Day 2 of Summer Goal: Front Desk

The Vlog Transcript 

Slides 1 and 2: I’m Kate Narita. This is day 2 of my summer 2019 #bookaday challenge, and I have a new favorite book--Front Desk by Kelly Yang. The book is tons of fun to read and it’s well-paced. But that’s not all. It’s honest, has my favorite theme of all time-perseverance, and it emphasizes the importance of inclusion of people of all skin tones in a kid-friendly way. I haven’t been this excited about a novel since last fall when I read The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden.

Slide 3: Usually when I'm very excited about a book I can use it to teach my students how to be better writers. So, I use The Benefits of Being an Octopus in my writer's workshop to each students the power of metaphor. Ann Braden does an incredible job of using the image of an octopus to show the various challenges her main character faces.

​Slide 4: I will also be using Front Desk in my writer's workshop in various ways. On page 191 the main character of Front Desk talks about revision and says, “It took me two and a half hours and five drafts to write the reference letter.” This is really important because often times kids think they can write something in five minutes and it'll be done or they can just write something once and it'll be done.

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​Slide 5: In my writer's workshop I also use the book Some Writer!: The Story of E.B. White to talk about the importance of revision. This book is fantastic because Sweet lays out all the different ways that E.B. White tried to start the novel Charlotte's Web before he landed on the famous first line, "Where's Papa going with that axe?" Now we can also use Front Desk in writer's workshop to talk about various drafts.

Slide 6: In addition to various drafts, Mia talks about using a thesaurus on page 127 and how you can trade out small, overused words for larger less common words. This is great because it ties in nicely with another book.

Slide 7: The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus. What's great about this book is it tells the story of how the first thesaurus came into being and this will work really nicely with Front Desk because now we have a child who is actually using the thesaurus in the book.

Slide 8: But that's not all. You can use the book Front Desk in your writer's workshop to introduce persuasive writing skills because Mia uses her persuasive writing skills to help her friends on pages 190 and 204. So, when we're writing we talk about the importance of an audience, and we can really see here how Mia understands the importance of an audience and who she is writing to, She uses this understanding to make her friends' lives better.

Slide 9: You can also use Front Desk to intorduce small moments. That's a big emphasis in writing today to have kids choose a small moment from their life to write about. On page 219 in the book it's absolutely fantastic because Mia brianstorms a list of small moments that she could write about in her classroom.

Slide 10: All in all, Front Desk is a must-have book for upper elementary classrooms. It's fun, well-paced, has a great theme of perseverance, it emphasizes the need to include all people no matter what their skin tone is, and it's an incredible resource to use when you're teaching writing.