Fancy Nancy
Written by: Jane O’ Connor
Illustrated by: Robin Preiss Glasser
Genre: Fantasy
Age: 6-8 year olds
Cunningham, P., & Allington, R. (2011). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
O’Connor, J., & Preiss-Glasser, R. (2006). Fancy Nancy. New York: HarperCollins.
Tompkins, G. E. (2013). Language arts: Patterns of practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Summary: Fancy Nancy is the first book written of a series of books following a young girl, Nancy through her normal life that she turns fancy. The character Nancy is a young girl who finds the simplest things and turns them fancy, showing readers that she can find a synonym for any regular/boring word and turn it fancy! In this book readers follow Nancy during a normal day in her life while learning synonyms for everyday, ordinary words. Nancy introduces young readers to words such as chauffeur, fuchsia, and stupendous in ways that allow the reader to add these new words to their everyday vocabulary. Fancy Nancy readers follow Nancy and her family around during their everyday routine and see how Nancy turns her ordinary family into a posh family. This book is great for lessons on synonyms and could definitely come in handy for a lesson on details and descriptive words because of the new synonyms students are learning.
Fancy Nancy is a book filled with synonyms and new vocabulary words that students could use in everyday language that they may have never heard of before. Simple words such as chauffeur and accessories are words that can be used everyday. On one of the pages Nancy has chalk board and has two sections plain and fancy, one example on the board is leather and patent leather; this is a perfect example of showing the students how they can add more detail to their writing. This book would be a read aloud during the lesson and students could be taught what fancy words/synonyms are and to be on the look out for them during the reading. It is important to enhance a student’s vocabulary and to always work on expanding it, according to Cunningham and Allington (2011) “reading is one of the major opportunities for vocabulary learning.” By having students point out the fancy words/synonyms in the book they are expanding their vocabulary. By having a follow up assignment of having students choose some fancy words and find more synonyms for them, allows students to expand their vocabulary even further.
The lesson used for this book would touch upon all five stages of the reading process. Tompkins (2013) states “reading is a process in which readers negotiate meaning in order to comprehend, or create an interpretation.” The first stage of the reading process is pre-reading; which is where students would activate prior knowledge and set purposes for reading, students will think about what a ‘fancy word’ is and what they know about synonyms along with learning that they will be searching for fancy words throughout the reading. The second step is reading; students will listen to the read aloud and apply strategies such as drawing inferences and using clues to find the fancy words and their meanings. Step three consist of responding; students will have the opportunity to share with the class which words they think are fancy and explain why The next step, number four is exploring; students are able to work together and brain storm the meanings of the newly discovered fancy words and learn more vocabulary words and their meanings. In the final step of the reading process students will reread Fancy Nancy and will find words that they can find synonyms for that are not in the book. Students will have to use the strategy of generating; creating new vocabulary words for themselves and their peers to learn.
-Heather Attanasio
Teaching with Children's Literature 