Rain school

Rain school

Author and Illustrator :James Rumford

Genre: Multicultural, Fiction,

Published :2010

For ages : 4-7

Themes in the book :  Africa, Educating Children, Schools, Multicultural

Summary: This multicultural book takes place in Tchad, in Africa. It is a story about Thomas’s first day of school. He is very anxious to start school and to learn. On his first day of school him and his classmates have to build their school  from mud and straw. The teacher explains to the children that this is their first lesson.Thomas learns how to make mud bricks and build his school. Once the school is ready the students can sit at their mud desk and learn. For nine months  they attend school and their teacher was very encouraging. After the nine months there is no more school and the rain comes. the rain and strong winds destroy the school and it disappears. Once September comes the children go back to school and begin their first day by building it all over again so they can prepare to learn.

This book can be used to help students connect to other cultures and to get students familiar with how other cultures do things. They could compare and contrast america to Africa when it comes to school. Students could get together and discuss the difference within the book about the first day of school in Africa and their first day of school. Through interactions with teachers and collaboration with other classmates, students learn things they couldn’t on their own( Tracey &Morrow, 2006). Getting children to get ideas from other or to even hear other students’ stories help them. I want the students to be active and communicate with one another. It is good to have the students aware of other cultures around the world because everyone is different. They need to realize that not all families do things the same and other countries are different than america.

I would make the lesson about cultures and have the students  I would read the story aloud to my students . Tompkins(2013) states that reading aloud models what good reader do, and students actively engage in the reading experience(p. 151). once the story is read aloud  I would have my students get into groups to discuss the book and the differences. Than once that is done i will explain to the students that they will write letters to a pen pal in Africa Asking them other questions they would like to know about their culture and also telling their pen pal about something about their culture that is important to them. they can also add how their first day of school was for them. We will go through the five stages of writing when doing this lesson. Tompkins(2013) states that there should be a pre-writing,draft, revise, editing and publish stage (p.173). Researchers have found that more reading leads to better writing and more writing has the same effect on reading(Tompkins,173, 2013). I want the students to incorporate what they learned in the reading in their pen pal essays. This book can also lead students to do posters of their background cultures so classmates can understand more about their peers and their customs.

Tompkins, G. E. (2013). Language arts: Patterns of practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Rumford, J. (2010). Rain school. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.