attention to the illustrative details, which are often overlooked.  I could see how the repetition of the words could help with sight vocabulary, although this wouldn’t necessarily help a child learn to read better if the child isn’t making sense of the phonetic patterns in the words (aka just memorizing). Anyway, I did an author/illustrator study on David Wiesner last semester…it was fascinating.  He wrote several Caldecott books, including Tuesday.    Here are some teaching ideas I came up with for Tuesday:

·        All of Wiesner’s books are great when exploring setting.  What time of day is it?  Where does this story take place?  How do you know? 

·        Writing ideas:  Have students become authors by creating their own words to go with the illustrations.  Or each student could write about one page and make the story as a class.  Ask the students what strange things are happening on Tuesday and write/illustrate what they think will happen next Tuesday.  

·        “Use this book to create “Split Images” described in Johnson and Louis’s professional book Bringing It All Together (Heinemann 1990 ISBN 0-435-08502-6) wherein each child sees only every other page of the book with her/his partner viewing the intervening pages. The two partners exchange information and try to recreate the story.”  ~~This idea came from http://www.carolhurst.com/titles/tuesday.html