From the 2003 OCIRA Fall Conference: Weaving Our Own Tapestry of Books
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The 2003 OCIRA Fall Conference was all about books - the newest and the best in children's literature, and it was all about how to weave many genres into the fabric of our teaching to enrich students' learning. Superb presentations delivered by educators, authors and storytellers with a passion for literature shaped a remarkable experience for all who were fortunate enough to attend the annual literacy event. For those who were unable to join us, this column offers a vicarious experience. Featured author Gary Paulsen shared personal life stories, from which he has drawn to write his many adventure novels like Hatchet, especially favored by adolescents. After the book was published Paulsen declared that he would write no more books. But then came Brian's Winter, another Brian adventure and after it, Brian's Return. And just released is Brian's Hunt in which our hero Brian Robeson returns to the Canadian wilderness where he finds a mysteriously injured dog, some Cree Indians and a startling challenge. In a note at the book's end, Paulsen reminds his readers that his unusual background enables him to colorfully detail these gritty stories. Will Brian's Hunt be the last of the sequels? There is a suspiciously nagging question posed at book's end - a question that surely must be answered. Storyteller/author Coleen Salley spun tales from Cajun Louisiana and demonstrated an energetic delivery of story. Salley has authored her own amusing interpretation of a book titled Epossumondas, a Southern folktale about a muddleheaded possum who lacks critical thinking skills. She had the Saturday luncheon audience literally rolling in the aisles with a lively rendition of this amusing cumulative story - a fine read aloud choice for early childhood classrooms. Ohio author/illustrator Denise Fleming, though not a scheduled speaker, stopped by the conference bookstore to autograph her most recent title, Buster. The book drew praise for its rich colors, varied textures, and cleverly crafted chapters. In it she introduces readers to Buster the dog whose pampered life falls apart when his owner brings home a fluffy white cat. Fleming uses repetitive language and the bold illustrations that appeal to her young audience. Rick Sowash, storyteller of the Heartland, entertained us with tales about amazing Ohio animals- some funny, some sad - from his latest publication Critters, Flitters and Spitters. Sowash has included stories about creatures from the Ice Age and the Civil War era - all of them entertaining. The following annotations are a sampling of new literature recommended by our conference presenters. Picture Books Marian Anderson emerged as an incredible singing talent in the 1940s at a time when African American artists were largely ignored. In When Marian Sang, Pam Munoz Ryan has written a simple biographical text about Marian's life that ends with her triumphant recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Brian Selznick's sepia-toned paintings convey the emotion of Anderson's dream to be heard by an entire American audience. Munoz Ryan includes lyrics from gospel tunes that add authenticity to this drama. This book, recognized by the Coretta Scott King Award committee, will be valued for its artwork and multicultural content, and it integrates easily into history themes and music. Ashley Bryant's Beautiful Blackbird is a Zambian tale in which he incorporates rhythm and rhyme as readers and listeners learn of the search for the most beautiful bird of all. Elements of sound-alliterative chants and metered cadence, Beak to beak, peck, peck, peck, /Spread your wings, stretch your neck, will appeal to emergent readers. Bryant has just been awarded a Coretta Scott King recognition for this book. G is for Goat by Patricia Polacco attracted the attention of early childhood attendees for its alphabetic awareness and concept development features. Polacco continues to draw on her childhood experiences to write, this time about goats, like the ones she once raised on her Michigan family farm. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".