Whoa! Here I come! I am the Hug Machine! Crandall, On a Whim, Hits the Literacy Lottery with @scottlava

Let me start by saying this was not planned.

I had a dream Monday night about an activity to do with math, history, science, Italian, Spanish, and ELA teachers that would involve children's books. I got up at 7 a.m. and was at the library by 8 a.m. only to learn that they didn't open until 10 a.m., so I sat in my car for 2 hours and read.

I entered at 10 a.m. and introduced myself to the children's librarian. I explained, "I'm a professor at Fairfield University and my students all have to design lessons to showcase ways they develop literacy skills in their content areas. To get their heads around "genre," I told her, I'm doing an opening prompt where they choose to write about a favorite sport, food, book or movie taste (they did this without flaw, which allowed me to discuss the categorization of genres in our every day life - genres are our social glue, as Richard Beach writes). I also was going to read a children's book to them and dissect it for the parts of how we know it is a children's book.

With a few references to course readings, I then  brought forth the delivery of several children's books that were content-specific - written in Italian or Spanish, historical stories topics, math-related, sand narrative. Some read  Funny Bunny Money and others read The Dark Tale of the Tortoise and the Hair. There were 17 different books.

I, by luck of the draw, got the last book which happened to be Hug Machine by Scott Campbell, which I read to model that I, too, was reading for purpose, content knowledge, and genre reliability.
I loved this book. In fact, I passed it to the kid on my right who read it, then passed it to the kid on his right, and eventually it made it around the room. We all decided we wanted to get the Hug Machine kid tattooed over our hearts (and to create our own hug checklist to follow on a daily basis). The illustrations were stellar: whimsical, relevant, and perfect for the the text. We started singing, "I am the hug machine," to the tune of "I am a love machine."

Of course, I then transitioned to a reading of "The Psychology of Genre" in the NY Times - an opinion piece - and we applied a few Beers and Probst strategies. (They NYT's piece is a great read...I recommend it).

From there, we brought forward all the activities that I did in the night and how I used activities and, in a democratic student-centered practice, got everyone on the same page about what genre is. Their homework is to find models of a genre that they are likely to teach (something they will read or something that they will be expected to write). They are to analyze it like we did the children's books.

Ah, but back to Hug Machine. What a great book. It's likely to be a new go-to text to send on special occasions. Scott Campbell, if you are reading this, my class and I send you a 1,000 hugs. Bravo!