Title: Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verses (Updated 2002) Author: Walter Dean Myers Illustrator: Walter Dean Myers Publisher: Harper Trophy, New York, 1996 ISBN: 0064434559
Ask the children, recording their responses on chart paper:
Begin to read each of the eleven poems at different sessions with time to view the related photographs. Encourage the children to express their responses to the ideas in the poetry and relate them to their own experiences of being nurtured, celebrated and photographed as they are growing up. Relate the discussions about the poems to the photographs to ensure understanding of the poets' ideas and vocabulary.
Copy poems onto charts. Illustrate. Use predictable word patterns and rhyming words to learn new words, their meaning, alone and in the context of the verses. Return after each poem to the original chart to eliminate any stereotypes and to add to the concepts of endearment. Reread to clarify the meaning, and use as rote chants identifying on each that it came from a book of poems.
Ask sign pupils to make a table of contents using ordinals for the poems in lieu of the unnumbered pages, using the underlined titles of each poem, displayed in order on their charts.
Discuss the use of numbers and arrangements in the photographs to show that both genders are represented in the photos and in the class. Estimate the numbers of "little angels" in the photos. Count to check the reasonableness for each page making pictographs of boys, girls, pets, structures, and mechanisms. Observe and discuss the characteristics and variation of each. Discuss how the structures and mechanisms appear to be made, and their various uses in homes and schools. Identify any geometric shapes in them and describe any patterns produced by repetition of shapes or symbols.
Enlarge school photos on a photocopier lightening the settings so children can use pencil crayons to match their own skin tones. Encourage children to adapt the pattern of their favourite poem, writing it on another paper, to accompany the picture. Mount and have pupils sign in a variation of "from your little angel".