What Makes a Book "Good"?

Recently, many of my students have been struggling with this question. They are participating in the nomination process for the Golden Archer Award and have had to choose one book to nominate for this state honor. During the beginning of our discussion, many got caught up in the idea of good pictures, neat text, and accurate spelling. Perhaps they thought this was what I wanted to hear, because when I told them that the last thing I think about when reading a good book is neatness, the tone of their ideas began to change. Here are some of their better answers.

• Interesting characters that we can understand and connect with.
• A good "hook" in the beginning to make us keep reading.
• Some new ideas or a twist on an old idea.
• Interesting and exciting story lines.
• Descriptive words and phrases, so you can "see" what is written.
• Something organized well, that flows from one idea to the next.

So, we began talking about Organization, Fluency, Voice, Ideas, Word Choice, and even Presentation...which are the six traits of good writing that we use in each classroom. Good writing makes a good book, so that connection was made between what they are learning as writers and what they like as readers.

Now, we will see if they can take this connection a step further. They have been given the challenge to create an advertisement for the book they are nominating. Students are busily creating slogans and signs to persuade others to support their book. These will be posted in the cafeteria in a couple of weeks. I hope you have a chance to stop in and see some of them. Judging by what I am hearing during their planning sessions, we have some budding marketing professionals in our school!

That's A Good Question ...

I love questions. A sincere question is an expression of curiosity and thought, two of my favorite character traits. My best lessons are not the ones I plan, but the ones that evolve from a spontaneous question.

The best question I have handled lately came from one of my fourth grade students, who was struggling to research an explorer whose last name was Duluth (which is all the student knew at the time). After apologizing for maybe asking a "dumb question", the student said, "Does it matter where you start a search on the Internet, like is it different if you start at Google or Yahoo?" An excellent question -- truly stellar -- from a student whose shining moments are sometimes few and far between.

After reassuring him that the question was far from dumb, I explained that the answer was not a simple yes or no. Knowing where to start a search on the Internet can make a difference in the quality and amount of information found. Google and Yahoo are both search engines, but Google searches tend to include Yahoo, so it is a larger source of web sites. Also, not all search engines rank the results in the same order. In some cases, you are better off not using a search engine at all, but going to a web site that specializes in your topic area, such the Wisconsin Historical Society web site. We looked at a couple of examples to illustrate my point.

Then, I explained that it is even more important which terms you search with and how you arrange them. Just typing in Duluth, for example, brought up all sorts of sites on Duluth, Minnesota. When we typed in Duluth explorer, we actually found a site that had his entire name. When we typed in his entire name "Daniel Greysolon Duluth" and surrounded it with quotation marks to let the computer know we needed all those words together in that order, we were on a roll. Adding the word biography behind his name narrowed our choices even more and led to some useful information.

The best part of the lesson? After all those tries, we had what I call an "aha" moment -- a moment when something clicks, and a student makes a connection. These are the moments all teachers live for...and mine was particularly sweet, because the student looked at me and said, "Do you think I would have found his whole name if I had used the encyclopedia first?" This was something the classroom teacher and I had tried to get all the students to do, so being able to say, "Absolutely, that's why I suggested it," was a great end to a teachable moment.