A Year of Reading

Poetry Friday -- Rain Songs

2012-01-27T06:15:00.001-05:00

April Rain Song

by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

January Rain Song (Through Gritted Teeth)

by Mary Lee Hahn

A kiss that lasts this long is just downright obscene.

The beating of the rain is making us go collectively insane.

We go to sleep -- it's raining, we wake up -- it's raining. Some lullaby.

The rain makes deep puddles under the swingset. Indoor recess again.

The rain keeps sump pumps running.

Yet, I must not forget that the rain is the reason for our towering trees—

And so I love the rain.

Jim Hill has the Poetry Friday roundup today at Hey, Jim Hill!

A Wrinkle in Time: 50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs Celebration

2012-01-26T05:53:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe that A Wrinkle in Time is turning 50 this year.

This book was a landmark book in my reading life. I chose it from the Scholastic book order in sixth grade. I was a voracious reader, but this was in the first book that really challenged me to THINK and to FEEL.

Although I've read it over and over again, I've never read it aloud to my students. Last year's class (4th grade) embraced the challenge of a long science fiction book (The Search For Wondla), so I decided to try A Wrinkle in Time with this class.

I reserved 24 copies of the book from the public library so that every student could read along, and they've each got a short stack of mini stickie notes to mark juicy (or unknown) vocabulary words and places to go back to and discuss.

Then I made a somewhat radical decision. I am not reading the book to them.

Madeline L'Engle is.

We're listening to the audio book!

We are only a few chapters in so far, but the combination of having a book to follow and a very different voice to listen to as we read has been magical. The students have been studying the cover illustration in minute detail, and as we have been introduced to each new character so far, they go back and look again and talk some more. This is our cover:

Can you see the evil man with the red eyes? He's both in the background and in the sphere that someone (we're not sure who) is holding aloft. I didn't notice him until my students pointed him out to me.

I'm excited to see what else about this old favorite will be made new and fresh as I read along with my fourth graders.

* * * * * * *

Visit the A Wrinkle In Time Facebook page.

Here are all 50 of the blogs that are participating in the 50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs Celebration Blog Tour:

Week 1: Revisiting A Wrinkle In Time

January 16 -20

Biblioklept

The Compulsive Reader

The Discriminating Fangirl

The Story Siren

Steph Su Reads

Week 2: Sharing A Wrinkle In Time

January 23 - 27

Green Bean Teen Queen

One Librarian’s Book Reviews

Week 3: Characters in A Wrinkle In Time

January 30 - February 3

Coffee and Cliffhangers

S. Krishna’s Books

Lisa the Nerd

Week 4: Expressions of A Wrinkle In Time
February 6 - February 10
Word For Teens
Fictional Food
New Cover
Textbook
Presenting Lenore
Modly Chic
The J. Sorese Visual Companion
Read. Breathe. Relax.
Book Aunt
Meg Bentley Illustration

Week 5: Reading A Wrinkle In Time for the First Time
February 13 - 17
Geek Girl’s Book Blog
The Cozy Reader
I Just Wanna Sit Here And Read
Jenn's Bookshelves
Booking Mama
Page Turners
I Read Banned Books
YA Bibliophile
Alison’s Bookmarks
Galleysmith

SUMOKU: My New Favorite Game for the Classroom or Library

2012-01-24T04:58:00.000-05:00

Teachers at our school have spent a lot of time finding great learning games for our kids. This week, my friend McKenzie popped in at lunch with Sumoku, a new math game she had purchased for her 3rd graders. She wanted to learn how to play the game so we figured it out together and I LOVED it.

Sumoku is made by Blue Orange USA--this company has lots of great games that are fun, unique, and reasonably priced. First of all, let me say I loved the whole design of the game. It comes in a cone shaped zipper pouch with lots of colors. I love the size, color and texture of the tiles. And I love the font of the numbers on the tile. I have not seen the stand that carries these in bulk in stores, but I saw a photo on the site and I love that too. Overall, the game has a really fun, happy feel to it.

This is a math game, recommended for ages 9-adult. It seems perfect for kids in grades 3-6. I made my husband play a game with me when mine arrived from Amazon today and he enjoyed the game too. Definitely a fun challenge. And it is not a game that takes forever to play.

The game is based on multiples and combinations of numbers--lots of addition, multiplication and strategy work when playing this game. It works a bit like scrabble and a bit like Sudoku. Your job is to make rows and columns of numbers that add up to a multiple of the Key Number for the round. Get it--"Sum"oku. Hah! Love that this game even has a very playful title:-)

The challenge is to build rows and columns of numbers without repeating a color in one row/column. In the main version of the game, players keep score by adding their totals together for each round. There are other versions of the game (Speed Sumoku being my favorite right now--I am quite good at it:-)

This is really a great game and it is a little bit addicting if you love addition and multiplication. I think we need one at home too. I am so happy that McKenzie shared her find with me. My new favorite game:-)

Caldeoctt Voting and Newbery Club Reflections

2012-01-23T05:53:00.005-05:00

This morning, as they are announcing the Caldecott and Newbery Awards at ALA Midwinter. As much as I would LOVE to be at the Youth Media Awards announcements, I won't be there. But we will be having our own fun as our school's Newbery Club will be enjoying donuts while we watch the live webcast. We are all excited to see which book will win the award and I am sure the follow-up conversations will be amazing.

As a school, we spent this week looking at many of the Caldecott contenders. All students in grades 1-5 voted and here are our results:

Mock Caldecott Winner:
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Mock Caldecott Honors:

Bone Dog by Eric Rohmann
I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
Where's Walrus by Stephen Savage

Our Riverside Mock Newbery Club has been meeting for a year. This week, the kids voted from the short list we had created. The winner of our vote was: INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN by Thanhha Lai.

Riverside's Mock Newbery Honors:
BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX by Laurel Snyder
HIDDEN by Helen Frost.

My reason for starting the Newbery Club at our school was to build a group of older readers who had stamina to read really great books. I had noticed that other than THE LIGHTNING THIEF, CITY OF EMBER and a few other titles, many our older kids needed a push to expand their lives as readers. Our kids are readers. The teachers run amazing Reading Workshops and I felt like I could support the work they were doing by supporting great book choice with a group of kids that was interested.

Our club has about 25ish members. We meet on Mondays and we average about twice a month. The members are all 5th graders and we started meeting a year ago--in January of 2011. They were 4th graders at the time and we continued the group in the fall as 5th graders (with a few new members:-) It has been a pretty simple club. Kids come in, eat lunch in the library and chat about books. Or they chatted about 5th grade stuff and then moved onto books. My plan was to have a more structured club and months where we were all reading the same book, etc. But it didn't turn out that way.

This group did not like "assigned" reading so a whole group book never took off. They were clear that they were in charge of their reading lives. So, I handled it differently than I had planned. It was very unstructured and because of that, it ended up surpassing any goals I had set for it.

I started the club with a pile of 2011 arcs and added to the pile with new books and arcs as they were released. For a while, our meetings were merely about picking books. Members were just trying to read lots of 2011 books. Kids would share informally about the books they read and decide on their next read. As time went on and buzz around books picked up, books started circulating between meetings so book swapping was no longer the focus of our meetings.

As we began this school year, we started to look at some Mock sites and I started to share books that were being talked about as possible Newbery winners. I created this JOG THE WEB highlighting books that were highly reviewed. Members explored this during a few meetings this fall and continued to revisit it as needed. I began to house the 2011books on a specific shelf near the checkout desk. Kids came in and out of the library every day to pick a book.

Then in November, we created our own Short List. Kids voted and as we chatted, I was amazed at how many great books the group had read. The books on the shortlist were INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN, BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX, TUESDAYS AT THE CASTLE, ROMEO AND JULIET CODE, HIDDEN, SMALL AS AN ELEPHANT, THE UNWANTEDS and A DOG'S WAY HOME. They really were talking ONLY about amazing books. Talk is always good when the book is good and the books being discussed, shared and passed around the group were amazing. Even though we had never had a formal conversation, it was clear to me that just sharing the experience, sharing books they loved, having time to read and tools to support great book choice, this group grew as a community. The informal chat was powerful.

When I think back to the year, I am amazed at how these kids grew as readers. They tried new genres, discovered new authors, fell in love with great books and shared those books with others. Many of them experienced ebook reading -- some liked it and some did not. They grew as readers in so many areas over the year. I know this growth wasn't solely because of the club, but I think it was a way to put new quality books in their hands. They learned about stamina, quality book choice, talk, community. And it was a great way for me, as the librarian, to get to know a group of readers at a different level.

My plan was to end the group after the ALA announcement and start a new 4th grade group this month, but I hate to end this group. They are reading and talking about books like crazy. And I can really just sit back and listen. My thinking now is to keep them together as a group that keeps up with new books. Or to start them off on their own Newbery Club that they might continue on their own into middle school. They seem the perfect group to spread the word about great new books.

For me, this is such an exciting day! I have so many books that I loved from 2011. So many titles that I'd love to see win these award. So many deserving authors and illustrators. I am crossing my fingers for a few favorites!

Poetry Friday: The First

2012-01-20T06:14:00.000-05:00

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Paul Lowry

The First

Jackie Robinson

First African American baseball

player in the modern era

January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972

I run down

the line, eight feet,

nine. . .and feint to feel

the rush between the third

baseman’s brush back and home.

Whitey Ford stares through me, a sneak thief

playing on his disbelief, a phantom blackbird hopping

on and off

the dare, flinching,

inching along the ledge

to legend. I time the windup,

my pistons primed to shovel under

Yogi’s glove. Yankee Stadium is stunned!

But you can hear the cheering all the way from Harlem.

© J. Patrick Lewis

[This poem will appear in When Thunder Comes:

Poems for Civil Rights Leaders, Chronicle Books, 2012,
and is used with the permission of the author.]

* * * * * * *

Thank you, Mr. Poetry Ambassador, sir, for sending this poem for us to feature on our blog for Poetry Friday today!

I poked around the Internet a bit to find out some more information about Jackie Robinson, seeing as I'm not any kind of baseball fan.

I found the official Jackie Robinson website.
Here's more about Whitey Ford, pitcher for the Yankees, and Yogi Berra, catcher for the Yankees.
And here's Jackie Robinson stealing home, an amazing and daring move. Yogi Berra's not too happy about it!

Elaine has the Poetry Friday roundup today at Wild Rose Reader. Steal on over and check out the poetry offerings for today!

Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking

2012-01-19T06:40:00.000-05:00

Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking
A Toon Book
by Philippe Coudray
Candlewick/Toon Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

I love Toon Books. Their catch-phrase is "TOON BOOKS: Bringing new readers to the pleasure of COMICS!"

Benjamin Bear is identified as a Level Two: "easy-to-read comics for beginning readers." However, the sophistication of the humor makes it a fun book for readers of all ages and all levels.

Each page is a story. A short story, but a complete story, with a beginning, middle and end. They are funny stories -- almost sight gags, since there is so little text. One of my favorites is a three-panel story, "The Biggest Fish." Bear says to Rabbit, "A shark takes up as much room as a whale." In the next panel, Rabbit asks, "How?" In the bottom panel (2/3 of the page) Bear and Rabbit stand at the shore looking down into the ocean, where all the fish have retreated to the edges of the panel, leaving a whale-sized empty space around a shark. Another favorite is "The Maze." Bear gets lost in a maze, but luckily, he has an apple with him. If you're wondering, "How could an apple help him?" you have a sense of the quirky humor in these stories. (Sorry. You'll have to read it to find out how the apple gets him out of the maze. Make your prediction. Then go get the book!)

Because they are single-page stories, this book would make a great mentor text for kids working with Comic Life or the Comic Book app to create their own single-page stories. Courdray uses a variety of panel sizes and combinations in each of his comics, and it would benefit young writers to study his panel choices and think hard about why he made his choices.

Also reviewed at No Flying, No Tights: A Graphic Novel Review Website

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred

2012-01-18T05:00:00.000-05:00

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred
by Samantha R. Vamos
illustrated by Rafael López
Charlesbridge, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

This book is The Happy Nappy Bookseller's pick for the Pura Belpré Award.*

I agree.

First of all, the illustrations are gorgeous. They pop with the happy bright colors you can see on the cover.

And the story is fun, fun, fun. It's a cumulative tale with a nod to "The House That Jack Built." In this case, though, arroz con leche is cooked. The story is told primarily in English, but the Spanish is included in a way that makes the reader pay attention and use context and story pattern clues. (There's a glossary in back if you really get stuck.)

The book starts, "This is the pot that the farm maiden stirred." On the next page, "This is the butter that went into the CAZUELA that the farm maiden stirred." So, you see, cazuela is pot. On the next page, "This is the goat that churned the cream to make the MANTEQUILLA that went into the CAZUELA that the farm maiden stirred." So, mantequilla is butter, and you can see how the story accumulates not only ingredients and animals but Spanish words.

Maybe I won't have read the Newbery this year, but I'm pretty sure I've read the Pura Belpré!

Fuse #8 also liked this book a lot.
An interview with the author here.

*This award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award is presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth. It is co-sponsored by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, an ALA affiliate.

Dublin Literacy Conference: February 25, 2012

2012-01-17T04:03:00.002-05:00

Dublin Literacy Conference 1995

From Left: Karen Szymusiak, Louise Borden, Franki Sibberson, Georgia Heard, Ralph Fletcher

The Dublin Literacy Conference has been a constant in my life as a teacher. It is one of my favorite times of year. The conference is run by a committee of teachers. Mary Lee and I have somehow been involved in the planning of this for a very long time. (The photo above is one from the 1995 Dublin Literacy Conference--it looks more like the 80s with my hair, but whatever...). The Dublin Literacy Conference is a highlight for many of us. I love it every year and each year I look at the list of upcoming speakers and think, "WOW! This is the best conference yet." We are so lucky to get amazing speakers each year, great book sales, and lunch. It is always a great day of literacy and learning. The conference is a deal--a one day Saturday conference for only $100 ($75 for Dublin Teachers).

There are two keynote sessions and 3 other sessions during the day-an A, B, and C session. The A and B sessions offer 20+ choices for participants. Some are given by features speakers and others by classroom teachers, technology specialists, authors, etc. The C session is an opportunity to hear a Featured Author of your choice. Everyone leaves the conference with new energy (and usually a few new books).

This year, we have a great slate of Professional Authors:

Donalyn Miller author of The Book Whisperer will present the morning keynote entitled,

One Book, One Child, One Teacher. She will also present a session later in the day called, Bring on the Books!.

Ruth Ayres, author of Day By Day and blog, Two Writing Teachers is presenting 2 sessions for teachers. Celebrating Writers and Meaningful Minilessons.

Bill Bass author of the upcoming book From Inspiration to Red Carpet: Hosting a Student Film Festival will offer two sessions, Developing Student Filmmakers and Authentic Learning through a Digital Lens.

Bill Kist author of New Literacies in Action and The Socially Networked Classroom will present sessions on The Socially Networked Classroom and The World is a Village: Implications for Global Education in a Web 2.0 World

We also have a great group of Children's Authors speaking at this year's conference:

Eric Litwin and James Dean, author/illustrator team of PETE THE CAT will open the conference with a song and present two sessions on Interactive Literacy for teachers.

Our afternoon keynote speaker will be Sharon Draper. Sharon is the author of Out of My Mind, Sassy, Tears of a Tiger and other books for teachers and children. The title of her keynote will be, Literacy, Laughter and Learning. She will also present a a session called Making Books Come Alive for Adolescent Readers.

Bob Shea, author of Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime, New Socks and Big Plans will present sessions entitled, Super Fun Time with Bob Shea and Super SECRET Fun Time with Bob Shea.

James Preller, author of the Jigsaw Jones series, Bystander, Justin Fisher Declares War and others will present sessions on Meet James Preller and Meet James Preller: The Long Version.

There are also many great Dublin teachers and Central Ohio bloggers presenting at the conference. Some Central Ohio bloggers you may know include:

Mandy Robek from Enjoy and Embrace Learning who will be presenting Helping Emergent Writers Develop.

Tony Keefer from Atychiphobia will present You Can Build Community with Writing.

Bill Prosser and Karen Terlecky from Literate Lives have a session that is becoming an popular tradition at the conference: So Many Books, So Little Time.

Mary Lee Hahn will be presenting on one of her favorite topics, Make Read Aloud a Must, Not a Maybe.

I will be presenting Comprehension in the Digital Reading Workshop.

Deb Frazier (Primary Perspective) and Nicole Kessler (Nicole's Book Nook) will present VoiceThread: Breaking Down the Walls.

Scott Sibberson (Scott Sibberson) will share Free Web Tools and Applications for Literacy Learning

Maria Caplin (Teaching in the 21st Century) will present with colleague, Mark Saelzler on Digital Literacy in the Everyday Classroom

It looks to be an amazing day of learning and hanging out with colleagues. There are lots of other great sessions. You can visit the Dublin Literacy Conference website and access a program and registration form. Hope to see you there!

It's Monday: What Are You Reading?

2012-01-16T05:23:00.002-05:00

Love It's Monday! What Are You Reading? Joining in with Teaching Mentor Texts today as well as lots of other bloggers to share my recent reading.
My reading life has been a little crazy. I have not given myself as much time to read as usual because I am really working hard to get into a good exercise routine (Reading Teachers Running). It takes a lot of time to exercise and to eat healthy. And I know when I get into a good book, it is hard to make time for anything else. So, I am mostly reading at night. I am trying NOT to read as much--last January, I read 40 books but I am trying to be a bit more balanced this January.This week, I read:

I missed last week's post so I'll talk about the last week or two of reading.

The Most Important Book I've Read Lately

Yesterday, I finished John Green's new book THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. This book has been hugely anticipated and I was looking forward to it. I am a huge John Green fan and have read all of his other books. PAPER TOWNS is my favorite. I was excited about this one but a bit worried that it couldn't live up to the hype. And it couldn't live up to his other books for me. How wrong I was. This is an amazing book. Brilliant and all-consuming. It is the story of Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters. I really don't even know what to say about this book except that I will most likely read it again sometime soon. It is a story that will live with me forever--a story that actually changed who I am, I think. No matter what is on your To-Be-Read stack, I would highly recommend moving this one to the top. The book is being reviewed and rated everywhere and I have not seen or have not heard of one person who was disappointed. Be prepared--it is not an easy read. You will be sucked in to the joy, pain, fear and energy of these characters. As I said, it is all-consuming. (I actually purchased 2 copies of this book--one for me and one for my 21 year old. I do not want to give mine up and I know we will each want to keep a copy of this one forever.)

Nonfiction

FED UP WITH LUNCH by Sara Wu
If you discovered the blog FED UP WITH LUNCH where Mrs. Q., a public school teacher, decided to eat a school lunch every day for a year. She took photos and blogged about her experiences. From the way the food looked to the way it tasted to the way it made her feel. She had no idea that the blog would attract so much attention but it is and she has become a huge advocate for healthier school lunches. Once she gave away her identity, she published this book. Her book has been recently released and whether you read her blog during her lunch-eating year or not, this is a great read. I was afraid it would be a repeat of the blog, but it wasn't. There is lots of good information and ways to make a difference in your school community. A great book and a great attitude about how to make good change.

Young Adult
SCORPIO RACES
Donalyn Miller recommended this book to me and I LOVED it. It wasn't a book I would have picked up myself. I am not a horse love. Don't love adventure or islands really. But I LOVED this book. There is a bit of romance, but a huge theme that I loved. The story is set on an island that provides an amazing backdrop for the characters. And I loved the characters the most, as I do in most books that I love. I loved the main characters and the not-so-main ones. The island is a small town where everyone knows everyone, and somehow the author made you feel that way too. I can't really explain why I loved this book but I did and I highly recommend it.

Picture Books

Catching up on Caldecott reading as we get ready for Caldecott Voting at school next week. Last week, Miss Loren from the Dublin Library came to visit and talk to the kids about Caldecott contenders. We love when she comes because we discover lots of new books and we love to hear her thinking. This week, kids will have time to look around and vote for a book they think should win. I read the following books to catch up a bit on 2011 picture book reading.

*BLUE CHICKEN by Deborah Freedman
*PLANT A KISS by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
*ZOMBIE IN LOVE by Kelly DiPucchio (This one would make a fun Valentine's Day read aloud.)
**GRANDPA GREEN by Lane Smith
SAY HELLO TO ZORRO by Carter Goodrich
JONATHAN AND THE BIG BLUE BOAT by Philip Stead
UNDERGROUND: FINDING THE LIGHT TO FREEDOM by Shane Evans
LEVI STRAUSS GETS A BRIGHT IDEA by Tony Johnston
BEFORE YOU CAME by Patricia Maclachlan
NIGHT FLIGHT by Robert Burleigh
WOOF MEOW TWEET-TWEET by Cecile Boyer
***WHERE'S WALRUS by Stephen Savage (One of my favorite new wordless books.)
WHERE'S MY T-R-U-C-K? by Karen Beaumont

Coming up Next
Not sure that I will read any fiction this week. I will probably choose a YA book sometime soon --maybe CINDER. Or I might read THE MIGHTY MISS MALONE by Christopher Paul Curtis. (I keep hearing amazing things about this one and I have an ARC from NCTE!) But I need to think about THE FAULT OF OUR STARS for a bit before I commit to new characters.

I will be reading a professional book that I am VERY excited about--OPENING MINDS: USING LANGUAGE TO CHANGE LIVES by Peter Johnston. I am a huge fan of Peter Johnston and his book CHOICE WORDS. CHOICE WORDS is a small book that has had such a huge impact on my teaching. In it Peter Johnston teaches us about the power of language and the messages our language gives to children. This new book looks to be an extension of that thinking and I can't wait to read it.

I have also been looking forward to reading Louise Borden's upcoming book HIS NAME WAS RAOUL WALLENBERG. I saw this one in process and can't wait to see the final book. Such an amazing story.

I would also like to fit in ICEFALL by Matthew Kirby. I have been hearing great things about it and it is all of a sudden getting some Newbery buzz. And it looks like a book that my students would love. So I am wondering if I can fit it in before next Monday...

Poetry Friday: Digital Mentor Texts for Poetry Writing

2012-01-13T06:05:00.003-05:00

Last Friday, at The Opposite of Indifference, Tabatha shared several centos that she had found while reading THE GREAT GATSBY. A cento is a poem created with the words of another author. You might have missed that she followed up on Saturday with this digital cento -- a poem created by editing a video of a commencement speech by Steve Jobs.

When I saw this, I realized that Poetry Friday had a way into the Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop conversation that's been going on here all week. I can honestly say:

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!

Poem Flow is the first place that comes to mind when I think of where I might look online for poetry in a digital form that makes me say, "I could do that!" Not only do they have an online presence on their website and on Poets.org, but Poem Flow also has an iPhone app that delivers poetry line by line, word by word, phrase by phrase on a simple white background. Click here to view Walt Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider in Poem Flow. Seems like that would be easy enough to do with PowerPoint or Keynote, but I know better than assgning it until I've tried it myself! (Franki's reflection on the importance of the teacher as digital writer is here.)

I would also love to create a typographic poem. I've been stuck at the "How do they DO that?" stage, but I really have no excuse -- there are MANY how-to sites and tutorials online. Maybe I'll challenge myself to learn to make one before April! Here's an example that's perfect for Monday's holiday/remembrance. It's a poem that is a combination of typography and cento (and it was created for a school assignment).

Here's a funny Taylor Mali typographic poem about language.

I used ToonDooSpaces, an online comic-making site, with my students for a couple of years. I could never convice any of my students to make a poem into a comic, but I had fun with Gerard Manley Hopkins' Pied Beauty.

By MLH | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

My students love to read poetry on the classroom Kindle and the Kindle app on our iPods and iPad. We have Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong's PoetryTag Time and Gift Tag, Gregory K's Kickstarter poems (on pdf), and Alan Katz's Poems I Wrote When No One Was Looking.

Here's an easy way to make a digital book of classroom poems. Show your students Laura Purdie Salas' 15 Words or Less weekly challenge. Same as Laura, start with a photo for inspiration. Then invite your children to write a very short poem that's as descriptive and original as possible. Drag your photo onto a page of PowerPoint/Keynote (ideally while projecting on your screen/whiteboard for students to see), then have the students bring their poems up for you to type, one on each page. Voila! A digital poetry book!

Tara has today's Poetry Friday roundup at A Teaching Life.

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop: Living Your Life as a Digital Writer

2012-01-12T05:54:00.003-05:00

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!

I realize that my posts have been anchored on the things I believe about the teaching of writing and how I have been thinking about those when it comes to digital writing. Anchoring my work in the powerful things I've learned working alongside writers in writing workshops over the years is key.

Writers' notebooks are hugely powerful tools in the writing workshop. It is not so much the notebook but the practice of living your life as a writer by keeping one. A writer's notebook is hard to define as it takes on a bit of a different personality for each writer. Ralph Fletcher says, "It's a place to collect, to react to ones world, to play with language, to stalk your inner voice, to find your stride as a writer." And in her book Notebook Know-How, Aimee Buckner says, “A writer’s notebook gives students a place to write everyday...to practice living like a writer.”

As a writing teacher, inviting kids to keep notebooks has always kept writing workshop authentic. It was a tool that reminded me that living your life as a writer was key. It was also a place to focus on growing and being a writer, rather than on writing "stuff" and focusing on projects/products.

So, I have been thinking about what this idea of a notebook means for digital writing. How do we make time for kids to live their lives as digital writers and what does that even mean?

When I think about the writer's notebook, there are several things that make it powerful. A few things that writers do in the notebook:

They collect great writing--words, phrases, passages
They collect images and moments in their lives
They collect their thinking
They try new techniques
They play with language
They give things a try

A writer's notebook is the place where writers can play with the things they learn from other writers/mentors and make them their own. For me, a writers' notebook is often where the real work of mentor texts happen. It is a place where they can collect writing they like. It is a place where they can try a technique that they saw another writer use, without the stress of a finished product. It is a place to play with things. Then, it is a place to go back to when publishing to pull out some of the things that will make your writing more powerful.

A Digital Writer's Notebook?

So, what does this mean for writers in this digital age. Obviously, a spiral bound notebook will not help our writers collect digital pieces, try our new techniques in film, or play with sound effects. But these things are clearly things that writers who use digital tools do. So, as the definition of writing has expanded, so has the definition of writer's notebook.

Teacher as Writer
I try to look at myself as a digital writer first. What habits do I have that feel like a writer's notebook expanded to include my life as a digital writer? Here's what I know about my life as a writer:
I blog regularly.
I read other bloggers' writing daily and often try things I've seen
I bookmark things I'd like to try in my blog writing
I save videos, presentations and podcasts that inspire me to try something new in my composition
I collect photos that I may use in presentations in the future
I play with new tools and often become obsessed with them as I am learning them
I try to create things with new tools for fun
I try various drafts of things and save the drafts
I revise and edit with online tools
I share writing online and immediately for feedback
I compose collaboratively using things like Google Docs

I am sure there are millions of other things I do. I did all of these things before there was a digital tool for composing. The difference is that before, my playing with writing, my collecting and my drafting was all housed in a writer's notebook. Although I still sometimes use the notebook, more of these habits happen on my computer, ipod or ipad these days.

As writers, we naturally pay attention to things we want to try. (Yesterday for example, Tony Keefer used a check mark symbol in a tweet. I had never seen that so immediately decided I wanted to write a tweet with a check mark. I investigated and thought of a tweet that would need a check mark. Now that is something I can do. The point is, sometimes these things are very small and meaningless but it is the way writers pay attention to what is possible and try out new things that is key.)

Mentor Texts as Invitations
So, I want to make sure to use mentor texts in ways that go beyond creating products. I believe in study and I believe that if we are writing persuasive essays, we need to immerse ourselves in reading persuasive essays to begin the study. However, I think an equally powerful way to use mentor texts is as invitation. If we want our students to live their lives as writers, invitations and playing are key. Collecting is key. And going back through your attempts is key.

So, I am trying to add more things like this to my time with kids. Quick minilesson type invitations where we study something a digital composer did and try it out ourselves--not to share, not to publish, just so we have it as a possibility in the future.

A few things we've done that support this idea:
Our students have access to lots of digital books and they spend quite a bit of time on sites like Tumblebooks. They enjoy audio and understand the idea of podcasts. And they know how to record in Garage Band. If kids are to create audio, I want them to have fun with voice and music. So, I invited them to try a few things.

I created an invitations in the library that we played with in a minilesson and a few kids tried out using the foam board displays. One was a foam board display entitled, "How would the character say that?". Scattered around the board were favorite characters and memorable dialogue. We tried reading it aloud in various ways in the minilesson. Then I invited kids to try recording different ways to read character dialogue on garage band. This was fun for those who merely wanted to play. For others, it helped them when they created audio podcasts of picture books for younger students.

I also try to create invitations by finding pieces that connect to student interest. In the past I have found how-to videos for students who like to build with legos and many give those a try while building--taking photos or video of their process. Our students love to build and a favorite building toy is Straws and Connectors. I wanted to give the students options for visual creation. On the Straws and Connectors site, you can access several PDFs of directions for building different structures. Once I showed these to a few builders, they created visual directions that will be turned into PDFs and put on our school website.

5th graders are currently playing with Numbers, learning how to make graphs, charts and tables. Eventually, they'll be invited to include those in some of the research that they do. They will also be able to use it when they conduct experiments, etc. So this playing time is key. Some may choose to use this tool. Others may not.

And, I love to share the Klutz Tricky Video book with students. These have been amazing invitations for students to see how various film techniques work and to give them a try. Klutz actually has many resources when it comes to giving kids opportunities to try some new and doable techniques.

And kids are finding their own ways to play when it comes to digital writing. When they have play time built into their digital writing workshop, they watch television differently. They look at commercials differently. They examine webpages differently. They listen to sound effects and they notice when a film has a close-up and when the scene is shot at a distance. Then they give things a try. I have to remind myself of this every time someone wants to create a talk show about nothing ("Mrs. Sibberson, don't you watch TV. Talk shows about nothing are funny!") or when they want to spend hours taking a million photos of themselves and embedding them in nonsense pictures on Pixie. The products don't always work, but the students are becoming more sophisticated digital writers every time they play. And they are living their lives as writers.

I have worried about this "play time" and am trying to figure out the balance between playing with tools, strategies, and techniques and creating quality products for an audience. But I have come to realize that this play time is the way digital writers live. It is the way I live as a digital writer. I like to play with things, give things a try, work with new tools, attempt new techniques and formats. Then these things come back in more published pieces when I see the need. This play time is critical and most of my playing comes from mentor texts I've discovered-something I've seen someone else do that I want to try.

My challenge is to help my students find ways to collect and revisit these things as we do in our writers' notebooks--to reflect and reuse in future work. I am still working on this idea but know that I want my students to live their lives as writers--writers who have access to digital tools and writers who are critical readers of all types of texts. If I want them to live their lives as writers, I want them to be awake to all that is out there, to notice what is possible and to think, "Hey, I can do that." I want them find things they want to try and then to have the freedom to play with an idea or technique without the pressure of a finished product--knowing that this will add to the things that are possible for them in the future. Just as in pre-digital writing workshop, I want notebook type thinking that helps kids live their lives as writers, and I want time for students to work hard on a published piece for an authentic audience. Both are equally important.

Mentor Texts: Teach the Writer, Not the Writing

2012-01-11T04:38:00.005-05:00

One of the most powerful things I learned as a writing teacher, was by Lucy Calkins who said, "Teach the writer and not the writing. Our decisions must be guided by what might help this writer rather than what might help this writing."

I have come back to this quote often in the last few weeks as I am working with 2nd graders on creating e-Comics. In Writing Workshop, before the digital tools entered, I had very little trouble remembering Lucy Calkins' important words. I was good at focusing on the learning, rather than the product. I felt confident about teaching things that my students would use in future writing--I was impacting the writer, not the writing. I learned early-on as a Writing Workshop teacher, that it was easy to "clean up" a student's writing to make the product "look good". I could do the revising and editing, make decisions for the child, etc. and have something nice to publish. But I quickly realized that with that approach, students writing never improved. Students never grew as writers. I was lucky to learn from amazing writing workshop teachers and saw huge growth in writers once I stopped focusing on individual pieces of writing and started focusing on individual writers.

Enter digital writing... I feel like I took a little step back in time and in my ability to manage an authentic writing workshop. It seems that more often with digital tools, I am a bit more structured and directive. I have to continue to remind myself about my beliefs about writing and learning. I have to go back to books by my writing mentors--Katie Ray, Ralph Fletcher, Lucy Calkins, Don Graves, Shelley Harwayne--to make sure I am staying true to what I know about quality writing instruction. Some days, I look around and notice everyone in the same place in the writing process, everyone using the same tools to create or everyone creating similar pieces and I panic. My workshop before digital tools was much more student-centered. Students had choice in tools to use, formats to publish and how fast to move in the process. There seemed to be fewer directives and more invitations. My vision of what a writing workshop should look like is harder to make happen with so many new tools and possibilities coming so quickly. I am working to make sure I stay true to what I believe about writing and that I give my students the right messages about what it means to be a writer. I am moving toward making sure my writing workshop matches the vision I have for it.

So, back to the Comic ebooks. This is a collaborative project I've been working on with our art teacher, our technology specialist, and our 2nd grade teachers. We started this project to meet several goals/standards that included learning around narrative writing, text and illustrations working together, using draw tools, finding and saving documents, creating ebooks, dialogue and talking bubbles, and more.

We used Pixie and Comic Life to create the ebooks. Comic Life has been a popular piece of software but we noticed students not really knowing what to do with it. The photos available didn't always make for the best stories. And they had no idea how to use a draw tool to create comics. In reading, I noticed that our younger students focused more on individual frames in their reading of graphic novels, than in the story as a whole. Understanding that graphica was just one more way to tell a story was key goal for us. It was a long unit of study as the students only worked on the projects during art and library class. As with our 3rd grade book trailer unit, we immersed ourselves in comics and made decisions about how our writing would go.

Challenges:

About mid-way through our study, students were noticing the various sizes and shapes of the frames in comics. We talked about how many shapes and sizes they could find and talked about why each was different. EVERY SINGLE child believed that the authors of comic books merely filled out the template they were given. They knew Comic Life well and just assumed that comic book writers were given a template and filled it in. They had no idea that the comic book creator was the one who decided on the size and shape of the frames and how critical that decision is to the piece as a whole. I was a little bit alarmed. As much as I love the tools that make digital writing more accessible, I also saw the limitations. The messages my students were getting from this piece of software, were that the software was in charge of their decisions as writers. I had to rework the unit so that students understood the decisions authors made when it came to frames, and more.

Another challenge that we faced was that, as teachers, we realized that we got caught up in technology troubleshooting. This was a huge project and there was always some issue that required a computer restart, help with a password, an undo, etc. Our kids are great at problem solving and collaborating but there were many times when kids needed our assistance. This seemed okay at the time--kids were learning important technology skills as we worked with them. But what we realized was that we had very little time to conference with the kids about their actual writing or their process. Our work with them focused on the technology We had worked hard on the writing before they got to the computers, but many kids missed out on the in-the-midst conferences that they needed because we were caught up in troubleshooting.

We worried about publishing. Our plan was to publish the ebooks on a internal class site. Putting work on the Internet is a little more stressful. Published pieces have always forced teachers to make decisions about what is acceptable to "publish". But it seems to be even more difficult when we are not merely hanging writing in the hallway or hosting an author event with student writing.

Reflection

We stepped back and thought back to all that we had wanted kids to learn and realized they learned SOOO many things that would take them forward as digital writers. No matter how their "product" turns out, every student learned to tell a narrative story using a draw program and in graphic novel form. In terms of technology, they learned to save and name documents, to use draw tools, to create text boxes, to use and manipulate templates, to export pieces, to change fonts, and more. In terms of writing, they learned to make decisions, to think about their audience, to connect words and visuals. They learned the difference between dialogue and narration. They learned how to revise when things weren't going as they had planned. They learned how to reread and rethink when something didn't make sense to their reader.

None of this is evident if you look only at the finished products but this learning--the learning that they will carry with them as writers--is far more important than what the product looks like. I have been visiting and revisiting the Video Game Design website that Kevin Hodgson created to make visible all of the learning that went on in his game design unit. This website is hugely powerful and important work. If we are to have successful writing workshops, it is critical for us to make the learning visible and capture what it is the students learn as writers--things they will carry with them no matter what it is they compose. I also think it is important for us as teachers as a reflection tool. We need to take the time and sit back and reflect on the learning that happens in a project like this--otherwise, we run the risk of focusing on the project and teaching the writing, not the writer.

Celebration

Some days, these comic ebooks take over the library. It seems there is always a computer open that's screen shows a product in the midst of a comic creation. A student who left a computer on, a child who popped in to work on something, etc. And guess what? Our biggest, most important goal--the one we forgot about throughout the project--has been achieved. Early on, we knew we needed good student-created mentors for our students. Pieces that students at our school created that would open up what was possible with the tools we had. As these open computers sit around the library or as I am finishing up moving a pdf to my flash drive as a new class comes in, someone notices the comic on the screen and someone says (almost every day)--"What is that? I want to do that." I can only imagine what will happen in the next few weeks as these comics are put online for the school community. So, we've met individual standards-based goals. But we've also met a schoolwide goal of creating a library of projects that our students can learn from. In-house mentor texts that can open up what is possible for all students. Every writer will grow a bit by seeing a few more things that are possible.

Teaching the writer, not the writing is key when it comes to any type of writing, especially digital writing. Some days I feel like I am back to my beginning years teaching in a writing workshop-reminding myself of what is important. I have to ask myself every single day-what I am doing to help this child become a better writer? What will he/she take with him no matter what he/she is composing in the future? What should I focus on now that will impact all future writing?

And I also have to ask myself, what am I doing to help this community of writers? How am I building our own library of mentor texts-pieces to learn from and to open possibilities for what is possible in our writing community?

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop: Creating My Own Book Trailer

2012-01-10T04:51:00.000-05:00

I was working with 3rd graders on creating their own book trailers. It was a long-term project and I was thrilled with the trailers I had found to study with children. This seemed perfect for this grade level as book response is a part of their writing curriculum.

I believe strongly in Study-Driven/Inquiry-Based writing instruction. I live by Katie Ray's quote from her book STUDY DRIVEN, which is one of the books that has most influenced my life as a writing teacher. She says, "In an inquiry stance, teachers help children explore different alternatives for how to write something, and then let them do what writers really have to do and make decisions about how their pieces will go." I have been working hard to transfer this understanding about the writing process to a workshop where digital pieces are being composed regularly. It is not as easy as I had imagined!

As I was inspired by all of the amazing conversations the kids were having about each of these trailers and what they envisioned for their own, I started to read Kelly Gallagher's new book WRITE LIKE THIS. Early in the book, he reminds us of the importance of writing the kinds of things we are asking our students to write. DUH! I knew this. I have kept a writer's notebook for years and believe strongly in this important piece to being a writing teacher. However, I had kind of forgotten to do that with the book trailers. I figured I had created videos and other similar products and I was constantly creating pieces digitally. But I realized that I HAD to create a book trailer. So, I got to work.

Here's the thing, by the time I had decided this, I had done a ton with the 3rd graders getting them ready for their own composing. We had studied 6-8 book trailers as a group. We looked at trailers where students spoke and used green screen and animation:

We looked at samples that had no spoken words but focused on visuals:

We looked at student-created videos as well as commercially published trailers. We studied several scripts of effective book trailers. (I had transcribed several so that we could look hard at the crafting of the script.) We looked at the first lines in the videos and which hooked us. I had typed up the first lines of some of the trailers we had enjoyed and we talked about how each was crafted:

Some Leads We Studied:

Caveman ABC

What do you get when you take an acorn…. Aabear……a caveman…and a dinosaur and put them all together in one book?

Shark Vs. Train

The great white shark…short tempered, single minded marauder of the watery deep.

The steam locomotive train…unstoppable, coal fueled, king of the rails.

We’re In a Book

Shhhh! Pssst! Piggie

Yes Gerald?

Piggie, I think someone is looking at us.

39 Clues

“Somebody’s Coming”

“Look at this”

A worldwide adventure, a family of rivals, a game of wit, a reward beyond measure…

Snakes

Snakes Snakes and even more snakes.

Dinotrain

All Aboard! All about the dinotrain. This books adventures begin right down the track.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

One bus. One Pigeon. One Rule.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

Everyone has a dream of something they would like to do. But have you ever heard of a pigeon who would like to drive a bus?

We had watched a few trailers looking at the variety of decisions each writer had made. We looked at the text decisions, visual decisions, and sound decisions. We talked off of a form like this that we used when watching a few of the videos.

We definitely knew the possibilities. I thought we were at the point that it would be no big deal for the kids to actually create a good book trailer.

So, then I jumped in. Before I asked the students to move forward in their work, I decided to create a trailer for Mo Willems' book, SHOULD I SHARE MY ICE CREAM. I love Mo Willems and I knew all the kids would know this book. So, thinking about the things we talked about, I created a plan, just as I had asked my students to do. I used Popplet on the iPad to think through the things I wanted to do in the script, with text, with sound and with visuals. This is when I realized that all of these conversations were wonderfully inspiring when I was thinking about what decisions other writers had made. I realized how very overwhelming it was to think through each one of these decisions myself, now that I knew what was possible. It was all too much to think about. But, I got to work.

I knew that I wanted to use Ice Cream Truck music. I knew that I wanted real photos of ice cream. I knew that the script would be behind these photos and I wouldn't be on screen. I knew that I wanted to mention other books in the series and have pictures of those.

All of the planning was pretty fun. But then I got to the actual creation and it got really, really hard. Getting my ideas to match my vision was not as easy as I thought it would be. I wrote the script and timed it. I found photos on flickr and on my own iPhoto account. Then I got started dropping it all into iMovie.

I dropped the ice cream truck photo, the other photos and the book photos. I read my script and realized I needed more photos. Then I began my search for ice cream truck music.

That's where things fell apart. It wasn't so easy to find this music, especially music that was available for use for a project like this. So, my husband and I became obsessed with finding good music. We finally discovered that "Do Your Ears Hang Low" is a popular ice cream truck song and available for free use. But we couldn't find a version that worked online. So, we tried a few things. We bought the piano app on the iPad and found simple sheet music online that we tried to play. We called my mother-in-law, a pianist in Toledo and her play it on her piano while we recorded it over the phone. We got caught up at the kitchen table for HOURS trying to get the music I was hoping for.

I worked so hard on the music that I didn't have time to actually finish the book trailer....

I ended up abandoning the project as a class expectation. I could not justify spending much more time on this project once I realized what was involved. The unit wasn't wasted--we had learned to be very critical readers of digital text. We had learned about the decisions digital composers make and the reasons that they made them. So, I showed some simple examples that were more book podcasts.I invited kids to finish who wanted to and I stepped back to reflect on what went wrong when it came to the writing.

What I Learned:
The most important thing that I learned was how important it is to go through the process of creating digital pieces before I even think about assigning them to students. With the experience behind me, I can better understand what kids will need, which mentors would be most helpful, the time the project will take and the learning that is necessary. Having assigned a book trailer before I had ever created one myself became a huge problem. Not only did I overwhelm the students with the trailers I shared, but I lost sight of the goals of the project. Looking back, had I planned the project after I had gone through the process myself, my teaching would have been far more effective.

I also learned how easy it is to get caught up in some little thing for hours. Not being able to find the music to fit my vision became my obsession. I could not move forward without the perfect music. All of a sudden, I understood those students who spend hours on garage band and create three seconds of music.

Deadlines matter. I dragged my book trailer creation out for days. As with any writing, a deadline would have forced me to just make a decision and get the work out there to an audience. Deadlines almost provide a sense of relief for some projects.

There were so many decisions, almost too many. The options I have as a composer of digital text is overwhelming. Whether we are creating blog posts, websites, podcasts or book trailers, the possibilities are endless. Knowing how to make digital writing authentic and doable for young children is currently a struggle for me.

I lost steam. I can't imagine what the third graders felt. One of the problems was that the work on this was done solely in the library. And working on something for 45 minutes every 4 days doesn't seem like the best way to attack digital composing. So, what place does digital creation have in the library when time with students and time planning with teachers is limited? What are the most important things for elementary students to learn and understand? Would this have been different in the classroom?

Questions that Came from My Experience?
What is worth the time? How much of the time spent was really worth it?
Was this doable for an 8th grader?
Did I give too many options?

I am struggling with what is doable at the elementary level. I clearly learned that I tried to pack too much into this project and I am not sure if the learning was worth the time. How do I keep writing authentic and teach students so that they grow as digital writers, but at the same time, make sure we are not spending hours and hours on deciding how to create the perfect Ice Cream Truck music?

I will never ask students to create a digital piece of writing without first going through the process myself. And I don't really want to do that in the midst of a project again. As a teacher of writing, I need to take full advantage of trying various types of digital writing just because....knowing that the learning I do in the process will make me a better teacher of writing. I have been learning a great deal from Kevin Hodgson over the years and his work with students. He seems to plan in a much more effective way than I have lately. And it is becoming clear to me that his commitment to his own digital creations allow him to do that.

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop: Reading Like a Writer

2012-01-09T05:36:00.002-05:00

(This post is part of a series on Mentor Text in the Digital Writing Workshop. Other participants include Katie Dicesare, Tony Keefer, Kevin Hodgson, Troy Hicks and Bill Bass. The post are being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.)

"Teachers must also ensure that children have access to reading materials that are relevant to the kind of writer they are interested in becoming at a particular moment. Teachers must recruit the authors who will become the children's unwitting collaborators."
Frank Smith, Joining the Literacy Club

Our students naturally mentor themselves to texts that matter to them. Kids are good at writing picture books because they have often been immersed in narrative for years before they write one of their own. Every day in the library, someone writes a new installment of the Pigeon books by Mo Willems. We have The Pigeon Gets a Christmas Tree, Don't Let the Pigeon Get Away and The Pigeon Gets a Wife in process right now. Mo Willems makes it easy for kids to grow as writers after they've been immersed-as readers-with his books. Lately, I have been thinking about what it means to read like a writer when the idea of both reading and writing are constantly expanding.

A few years ago, many of my students were learning Hannah Montana's Hoedown Throwdown dance from this video. Kids would practice the dance at recess and the clip inspired many to start their own Youtube channels teaching other dances they knew. They looked at this and thought, "I could do this!"

And we are seeing more and more things like Toaster Pop, an iPod app/game created by a first grader.

With apps like the Toaster Pop, we can read the story and easily identify the mentors this child used and the way in which he realized, "Hey, I could do that." Our kids are natural creators--they easily and naturally create things that they see in the real world.

But my students have taught me that the experiences they have with digital texts at home are mostly limited to viewing for sheer entertainment. They have said, "We are good at watching videos for entertainment, but not to get information or learn." Much of their viewing is based on videos or shows like iCarly. I LOVE iCarly and her web show makes me laugh. But I notice that when kids try to create narrative or tell stories digitally, they fall back on the kinds of things they've seen. Like this popular iCarly clip.

Funny, right? I can already think of other episodes I would love to create and this video has sparked ideas of videos that would be fun to create for friends' birthdays or other holidays. As a teacher, I need to know what my kids spend their time viewing so that I can build on and teach from that. But the types of things kids are viewing are not necessarily the things that will help them learn to grow as writers. So, I also need to find mentors that better match what I am hoping they will create. And as Kevin Hodgson mentioned in his post yesterday, "...with some exceptions, there is still a decided lack of digital examples of composition with technology that we can turn to as educators and provide as samples for our students."

I am a person who is is constantly mentoring myself to experts. The internet has been so instrumental in my learning. As a beginning blogger, I evolved as a writer because I read other blogs and got to know the genre and the culture of bloggers. When I started making cake pops and more fancy cupcakes, I followed blogs that shared the process of decorating and focused on those that could move me forward. And as I start toward a fitness goal of running, I look to others who have very recently started the process so that I learn from their experiences.

But in order to do that, I had to be comfortable on the web and with digital texts without an immediate need to learn something specific. It is the same with our students. If we want them to be composers of quality digital pieces, they need to be immersed in these types of things as readers. As Troy Hicks mentioned in his post on Friday, "It’s the difference between handing them a flip camera and giving them an hour to pull something together as compared to spending time talking about the craft of digital writing."

If we want students to create more sophisticated pieces, or use digital tools for authentic purposes, we need to make sure that we don't just pull those samples out quickly during writing workshop time--to study for a day or two. Instead, we need to think about how digital texts fit into all of the pieces of our literacy workshops. We need to use pieces of quality media throughout the day and rethink the ways we integrate all forms of reading into our day.

I have realized lately how much is out there for our students to learn from. There are many non-quality digital resources out there, but there are also many amazing sites for students. Some of my favorites are Wonderopolis, Pebble Go, Meet Me at the Corner, DOGONews, ToonBookReader and Tumblebooks. But I am also realizing that if we do not value al types of media at school, all day, every day, we cannot expect our students

Read Aloud
Do I choose to read aloud only texts from traditional books or do I share digital texts, audio books, blogs, etc. during read aloud?
Do we use web resources such as author websites and book trailers to help us dig deeper into the book we are reading?
Do I read aloud from websites and blogs?

Independent Reading
Do we use online resources for book previewing and book selection?
Do I limit students' independent reading to traditional books or do they have a variety of options for their reading time? Do I place equal value on reading on e-readers, reading websites, etc. as I do on reading novels?
Do I help my students use online tools to support their lives as readers? Do I value annotation tools, bookmarking tools, RSS feeds, etc. as part of my readers lives? Do I model these tools in minilessons?

Reading and Writing Minilessons
Do I use digital texts or pieces when teaching minilessons?
Do I rely completely on traditional text or do I use film clips, blog entries, podcasts, etc. when planning minilessons?
Do I share process in my minilessons? Do I tend to share process only as it relates to creating text-based pieces?
Do I share my own writing process? Composing in several types of media?

Shared Reading
Have I reflected on the resources I rely on for Shared Reading?
Do I include web reading and viewing when thinking about Shared Reading experiences?
How can I include a variety of texts for students to process through together?

Content Reading
Have I found sources for content reading that go beyond textbooks and traditional text?
Do I rely on newspapers for talk around current events or do I tend to focus more on sites like DOGONews and other sites that combine text and video?
How am I supporting the importance of visual information in the content areas?

I spend a great deal of time reading books so that I have the right book to share in a minilesson or reading conference. But I am working to rethink the messages I give to students as both readers and writers when I rely almost exclusively on more traditional texts for much of the day. I've been inspired by teachers like Andrea Smith who incorporates Wonderopolis into her Morning Meeting. I also learn tons from Katie DiCesare who has been thinking about this idea for some time. For me, it is about honestly reflecting on the types of "texts" I value all day, every day. And to expand the ways I use digital texts throughout the day. I know that if I want my students to read like writers, they need to be readers of digital text first. For my students to become creators of sophisticated digital texts, I believe that they need to be immersed in a variety of quality multi-media all day, every day.

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop: Writer as Decision-Maker

2012-01-08T05:54:00.000-05:00

"This is no recipe book: I have tried not to be formulaic. Rather, I want to suggest the richness of the options, the myriad of possibilities open to the writer at any given moment."

Ralph Fletcher, What a Writer Needs, 1995, p. 2

When I think about how the possibilities for writing has expanded for our students, these are the two video clips I keep going back to.

I discovered this "Saved by the Bell" Public Service Announcement years ago and have watched it numerous times.

Don't do drugs - saved by the bell from Matthew Stockmeyer on Vimeo.

It seems somewhat obvious that this was a clip scripted and produced by adults--adults who worked at a television studio. It also is interesting that the "adult' has to come in to have the final word. If I were to imagine kids watching this on t.v. I assumed not many kids watched it and thought, "Hey, I'd like to make something like that." With the technology available then, it took the big television studios, etc. to get word out about a topic quickly. It took lots of money and lots of adult organization.

Compare that to this Public Service Announcement done a few years ago by Noah Gray, a high school student:

I found this clip almost 3 years ago and I have watched it over and over again. The power of this message is amazing. From my understanding, Noah Gray was a high school student when he created this video. It was a message he cared about and the equipment necessary was easy to use. The message hit the internet and spread. You can find connected videos inspired by this video all over Youtube. It is clear that kids saw this and thought, "I can do that."

In my thinking about mentor texts, we have to keep in mind that writing has to be real and it has to have a real audience. We also have to remember that writers are ultimately decision-makers.

I've used this clip with students and adults to really begin to think about all of the decisions available to writers today. Noah Gray made so many decisions as a writer in this very short, powerful clip. He made decisions about the script, the sound and the visuals. Noah decided where to cut each person's lines and where to start the next person. He decided on the message. Here are some other decisions he made:

black and white video/no color
head shots only/not full body-same shot for each participant
casual dress for people speaking
short clips of talk by participants
boys and girls all look to be in teen years
participants showed up more than once
question as a lead into the video/script
9 people total
ending united with 9 kids shown in grid
white, plain background
no music/background sound
30 seconds long

Each of these (and many other) decisions were made for a reason. The reasons had to do with the message that Noah wanted his viewers to take away. Instead of just crafting words, as writers have done in the past, digital writers make decisions about words, sound, visuals and more.

Mentor texts in our classrooms could open up students' possibilities to these decisions-the options they have as writers. They can see that they are the decision makers and that multi-media requires creators of digital text to make many decisions so that their messages are clear and powerful. Rather than be formulaic, I want my students' mentors to be pieces that open up what is possible in their own work.

Poetry Friday -- You Shall

2012-01-06T06:04:00.000-05:00

This is what you shall do

by Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

* * * * * *

My own personal "you shall"s for the new year are already stumbling. I think Whitman had the right idea with his -- kind of a "shoot for the moon, and if you miss at least you'll hit the stars" sort of philosophy.

Maybe instead of focusing so much on my "do this every day, do one of those every week" self-commandments, I need to have a better vision of the person I think I'll be if I hold myself to them, in all their minutia. I need to ask myself, "Is this what I need to do to "be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in words"? "

If your New Year's "you shall"s are still on track, good for you! If yours are also already stumbling, I give you permission to have a do-over or a restart (as many times as you need it in the next 51 weeks).

JoAnn has the Poetry Friday roundup today at Teaching Authors.

Book Lists and Comment Challenge

2012-01-05T05:00:00.011-05:00

The Cybils Finalists have been posted -- five great books in each of eleven categories/genres.

Jules has done an amazing 2011 blog retrospective over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. It's a visual feast.

Sylvia Vardell shares her top 20 children's poetry books from 2011 at Poetry For Children.

And the motherlode of all lists: Susan's 2011 Best Children's Books: A List of Lists and Awards at Chicken Spaghetti.

* * * * * *

On another note, there's been lots of talk here at A Year of Reading and around the Kidlitosphere about reading goals. How about we all make it a goal to reading more blogs? And comment.

Mother Reader and Lee Wind have just the thing for us. For the next three weeks, they are running a comment challenge. Five comments on book blogs every day for 21 days. Get out of your rut and get (back) in the habit. Stop letting blog posts pile up in your reader until you finally just click "mark all read" on every blog and start over fresh...only to let it happen again in another couple of weeks. (Not that I know about that first hand or anything...)

Sign up for the comment challenge HERE.

2011: A Year of 300+ Books For Me, Too

2012-01-04T05:00:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the high praise in your Reading Year In Review post yesterday, Franki! You were ALWAYS reading more than you gave yourself credit for -- you just needed the perfect tool to keep track, and Goodreads is that tool.

For me, the trusty blank book was always my perfect tool. I have a whole shelf of book-books. Combined, they list every book I've read (minus the picture books) since 1987.

This year, when Goodreads unveiled the barcode scanner in the iPhone app, I began logging EVERY book I read in Goodreads. I still kept my book-book for novels (kid and adult) and for most of this year I wrote down a key quote for each book. (Other years, I've captured the first line or I've written a short summary.)

So I read more than 300 books this year, but in the end, I'm not at all satisfied with myself as a reader in 2011. My desires for my reading far outstrip the reality of what I know I can accomplish. I'd love to do the #nerdbery or #nerdcott challenges, but I know that wanting to do either one would never make them actually happen. Heck, I can't even do the #bookaday challenges with any kind of honesty and integrity! I think part of my problem is that when I hear about everything everyone else is reading, I want to read all those books and do all those challenges, too. It's a keeping up with the Joneses syndrome, but it's also about wanting to maintain my standing in the Nerdy Book Club, and there's a little bit of book gluttony thrown in. (All right, more than a little bit...)

Well, I've got a solution for this problem: I'm going to give myself permission to admire everyone else's goals and challenges...and I'm going to carry on with my own reading.

I've upped my personal goal to 92 children's and YA novels (I read 85 last year, so 92's not a huge stretch) and 20 adult books (I only read 15 last year, so 20 will be a push for me). 92+20 will give me 112 books in 2012 for the Centurions group on FaceBook. I'll keep track of picture books again this year just for the fun of seeing how high I can run my numbers up, but they won't really count for me.

Enough with the blathering about goals. Here's a sampling of some of my 5 Star books from 2011:

POETRY

Lemonade: And Other Poems Squeezed From A Single Word by Bob Raczka
BookSpeak!: Poems About Books by Laura Purdie Salas

ABC

E-Mergency by Tom Lichtneheld

PICTURE BOOKS

Stuck by Oliver Jeffers
I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

NONFICTION

Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet
All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon

MIDDLE GRADE

Clementine and the Family Meeting by Sara Pennypacker
The Friendship Doll by Kirby Larson

YA GRAPHIC NOVEL

Level Up by Gene Yang
Sita's Ramayana by Samhita Arni

ADULT

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

(Ann, Anna and Annie -- quite a trio!)

2011: A Year of 305 Books

2012-01-03T04:18:00.002-05:00

Mary Lee has always been my reading idol. We were in a book club together 20+ years ago and I was always amazed at how much she read. She was the one who encouraged me to keep a log of my reading. Blogging with her for the past 6 years has made me realize how lucky I am to have friends who read and how important that is to my reading life.

This year, it's not so much the books I read, but more the habits I started:

As I look at my 2011 reading, Goodreads changed my life. I had used it a bit before 2010, but decided to be diligent about tracking my reading carefully in 2011. Really, I had no idea how I kept track before. Goodreads helps me track, reflect, find book to recommend, connect with friends, choose books, etc. It has helped me in my own reading but has also helped me become a better resource for students and teachers looking for books. LOVE IT! I also set a reading challenge for myself on Goodreads and met it. I was part of a Mock Newbery group and a few others that kept me up to date on the books getting the most buzz. And it was so fun to hear everyone's opinions as we read monthly books.

I also found that groups/events like Titletalk, The Nerdy Book Club and the Facebook Centurions of 2011 group were important for me as I read throughout the year. They each provided a different type of support. And I read so many amazing books because of these networks.

And, thanks to Kevin Hodsgon's recent post reflecting on his 2011 reading, I realized that Goodreads will let me view fun stats about my year of reading. How fun is this!

Here are some reading highlights. Fifty or so books I LOVED in 2011.
January-40 books
Kakapo Rescue-NONFICTION
Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood-MIDDLE GRADE

February-13 books
How I, Nicky Flynn, Get a Life (and a Dog) by Art Corriveau-MIDDLE GRADE
Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt-MIDDLE GRADE

March-24 books
Mother Goose Picture Puzzles by Will Hillenbrand-PICTURE BOOK/POETRY
Can We Save the Tiger? by Martin Jenkins-NONFICTION
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai-MIDDLE GRADE
Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems by Kristine O'Donnell George-POETRY

April-27 books
Chime by Franny Billingsley-YOUNG ADULT
Bigger Than a Breadbox by Laurel Snyder-MIDDLE GRADE
Little Chicken's Big Day by Katie Davis and Jerry Davis-PICTURE BOOK
Also Known as Rowan Pohi by Ralph Fletcher-YOUNG ADULT

May-22 books
The Absolute Value of Mike by Kathryn Erskine-YOUNG ADULT
The Pull of Gravity by Gae Polisner-YOUNG ADULT
A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka-WORDLESS PICTURE BOOK
Babymouse Mad Scientist and Squish by Jennifer Holm and Matthew Holm-GRAPHIC NOVEL
Real Revision by Kate Messner-PROFESSIONAL BOOK

June-43 books
Time to Eat/Time to Sleep by Steve Jenkins-NONFICTION
Queen of the Falls by Chris Van Allsburg-PICTURE BOOK BIOGRAPHY
Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu-MIDDLE GRADE
The Friendship Doll by Kirby Larson-MIDDLE GRADE
Big Brothers Don't Take Naps by Louise Borden-PICTURE BOOK
Hidden by Helen Frost-MIDDLE GRADE
Should I Share My Ice Cream by Mo Willems-PICTURE BOOK
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick-MIDDLE GRADE
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett-ADULT NOVEL

July-28 books
Toys Come Home by Emily Jenkins-EARLY CHAPTER BOOK
Latasha and the Red Tornado by Michael Scotto-MIDDLE GRADE
Shine by Lauren Myracle-YOUNG ADULT
A Million Miles from Boston by Karen Day-MIDDLE GRADE

August-37 books
The One and Only Stuey Lewis by Jane Schoenberg-EARLY CHAPTER BOOK
Press Here by Herve Tullet-PICTURE BOOK
Leisl and Po by Lauren Olive-MIDDLE GRADE
Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George-MIDDLE GRADE
The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray-PICTURE BOOK

September-16 books
The Other Wes More: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore-ADULT NONFICTION
Waiting for Magic by Patricia MacLachlan-EARLY CHAPTER BOOK/MIDDLE GRADE
Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming-NONFICTION
Otis and the Tornado by Loren Long-PICTURE BOOK
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness-YOUNG ADULT
You Will be My Friend by Peter Brown-PICTURE BOOK

October-12 Books
Happy Pig Day! by Mo Willems-PICTURE BOOK
I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen-PICTURE BOOK

November-15 books
Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet-PICTURE BOOK BIOGRAPHY
The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? by Mo Willems-PICTURE BOOK (2012)
The Unwanteds by Lisa McMann-MIDDLE GRADE
BookSpeak! by Laura Purdie Salas-POETRY
The Trouble With May Amelia by Jennifer Holm-MIDDLE GRADE
Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri-MIDDLE GRADE
The Great Wall of Lucy Wu by Wendy Wan-Long Shang-MIDDLE GRADE

December-28 books

Sparrow Road by Sheila O'Connor-MIDDLE GRADE

The Aviary by Kathleen O'Dell-MIDDLE GRADE

Sir Gawain the True by Gerald Morris-EARLY CHAPTER/MIDDLE GRADE

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate-MIDDLE GRADE (2012)

Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner-MIDDLE GRADE (2012)

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr-YOUNG ADULT

Holiday Book-A-Day

2012-01-02T05:40:00.004-05:00

Really, I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed participating in Holiday Book-A-Day. Reading Donalyn Miller's idea on her blog last spring, I participated in #bookaday Summer. It was such a great way to catch up on my stack of books! I felt the same way about the holidays. We had a 12 day break, but I started early. My goal was to read 18 total books. Because holidays are busy, I knew I wouldn't be able to read a book every day, so I set a goal for an average of a book per day and a total of 18. I was smart about giving myself time to catch up on those shorter books that I hadn't gotten to yet! It was a great vacation filled with new books, many of which I am excited to share with my students. Below is the list of books I read along with some highlights.

Picture Books
I read several picture books. Most of my picks were books that I have been wanting to read before the Caldecott is announced in January.

BONE DOG by Eric Rohmann and THE HOUSE THAT BABA BUILT by Ed Youngare two I had wanted to read because they are both on several Mock Caldecott lists.

**I forget how I discovered FRENCH DUCKS IN VENICE by Garrett Freymann-Weyr but I loved it. It is a longer picture book that has a fairy-tale feel. It is a sweet book with a great message about loss, friendship and healing.

Looking to add new picture book biographies, I read HERE COME THE GIRL SCOUTS by Shana Corey about the woman who created the Girl Scouts. An interesting look at something I hadn't thought much about.

I heard Joyce Sidman speak at the CLA Breakfast at NCTE in November and finally had time to read SWIRL BY SWIRL. This is a fascinating picture book about spirals in nature. Her poetic language makes it pretty unique.

*THE PRINCESS AND THE PIG by Jonathan Emmett is one that I keep hearing about. It is a fun twist on princess stories and will make a fun read aloud for all ages.

**THE SCAR by Charlotte Moundlic is a story of grief. A child has lost his mother to a long-term illness. This book is brilliant. I am not sure how to share this one or whether to share this one with young children but it is an important one to have on my shelf. It is one of the most well-done books on death that I've read for children.

**Thanks to Colby Sharp, I discovered PAUL THURLBY'S ALPHABET by Paul Thurlby. This is a simple picture book--one letter and word per spread. The illustrations are quite fun and kids will have a great time with this one! One of my new favorite alphabet books!

Graphic Novels
I also read 3 very different graphic novels that I've had on my stack. I am not a huge graphic novel reader so I only read the best-reviewed out there. I want to keep up but they are not easy reads for me. Loved these three!
AROUND THE WORLD by Matt Phelan is a nonfiction GN and tells three stories of people who traveled around the world.

*A VERY BABYMOUSE CHRISTMAS was a fun one to read on Christmas Eve! A great holiday treat. I can never get enough of Babymouse!

I'm so glad I made time to read ANYA'S GHOST by Vera Brosgol. A unique YA graphic novel-perfect for middle school.

Middle Grade Novels
My goal was to stick with 2011 Middle Grade Novels until I caught up on my Newbery reading, but I could not resist reading a few 2012 ARCs and they were amazing.
*THE AVIARY by Kathleen O'Dell was one that I loved, even though I didn't expect to. It is a unique story with characters who I fell in love with. Definitely not one I would have picked up had it not been on the Anderson's Book Shop Mock Newbery list.

THE APOTHECARY by Maile Meloy is an interesting fantasy that is showing up on lots of 2011 lists. I think there will be a lot in this one that appeals to 4-6th graders who enjoy fantasy and magic.

*THE ADVENTURES OF SIR GAWAIN THE TRUE was on Mr. Schu's list of top books of 2011. I had missed it completely and am so glad to have discovered this series. It is a fun series for fantasy readers and for kids semi-new to chapter books. I loved the humor in this one and found myself laughing out loud in several spots.

I loved both 2012 books that I read. Both are must-reads in my opinion. (I would recommend preordering both so you don't forget!)

***THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN by Katherine Applegate. This is one I am so excited to share with my students. A great animal story based on a true story of people standing up for the rights of animals. Love love love everything about this book! (more in this previous post)

***EYE OF THE STORM by Kate Messner is a great sci-fi adventure. It is hard to find great science fiction for this age so this is a great addition. I could not put this one down. I loved the plot and the characters! I loved the whole premise of this book--it was complex in the ideas and also fun to read because of the way Kate wrote it up.

I also read A YEAR WITHOUT AUTUMN by Liz Kessler. This was a quick read and one I think middle grade readers will enjoy. There is a good mix of fun and depth to the story. Fans of 11 BIRTHDAYS by Wendy Mass and fans of THE MAGIC HALF by Annie Barrows will like this one.

Young Adult
I haven't read much by James Howe in a while and I was so happy to have found ADDIE ON THE INSIDE, a younger YA novel, probably perfect for middle school students. I loved Addie and everything about her. The real life middle school struggles were handled well and I can imagine this will be an important book for so many kids. Hoping to read the rest in this series soon. (This was also written in verse which makes me love it even more:-)

*****HOW TO SAVE A LIFE by Sara Zarr may be my favorite YA read of the year. I don't want to say much about it but I remember Paul Hankins mentioning it early in the year. Definitely a must-read in my opinion. This one will live with me for a long time.

Adult
I finally finished WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen. It wasn't a favorite but I think that's because I dragged it out for so long. I definitely need to give myself more time to read adult fiction as I didn't do that much this year.

Short Stories
I picked up THE TINY BOOK OF TINY STORIES by Joseph Gordon-Levitt because I thought it would be a handy book to use in Writing Workshops. I love the idea of a story being told in a few words and with twitter and texting, I thought some of these pieces would be fun to study with kids.

I'm already looking forward to Summer Book-A-Day!

December Mosaic

2012-01-01T14:00:00.000-05:00

Hmm...every single row of this month's mosaic features food.
No wonder I'll be back to the health club with a renewed dedication beginning...tomorrow.

A Year of Reading x 6

2012-01-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is our blogiversary.

We've been at this for six years.

In the past, we've done some pretty amazing blogiversary posts: 2007, 2008 2008 2008 2008, 2009 2009 2009, 2010, 2011.

This year, we almost forgot to celebrate.

Franki's getting ready for the Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop series (with Bill Bass, Katie DiCesare, Troy Hicks, Kevin Hodgson, and Tony Keefer), Mary Lee's getting ready to start round two Cybils Poetry judging (with Julie Larios, Diane Mayr, Laura Purdie Salas, and Andi Sibley), and both Franki and Mary Lee have had recent guest posts at the Nerdy Book Club blog.

Read that last sentence one more time.

There you have it, in a nutshell, in a single Polaroid of words, where we are in the evolution of this perpetual Year of Reading: we have branched out in different directions, and yet we both remain united in our passion for children's books and reading and teaching.

The Nerdy Book Club: New Year's Resolutions

2011-12-31T08:20:00.000-05:00

This post is cross-posted on The Nerdy Book Club's site. If you have not visited this wonderful community of readers, it is a must follow site!

Flickr by Sean Lloyd http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanlloyd/33762237/

(New Year’s Eve seems a perfect time to think about the goals we have for the year ahead. To think about where we want to grow and what we need to do to get there. In my usual tradition, my main goals each year have to do with fitness and exercise…)

So, I am not a runner. This is not a surprise to anyone who knows me. But the thing is, I have been fascinated for years by runners, and I have toyed with becoming one. I actually have all of the knowledge necessary to become a runner. I have read many, many books about running. I subscribed to the print version of Runner's World for years, and I currently get their daily emails. I subscribe to several blogs on running and follow some of the running news. I buy shoes at running stores and sometimes just hang out there. I listen closely when my running friends are talking about training for races, running injuries, etc. I have just never gotten around to actually…running.

A few weeks ago, I was with a group of friends. One was getting ready to run his first half-marathon. He was talking about the gel packets he would have with him to keep up his energy. I knew all about these and was able to explain them to our non-runner friends. They were amazed that I (a non-runner) understood about race food.

A week later, I was in a conversation with a different group of friends who had run the Chicago Marathon. They were talking about women in running skirts and I had remembered reading all about those on ANOTHER MOTHER RUNNER blog, a blog I read regularly since reading their book, RUN LIKE A MOTHER. On their blog, I learned that running skirts are all the rage. Women runners either hate them or love them. No happy medium. In the midst of this conversation with my runner friends, I wanted to jump in with some thoughts I had about running skirts. But then I remembered that I was not a runner and I did not have the credibility to talk about running skirts with real runners.

I have been in several conversations lately that have reminded me how very much I know about running. I sometimes actually “know” more about running than my running friends. These are conversations that I am not quite comfortable participating in because I am not a runner. I am not part of the club. I just watch from the sidelines.

No matter how much knowledge I have, I cannot call myself a runner. Running is not part of my life. I could probably not even run to the mailbox and back (and my driveway is not very long.) But here is the thing that I can't stop thinking about: I am certain I could pass a test on running. I am certain that I could probably pass a test at a higher level than most of my runner friends could. I have a lot of knowledge and understanding about running and feel confident about doing well on a test about running.

I keep thinking about this and acknowledging the fact that knowing a lot about running is not the same as running. This knowledge might end up becoming important if I ever become a runner and it does help me in some conversations. But what good does that do me, really? When I don’t actually run? When I am not part of the club?

How different this is compared to my life as a reader. Even though I attained a nearly perfect score on Tony Keefer’s quiz, “You Might be a Nerdy Book Clubber if…” , I don’t need anyone to tell me I am a part of the Nerdy Book Club. I don’t worry that some members read more than I do or that some members read faster than I do. I don’t worry about joining conversations that I have no business participating in. Even weeks when I can’t fit in a book, I know I am a reader. Reading is a huge part of my life and I don’t feel the need to prove that to anyone.

One of my favorite things about my job as a school librarian is that kids stop me in the hall constantly, mentioning a book they finished or one they want to read. They tell me the page number they are on or an author they’ve discovered. Sometimes I wonder if reading is the only thing they think they can talk to me about. Then I realize that it is at those times that they see me as a fellow club member; that they know I will understand their need to share their reading lives.

But I also see kids trying to get into the club. Standing on the edges of these conversations. Checking books back into the library with a bookmark about 1/3 of the way through, never having been finished. These kids seem to get excited when someone mentions an author they know. But they don’t feel confident joining the conversations. They don’t see themselves as readers.

This year, I’ve bumped into lots of past students – students I taught in 4^th and 5^th grades who have recently graduated. It is so fun to see what they ended up doing, which passions they discovered. They tend to tell me all of that, and then often mention what/if they are reading. They know I’ll wonder and that no matter which career path they’ve chosen to follow, that I still hope they are lifelong members of the Nerdy Book Club. I like to believe that I was one of the people who first invited them to be part of this club.

Each of us was invited into the club by someone who wanted us to be part of the fun. We saw something that we wanted to be a part of and there were lots of people in our lives who made joining the Nerdy Book Club possible. As a teacher, I know this takes commitment and hard work. I know it means giving kids great books, time to read, a reading community to be a part of, and instruction that moves them forward as readers.

So in 2012 I have two goals. I am going to be very deliberate in helping every child become part of the Nerdy Book Club. I am going to watch carefully to see which students feel confidently part of this club and which are standing along the sidelines wishing to be part of it all. I’m going to try to give them the support they need to become lifelong members.

And, of course, in 2012….I am going to actually run.

Poetry Friday -- Presidential Edition

2011-12-30T07:48:00.001-05:00

The President's Stuck in the Bathtub: Poems about the Presidents
by Susan Katz
illustrated by Robert Neubecker
Clarion Books, on shelves February 8, 2012
review copy provided by the publisher

Since 2012 will be a presidential election year, it seems appropriate to start brushing up on our presidential facts and trivia sooner, rather than later.

In this book, every president gets a poem based on sometimes a little-known and sometimes a well-known fact about his presidency. The fact is elaborated briefly at the bottom of the page. There is more information about each president in the back of the book, but it is as bite-sized and kid-friendly as each president's page -- you get dates of the term(s) served, birth/death dates, a quote, the president's nickname, and that president's "first."

I love the poems in this book. Here's an example that highlights one of the most infamous of the eight Ohio Presidents:

The Long and Short of It
(William Henry Harrison, 1841)

Without a hat or gloves or overcoat,
William Henry Harrison stood in driving rain
on the Capitol's east steps to declaim to a crowd
the longest, most meandering inaugural address
of any president in history, 3800 words or so,
that took almost two hours to deliver. That was long.

Harrison
was only
president
one month.

That
was
short.

William Henry Harrison's election campaign was longer than his presidency. He caught a cold at his inauguration and a month later died of pneumonia.

© Susan Katz, 2012

So, yes, I love the poems, but I also love how the facts at the bottom of each page elaborate or illuminate the poem in some way.

And if there isn't already enough to love about this book, I can't wait to read through the presidential notes and quotes with my students to give them an interesting snapshot history of the United States. Here are a few examples that stopped me in my tracks and made me think:

We were 8 presidents in before we had the first president born an American citizen. (Martin Van Buren)
Jimmy Carter, president number 39, was the first president born in a hospital. (how could that BE?)
It took 16 presidents before we had one who had been born outside the original thirteen colonies. (Abe Lincoln)
And president #34, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was the first president of all fifty states.

Julie Larios has the Poetry Friday roundup today at The Drift Record. Seems she has politics on her mind, too!

Alphabet Fun

2011-12-29T07:40:00.000-05:00

Remember how much my students and I loved E-Mergency! by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer? (my review is here)

Well, I've got another pair of alphabet book that I'm betting stay off the shelf more than on, just like E-Mergency!.

A Call for a New Alphabet
by Jef Czekaj (Jef's website)
Charlesbridge, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

First sentence on the front flap: "X is tired of being at the back of every alphabet book." There's the "major conflict" in the story.

First sentence on the back flap: "Jef Czekaj has a BA in linguistics." That explains just about everything else.

Because X is tired of being at the back of the alphabet, and because he thinks more words should begin with him, X starts a campaign to change both the order of the letters in the alphabet, and their roles there.

The night before the big vote, X has some strange dreams that make clear to him the hard work of the other consonants in the alphabet. He turns to the vowels for an easier job, but find that they, of all the letters, best understand that the letters of the alphabet have to work together, rather than in competition. Each has an important job to do.

The illustrations are filled with all kinds of alphabetic sight-gags that will keep readers busy thinking about letters and words and the crazy English language.

Al Pha's Bet
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (Amy's website)
illustrated by Delphine Durand (Delphine's blog)
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Al, the guy who lived back in history "when all sorts of things were being invented. Like fire. The wheel. Shadows." decides that he wants to invent the order for the newly invented set of twenty-six letters. He bets himself that he can win the King's contest to organize the letters with the most beautiful arrangement.

Al has quite amusing (and incredibly LOGICAL) reasons for the order of the letters. When he presents his order to the king, "The king said it out loud. The king tried singing it. The king wanted to sing it again. He said to Al, 'This time, won't you sing with me?' " (Groan.)

You can guess by the title -- Al won the bet he made with himself. And that's how the twenty-six letters have come to be known as the Al Pha Bet. (Groan.)

It Happens All the Time in Books

2011-12-28T06:30:00.000-05:00

I love kids' books that incorporate kid-sized literary references! Here are two fairy tales that require the reader to remember other stories they've read in order to get the most out of the story at hand:

The Princess and the Pig
by Jonathan Emmett
illustrated by Poly Bernatene
Walker & Company, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

A poor farmer's tiny pig and a baby princess switch places (if by "switch places" you mean one gets dropped from a balcony into a cart of hay and the other gets sproinged from the cart of hay into the cradle on the balcony). "The king thought he knew what had happened. 'A bad fairy has done this,' he explained. 'The fairy wasn't invited to the princess's christening, so she's turned the baby into a piglet to get her revenge. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time in books.' " (He's holding a copy of Sleeping Beauty in the illustration just in case you don't get it...)

That refrain, "It's the sort of thing that happens all the time in books," occurs throughout the story as the pig grows up a princess and the princess grows up a farmer's daughter. There's a funny twist in the end that I won't spoil for you here!

Other reviews: Jen Robinson's Book Page, Fuse #8

Dog in Boots
by Greg Gormley
illustrated by Roberta Angaramo
Holiday House, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Dog gets the idea that he'd like some boots from the storybook in his lap, "...a brilliant book, all about a cat who wore a pair of truly magnificent boots." You know the book, but in case you forgot, there it is in his lap.

Dog tries boots like Puss's, but they're not quite the right thing for digging in mud, so he takes them back to the shoe store. The accommodating shopkeeper trades the muddy boots for a pair of rain boots, and although those work fine for digging, they don't work too well when Dog goes for a swim. Over and over, Dog tries different footwear, only to discover in the end that his built-in footwear (his PAWS) are the best in every situation.

Tired and happy, Dog plops down in his big chair with another brilliant book. "This time it was about a girl who didn't wear any silly boots, but did wear... (text deliberately excluded...can you guess what she wore!?!?) 'Hmmm...,' thought Dog."

Other reviews: BooksForKidsBlog, A Random Hodgepodge of Bookishness

Pets

2011-12-27T06:19:00.000-05:00

Prudence Wants a Pet
by Cathleen Daly
illustrations by Stephen Michael King
Roaring Brook Press, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Prudence really really wants a pet, but her parents (seen only from the waste down in the illustrations) tell her they cost too much and make noise. So Prudence gets a pet branch. Branch is an outdoor pet who lives on the front porch and who has tripped Prudence's father eight times. "Dad broke Branch into little bits and put them on the woodpile." But Prudence is not daunted. She has a new pet. Its name is Twig. But Twig lives in her pocket and one day Twig runs away in the rinse cycle. Prudence tries one unique, inanimate pet after another. Her persistence finally gets her parents' attention -- just in time for her birthday.

Another review at Colby Sharp's blog sharpread.

Jane and Mizmow
by Matthew S. Armstrong
Harper, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

This is a different kind of pet book. Jane has a pet -- a monster she finds in a red cap at the base of a tree (what is it with red caps this year???). Jane and Mizmow are best friends until the day they argue over the red hat, warm from the dryer, and pull it into two parts. Then, just like the hat, the two friends are pulled apart. Luckily, they find a way to repair their friendship in the end.

If you've read any of the FLIGHT graphic novel short story anthologies edited by Kazu Kibuishi, that's where you've met these characters before. This book has a graphic novel feel to it, and would have worked perfectly well as a wordless picture book -- the captions seem like an afterthought.

Another review at Lori Calabrese Writes!

The Gift of Imagination

2011-12-26T08:22:00.000-05:00

Are there still children who love to play with the box as much as they love to play with the item that came in it? I hope so!

I know for sure that there are still children who will create a dollhouse and dolls from scraps of paper, because there's one in my fourth grade class.

Here are a few books for those who have the gift of imagination, or for those who would blow the dust off theirs and bring it out to play.

Sea of Dreams
by Dennis Nolan
Roaring Brook Press, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

In this gorgeous wordless picture book, a light comes on in the sandcastle the little girl leaves to the tides on the beach. As the waters swirl around the castle, a family escapes in a boat, survives a wild ride in a storm, and eventually washes up again to settle with a family of gulls. The girl comes back to the beach and makes another sandcastle, watched over by a gull. And as the sun sets and the tides wash around the castle, a light comes on in the tower window...

A Few Blocks
by Cybèle Young
Groundwood Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Ferdie doesn't want to go to school. "Not now," he said. "Maybe never..." But Ferdie's sister Viola knows how to get him moving. She holds out his coat and says, "Ferdie, look! I found your superfast cape! Quick -- put on your rocket-blaster books and we'll take off!" At this point, the black and white pencil sketch illustrations turn into full color 3-D paper sculptures...for as long as Ferdie's imagination stays engaged. Then Viola must come up with another imaginative scenario. In the end, Viola gets tired of having to be the one that provides the impetus to get Ferdie to school...but he comes through, and the two find the strength to walk the final block to school.

Inkblot: Drip, Splat, and Squish Your Way to Creativity
by Margaret Peot
Boyds Mills Press, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

With a very few supplies (don't forget the apron -- India ink is permanent) and the easy-to-follow directions in this book, you could be the first inkblot artist on your block!

Not only are the directions clear, but the chapters progress nicely from the most basic to the most complicated designs/techniques. Spattered throughout the text (yes, pun intended) are short bios of "Inkblot Heroes," including (you guessed it) Hermann Rorschach, and others such as Victor Hugo, Justinus Kerner and Stefan G. Bucher.

The chapter on the Inkblot Sketchbook journal is the one that tugs at my imagination most strongly. Surely I've got a spare blank book somewhere on my shelves...I've got the ink, and I've got an apron...

Poetry Friday -- Addendums

2011-12-23T06:42:00.001-05:00

#1 As I was working on my Poetry Friday post, the Gapingvoid daily cartoon from Hugh MacLeod pinged into my inbox. It seems to talk nicely to today's poem, but I didn't want to clutter up my post with any chatter.

#2 Here is the html code for the Poetry Friday roundups from January-June 2012. If it doesn't work for you to copy/paste from here, look for the code in a file on the Kidlitosphere Yahoo group. If all else fails, email me, and I'll send it to you directly! Thanks, everyone, for volunteering to host the roundup in the first half of next year!

<b>January</b></div>

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6 JoAnn at <a href="http://www.teachingauthors.com/">Teaching Authors</a></div>

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13 Tara at <a href="http://tmsteach.blogspot.com/">A Teaching Life</a></div>

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20 Elaine at <a href="http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/">Wild Rose Reader</a></div>

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27 Jim at <a href="http://heyjimhill.com/">Hey, Jim Hill!</a></div>

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<b>February</b></div>

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3 Karissa at <a href="http://theirischronicles.wordpress.com/">The Iris Chronicles</a></div>

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10 Laura at <a href="http://laurasalas.wordpress.com/">Writing the World for Kids</a></div>

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17 Myra at <a href="http://gatheringbooks.wordpress.com/">Gathering Books</a></div>

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24 Jone at <a href="http://maclibrary.wordpress.com/">Check it Out</a></div>

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<b>March</b></div>

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2 Dori at <a href="http://dorireads.blogspot.com/">Dori Reads</a></div>

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9 Myra at <a href="http://gatheringbooks.wordpress.com/">Gathering Books</a></div>

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16 Gregory K. at <a href="http://gottabook.blogspot.com/">GottaBook</a></div>

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23 Mary Lee at <a href="http://readingyear.blogspot.com/">A Year of Reading</a></div>

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30 Heidi at <a href="http://myjuicylittleuniverse.blogspot.com/">my juicy little universe</a></div>

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<b>April</b></div>

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6 Robyn at <a href="http://www.robynhoodblack.com/blog.htm">Read, Write Howl</a></div>

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13 Anastasia at <a href="http://asuen.wordpress.com/">Booktalking</a></div>

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20 Diane at <a href="http://randomnoodling.blogspot.com/">Random Noodling</a></div>

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27 Tabatha at <a href="http://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/">The Opposite of Indifference</a></div>

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4 Elaine at <a href="http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/">Wild Rose Reader</a></div>

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11 Irene at <a href="http://irenelatham.blogspot.com/">Live. Love. Explore!</a></div>

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18 Katya at <a href="http://www.katyaczaja.com/">Write. Sketch. Repeat.</a></div>

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25 Linda at <a href="http://teacherdance.blogspot.com/">TeacherDance</a></div>

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1 Carol at <a href="http://carolwscorner.blogspot.com/">Carol's Corner</a></div>

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8 Jama at <a href="http://jamarattigan.com/">Jama's Alphabet Soup</a></div>

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15 Mary Lee at <a href="http://readingyear.blogspot.com/">A Year of Reading</a></div>

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22 Amy at <a href="http://www.poemfarm.amylv.com/">The Poem Farm</a></div>

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29 Marjorie at <a href="http://www.papertigers.org/wordpress/">Paper Tigers</a></div>

Poetry Friday -- Less Can Be More

2011-12-23T06:17:00.003-05:00

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by EmreAyar

Crane

by David Yezzi

Paper creased is
with a touch
made less by half,
reduced as much

again by a second
fold—so the wish
to press our designs
can diminish

what we hold.
But by your hand’s
careful work,
I understand

how this unleaving
makes of what’s before
something finer
and finally more.

Any thoughts I might add here would subtract from the simple beauty of the poem. I'll leave you in the quiet to bring to and take away from this poem what you will. (This poem is posted in its entirety with the permission of the author, David Yezzi -- his website is here.)

The Poetry Friday round up today is at Dori Reads.

Nothing Like A Puffin

2011-12-22T05:00:00.001-05:00

Nothing Like A Puffin
by Sue Soltis
illustrated by Bob Kolar
Candlewick Press, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

This is a very fun book!

It starts off being a book about the things a puffin is NOT like: a ladder and a house. But then we come to the newspaper, and

"A newspaper, to be sure, is nothing like a puffin. A newspaper is shaped like a rectangle and made out of paper. A newspaper has pages. It's black and white. But wait -- a puffin is black and white, too! What are the chances?

A newspaper is something like a puffin, after all."

After the newspaper come things that a puffin is more and more like, until we get to a penguin, which is very much like a puffin...but not quite. In the end, "There's nothing like a puffin!"

The illustrations have their own story line, so the book begs to be read more than once to enjoy all the details.

And this is a book that also begs to be used as a mentor text. Wouldn't it be fun to pick an animal or an item, find a few things that it is NOTHING like, then several things that it is SORT OF like, and finally one thing it is A LOT alike, and write with the same pattern? Yes, I thought so. We'll be doing this in our writing workshop after the first of the year!

Time Machine

2011-12-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

The wrapper reads, "Everyone should have their own time machine," and on the spine it says, "The Busy Person's Journal."

The new volume that came in the mail today lies completely flat, while the one that holds bits and pieces of my life for this past 11 years bulges with movie tickets, quotes, newspaper articles (Lance Armstrong's wins, Oprah's book clubs) and columns (Joe Blundo, Craig Wilson)...and taped in are blue jay feathers and the piece of metal that punctured my car's tire. There are programs from lectures/performances by Amy Tan, Billy Collins, and David Sedaris. I marked the passing of my fourth grade teacher, the parents of several friends, Mike Hardin, Charlotte Huck, two good dogs, and The Series of Unfortunate Events.

Each day is afforded only four lines in which to capture a moment: the first time the trees fully shade our street in the spring, the first locusts that are heard in the summer, the first sighting of Orion on my early morning walks in the late summer, the beginning of school, the laryngitis season of October, the birthdays (both 40 and 50 are captured within the pages of this volume), dreams, surgeries (back and gallbladder), trips, presidential elections, snow days, full moons, Fairfield County Fairs, irritations, embarrassments, celebrations, landmarks, crocuses, dog walks, and both good and bad restaurant experiences.

Franki asked for the link to the company that sells these 10+ year journals, but I decided that I'd just get her her very own time machine. Merry Christmas, Franki!! Happy New Year again and again and again (x11). I hope you have as much fun capturing snapshots of your life as I've had capturing snapshots of mine.

Upcoming Blog Series: Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop

2011-12-20T05:23:00.002-05:00

Over the last few years, I have been doing a lot of thinking around the idea of Digital Mentor Texts. I believe strongly in Reading and Writing Workshops to move all students forward in literacy. With the definition of literacy expanding, I believe that much of what we know of the writing process remains the same. The power of mentor texts in writing first hit me when I read Ralph Fletcher's classic book WHAT A WRITER NEEDS. He gave us great pieces to learn from as writers and new ways to work with our student writers. Another book that had a huge impact on my personal thinking about mentor texts in the writing workshop was STUDY DRIVEN by Katie Wood Ray. In this important book, Katie reminds us that inquiry has to remain at the heart of writing workshop. She says, "In an inquiry stance, teachers help children explore different alternatives for how to write something, and then let them do what writers really have to do and make decisions about how their pieces will go." (p. 27) Ralph Fletcher, Kelly Gallagher (WRITE LIKE THIS) , Aimee Buckner (NOTEBOOK KNOW-HOW), Lucy Calkins (THE ART OF TEACHING WRITING) Katie Wood Ray, Lester Laminack, Shelley Harwayne (LASTING IMPRESSIONS), Ann Marie Corgill (OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE) and others have all given me so much to think about when it comes to the role of mentor texts in writing workshop.

As I've been playing around with digital writing in the library, I realize that the decisions our writers have to make are also expanding. There are so many ways to write and create and so many decisions that writers make when creating pieces of digital writing. There are several of us who have been informally talking about the idea of Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop and we thought we'd have a more focused online conversation around the topic--to try to synthesize our thinking.

Lots of us included our thinking in our sessions at NCTE 2011 but then followed up with conversations working through what the idea of mentor texts and inquiry-driven study mean for a digital writing workshop.

In the midst of one of our conversations, an idea formulated about focusing some writing around it. So, during the week of January 8, we'll each be posting on our own blogs about the thinking we've been doing, the things we've learned from students, and our own writing. We are hoping you'll join us by thinking along with us about this idea of mentor texts in the digital writing workshop. You can join in the conversation by reading our blogs, posting your own thinking to your blog, commenting, etc. We thought this would be a fun way to have a larger conversation about ideas we are thinking about. We love the idea of pulling lots of voices together around one idea.

Participating in the series will be:

Bill Bass, Technology Integration Specialist in Missouri and author of the upcoming ISTE book on Film Festivals tentatively titled, "Authentic Learning Through a Digital Lens" will be blogging on his blog MR. BASS ONLINE.

Katie DiCesare, a primary teacher in Dublin who runs an incredible writing workshop will be blogging at her blog, CREATIVE LITERACY.

Troy Hicks, author of THE DIGITAL WRITING WORKSHOP and BECAUSE DIGITAL WRITING MATTERS. He will be blogging at his site, DIGITAL WRITING, DIGITAL TEACHING.

Kevin Hodgson, 6th grade teacher and author of TEACHING THE NEW WRITING will be blogging at his blog Kevin's Meandering Mind.

Tony Keefer, an amazing 4th grade teacher in Dublin, Ohio will be blogging at at ATYCHIPHOBIA.

And I'll be blogging here.

Each of us has committed to posting several times during the week of January 8 around the topic of Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. I am hoping to revisit some of those staple professional books I mentioned above to reground myself in the role of mentor texts and what they mean for writers.
We hope you'll join us in thinking about this!

It's Monday: What are you reading?

2011-12-19T05:24:00.003-05:00

Joining Jen and Kellee (TEACH MENTOR TEXTS) and Katherine (READ, WRITE, REFLECT) again this week for It's Monday: What Are You Reading? I have somehow (against my better judgement) become a person who reads more than one book at a time. This is new for me! It is definitely an interesting way to read--haven't decided if I like it or not.... Even though we don't start winter break until Thursday, I have started my participation in The Book-A-Day Challenge started by Donalyn Miller. I participated over the summer and I find it not only fun and a great gift to myself, but it is a great way to catch up on my TBR pile.

This week I finished THE AVIARY by Kathleen O'Dell. This is one of the books on Anderson's Book Shop's Mock Newbery list and I am so glad that I read it. It is definitely a unique read. A bit spooky and I loved the story and the characters. It is a great story about a little girl named Clara. It reminded me a bit of The Little Princess, a bit of The Secret Garden and a bit of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (with a tiny bit of Home Alone mixed in...). It is truly a great book and a must-read in my opinion.

I also read BONE DOG by Eric Rohman as it seems to be on many Mock Caldecott lists. I love Eric Rohman's work but this wasn't one of my favorites. One I will add to the library and glad I read it.

Thanks to Mr. Schu's list on Watch. Connect. Read. I picked up a copy of THE ADVENTURES OF SIR GAWAIN THE TRUE by Gerald Morris. This book was one on Mr. Schu's list of the Top 20 books of 2011 that I hadn't heard of. I figure if it was on Mr. Schu's top 20, it was a must-read. (BTW, A huge CONGRATULATIONS goes out to Mr. Schu for meeting his reading goal of reading 2011 books in 2011!!) Anyway, I LOVED Sir Gawain and am so glad I read it. I am always looking for great short chapter books--especially those that might appeal to boys. This book has adventure and humor and is definitely part of a series I want to add to our collection.

Another that I discovered on John Schumacher's list was AROUND THE WORLD by Matt Phelan. This is a fascinating graphic novels that shares the stories of 3 journeys around the world.

I have tried (REALLY HARD) to stick with 2011 books, even as amazing 2012 ARCS are delivered to my door. When I opened a copy of Katherine Applegate's upcoming THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN I knew that I could not hold out reading 2011 books much longer. This one is due out in mid-January so I wanted to get to it as soon as possible. This was a great first 2012 book. It is the story of Ivan, a gorilla who lives in a mall. He has a few friends but is lonely. When a baby elephant (Ruby) moves into the mall to be part of the daily show, things change. This is an amazing story. I loved Ivan and all of his friends in the mall. I loved the story and the format. And I loved learning about the true story that inspired the author to write this book. This is a must-read I think. An amazing upcoming book. So happy to have interrupted my 2011 Newbery reading to read this one!

So, there are still so many I want to read, but I may have to dig into my 2012 books during this #bookaday vacation. EYE OF THE STORM by Kate Messner is next on my list for 2012 titles.

I am so looking forward to reading Tom Newkirk's new professional book, THE ART OF SLOW READING. I have heard so many good things about it and love all of Newkirk's thinking. I have been saving it for holiday break when I have time to really dig into his newest thinking.

Currently, I am reading SPUNKY TELLS ALL by Ann Cameron--a great early chapter book. I can already think of many kids who will love it.

I may stick with my original plan to read more from the Anderson's Mock Newbery list or I may choose other things. I am keeping my reading options open this week!

Poetry Friday -- Education

2011-12-16T06:17:00.000-05:00

To David, About His Education

by Howard Nemerov

The world is full of mostly invisible things,
And there is no way but putting the mind's eye,
Or its nose, in a book, to find them out,
Things like the square root of Everest
Or how many times Byron goes into Texas,
Or whether the law of the excluded middle
Applies west of the Rockies. For these
And the like reasons, you have to go to school
And study books and listen to what you are told,
And sometimes try to remember.

Read the rest of the poem here, at The Writer's Almanac.

I struggle with the idea of keeping "the grand confusion of the world / Under (my) hat... / and teach(ing) small children to do this in their turn."

In my opinion, "the grand confusion of the world" is all of the good stuff in the world -- all the mystery and wonder and magic in the world. And instead of teaching my students to quantify and qualify and categorize all of their fresh amazement about this incredible world that is so new and wonderful to them, I try to teach them to savor learning, to even savor the feeling of learning. For example, we started long division yesterday, a particularly perfect time to teach a child to stay in a place of patience with themselves and the process, rather than giving up and feeling defeated on the first try.

Here's another example. Yesterday, for the 28th time in my teaching career, we decorated cookies. And while it wasn't "the mean annual rainfall / On Plato's Republic," I do believe that what I teach in this afternoon spent away from papers and books and standards and curriculum is just as important:

slow down,

pay attention to the details,

sing along to the music,

share, cooperate, compromise,

wash the spoon after you lick it,

enjoy the one you made for yourself but

make three times as many for others.

Kate has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Book Aunt.

11 Science Experiments that Failed by Jenny Offill

2011-12-15T05:00:00.000-05:00

Reading visuals is something we've been working on in the library. Charts and graphs seem to be extremely challenging for some students to make sense of, so that is a current focus. With the idea of reading expanding, our students need to have experiences reading various types of visual information and putting that information together with text.

As part of this thinking, I read 11 SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS THAT FAILED by Jenny Offill and illustrated by Nancy Carpenter to our 5th graders. I love this character an have loved her ever since she appeared in the book 17 THINGS I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DO ANYMORE by the same author. In this new story, wonder is the key. The little girl in the story is full of curiosity. She has lots of questions about the world and works to answer them. For each question she has (such as "Can a person live on snow and ketchup alone?), she shares her hypothesis and tests her theory. We had a ball reading the questions she had as well as the ways she went about finding out the answers.

This was a great book for so many reasons. I am finding that lots of our students think that the way to find answers to their questions is to "search it up". If something isn't answered in a Google search, students suggest finding a book or asking someone. This book started a great conversation about questions that can't be answered in that way--questions that require active research.

During the 2nd read of this book, we talked about the ways in which the narrator of the book could have recording what she discovered in her experiments. We talked about ways she could keep track of her data and what her charts and graphs might have looked like. For example, students suggested that when trying to determine whether her dog enjoyed being covered in glitter, she could have charted the time it took for the dog to shake the glitter off for several consecutive days. They described the chart that could be created to connect that information. We had a great time thinking about the possibilities for this scientist.

Following these conversations, I challenged kids to create charts to keep track of data around questions they had. Several students moved forward with this challenge creating charts to determine average time needed to play 4-Way Countdown, tracking strategies when playing Mancala, and more.

After three library classes, I can already see the interest in charts and graphs changing and found this book to be a great one to start these conversations. Whether you are looking for a book to start great conversations around science or just looking for a fun read aloud, I'd recommend this book.

Newbery Talk in the Library

2011-12-14T20:55:00.000-05:00

We are lucky to have a great public library system and wonderful children's librarians at our Dublin Branch! They have so much to offer our students and the kids love to see them when they visit the public library. This week, Miss Tamara from the Dublin Library is coming in to talk to students about possible Newbery titles. Today was the first day and I love to hear her thoughts and to listen in on the conversations . She shared possible winners and some new books that probably wouldn't win but were fun anyway! Students are most excited about learning about new books to read. I did learn about a few books I didn't know about. One I've added to my TBR stack are TRAPPED by Marc Aronson.

Our 5th Grade Newbery Club has also been busy reading books from our 2011 titles. We've really just done free reading of lots of new books and especially of some that are getting some Newbery buzz. This group has been meeting since last January (they started as 4th graders and continued on this fall.) This week I asked members to vote so that we could create a short list that kids could focus on over the next month or so. Here is our Riverside Newbery Short List. I think they did a fine job--some great titles here!

INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN by Thanhha Lai

BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX by Laurel Snyder

TUESDAYS AT THE CASTLE by Jessica Day George

THE ROMEO AND JULIET CODE by Phoebe Stone

HIDDEN by Helen Frost

SMALL AS AN ELEPHANT by Jennifer Jacobson

THE UNWANTEDS by Lisa McMann

A DOG'S WAY HOME by Bobbie Pyron

Nerdy Book Club

2011-12-14T05:00:00.002-05:00

(This post is cross-posted on the Nerdy Book Club blog, and is part of an ongoing series of confessionals/testimonials/proclamations by members of the NBC -- the Nerdy Book Club.)

My name is Mary Lee Hahn, and I’m a member of the Nerdy Book Club. I could tell you the entire story of my membership, from my bookish childhood to the present, but instead, let’s pretend there’s a bookmark in my story and let’s open to one particular spot. Let’s start with last week.

Last week I finished listening to Monsters of Men in the Chaos Walking series.

If you are a member of the Nerdy Book Club, the above sentence will tell you volumes (pun intended) about me. You can empathize with the emotional rollercoaster Patrick Ness has taken me on over the past few months as I listened to all three books in the Chaos Walking series. You’ll know exactly when I cried, and you’ll know what moral and philosophical issues we could talk about into the night.

Two of the readers I most admire in the world recommended this series to me, and recommendations are one of the hallmarks of the NBC – if it weren’t for the joys of convincing another reader to fall in love with our (new or long-beloved) favorite books, there would be no CLUB in the Nerdy Book Club. Not only do we read, we talk about books, blog about books, and tweet about books. Now that I’ve completed Ness’ series, I’m connected to those two readers (and all the NBC readers who’ve read the series) in deep and complicated ways. We share a reading history.

Books build connections between readers and readers build connections between books. After finishing Monsters of Men, I needed to listen to a book that would heal my soul. On my Audible.com bookshelf was Charlotte’s Web, read by E.B. White – the perfect antidote for a dystopian future on a fictional planet: the cycle of life and friendship, anchored in the concrete details of Zuckerman’s farm. That’s another benefit of membership in the NBC: the knowledge that books can heal us. And did you notice what kind of shelf I went to in order to find my next read? It was my audio shelf. As a card-carrying member of the NBC, I have many shelves for my books: audio, e-book, poetry, cookbooks, adult, professional, and classroom, to name a few.

Not only do I have shelves, I have piles. Most NBC members do. There’s a To-Be-Read pile…and another, and another and another.

Time to stop writing and read. I finished Charlotte’s Web today, and I’ve already downloaded my next listen – Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks. Now…which TBR pile should I tackle…

Mary Lee Hahn teaches 4th grade in Dublin, OH. She has belonged to the Nerdy Book Clubs know as the Cybils (she’s a round two poetry judge this year), the NCTE Notables, and the Central Ohio Kidlitosphere Bloggers. Ten years ago she wrote Reconsidering Read-Aloud. These days she blogs with Franki SIbberson at A Year of Reading, and writes occasionally for Choice Literacy.

A Day in the Library: How We Spend Our Time

2011-12-13T05:40:00.004-05:00

I have been thinking hard about the choices our students make in the library. I am in year four in the library and I've worked to build quality choices for students once we've finished the lesson and check out. A big goal for students in their use of the library is to find tools and resources that match their need. As the tools of learning expand and grow, I want our students to see how many options there are for learning and to discover the tools that best support them as learners.

This graph was a Google Doc form that I filled out during each class over the course of a day in the library. I will look more closely at choices over time but wondered how kids were spending their time when given the choice. I found the results very interesting.

There seem to be enough quality choices in the library at this point that kids are all choosing well. There seems to be something for everyone and I try to introduce new options every so often. We have spent time as a school talking about the importance of quality educational games so I wasn't surprised to see that so many kids chose to play one of these on the day I observed.

I was thrilled to see the number of kids who chose reading during this time. Reading Online covered all reading that wasn't traditional book reading--so ebooks, websites such as Tumblebooks, researching a topic, etc. all fall under that category.

And I loved to take the time to see what kids are creating with the variety of tools we have available. From creating a new story about The Pigeon in a blank book stapled together by library volunteers, to creating a book trailer, kids are working to create project and to learn new tools. I am amazed at how quickly kids can envision what a tool can do- they don't hesitate to think about all that is possible and then to problem solve to figure out how to make it work. One second grader taught herself to add video to a Pages project on the iPad while another learned how to create stop motion on the iPad this week.

This was just a first step in looking at the choices in the library and how they work to meet the goals we have for our students in the library.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2011-12-12T05:03:00.001-05:00

I decided to join Jen and Kellee at TEACH MENTOR TEXTS, Katherine at READ, WRITE, REFLECT and others for this meme this week.

It has been a slow reading week. I've had lots of evening events, meetings, etc. Add that to getting ready for the holidays and I have had very little time for reading.

Last week, I finished
SPARROW ROAD by Sheila O'Connor. As you probably know, I am working to get through a few more of the books on Anderson's Bookshop Mock Newbery list before January. I still have lots of 2011 books I'd love to get to but I'm not sure how many I'll have time for. With that said, I am so glad that I made time for SPARROW ROAD. This was definitely one of my favorite middle grade novels of the year. It is the story of Raine and her summer at Sparrow Road. Raine's mother decided that the two of them will be spending the summer at Sparrow Road, an artists' retreat. Raine is not thrilled about the idea but quickly makes friends and tries to solve the mystery of the people who used to live there. This is a story of friendship, family, loss, and acceptance. Definitely one of my favorites of 2011.

I read a few picture books this week.
GOOD LITTLE WOLF by Nadia Shireen is a fun picture book about a good little wolf who meets a big bad wolf. The big bad wolf tries to convince the good little wolf to be bad. A fun book with a surprise ending.

I am always looking to add to my wordless book collection. This week, I picked up HOCUS POCUS by Sylvie Desrosiers. This is a fun wordless book that has a Tom and Jerry feel. The format is more of a graphic novel format and the story is a fun one. Many of the wordless books I have tend to have a more serious tone but this one is pretty fun so I am glad to add that variety to my collection.

HUGS FROM PEARL by Paul Schmid is another fun picture book that I'm anxious to share with students. Pearl loves to give hugs but the problem is, she's a porcupine and her hugs tend to cause her friends pain! Not to worry, Pearl comes up with a great solution.

I also picked up GIANT POP OUT FOOD (Chronicle). Who doesn't like a good pop-up book? My first graders have doing lots of reading like writers--really looking at books and thinking about what the writer did and how they might try something similar in their own writing. I thought this series of books might stretch them a few of them a new direction by giving them a new type of writing to try. Or they just might enjoy the fun riddles and pop-out illustrations.

I am currently reading the middle grade novel THE AVIARY by Kathleen O'Dell. This is one from the Anderson's Mock Newbery list. I don't know that I would have picked it up had it not been on Anderson's list and I am really enjoying it. Hoping to finish this one this week.

After that, I imagine I'll read another from Anderson's list--maybe LUCK OF THE BUTTONS or THE APOTHECARY....

IMHO

2011-12-11T15:24:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday: Your Day Today

2011-12-09T06:50:00.000-05:00

Have a ____ Day
by Lou Lipsitz

Have a nice day. Have a memorable day.
Have (however unlikely) a life-changing day.
Have a day of soaking rain and lightning.
Have a confused day thinking about fate.

(the rest of the poem is at The Writer's Almanac)

No matter what kind of day you have today, no matter how many ups and downs and wanderings with no crumbs to follow, I hope it includes some time spent with poetry!

The Poetry Friday roundup today is at Read, Write, Howl.

Numbers and Letters

2011-12-08T06:17:00.004-05:00

City Numbers
by Joanne Schwartz
photos by Matt Beam
Groundwood Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

I'll admit, I'm a little surprised to be reviewing this book. Photographs of numbers around you in the city? Big deal. The book starts with 000. Not much of a surprise. Next up is... 1/2 ?? Hmm... Then 1, and... 2nd (second). That's exactly how long it took me to be hooked -- as soon as I wasn't sure what was going to happen on the next page, I was eager to see what number came next and where it was found. (Each two page spread has the photo on the right, and on the left, the number, in digits and words, and the location and media. 2nd is "Printed on paper, pasted on steel. Electrical box." Besides cardinal and ordinal numbers, the book includes decimals, percents, prices, and one iconic number: 007 ("Double-O Seven").

Two things happened when I read this book.

1. I said to myself, "I can do that." And then a half a heart-beat later, I said, "I'm going to do that!!" Here is my theme for my photos in 2012: I am going to look for numbers in my environment in all varieties of media, location, and form. Suddenly, I feel reinvigorated to continue my personal Project 365 for a fourth (FOURTH!!!) year.

2. I wanted to get this pair's book City Alphabet and see what they did with letters and words in a similar format. I will not limit myself to numbers next year, I will also look for words and letters. Maybe. Maybe I need to be patient and stay focused on one theme at a time...hmm...stay tuned for a decision on that one.

E-Mergency!
by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer
Chronicle Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Which letter in the alphabet is used with the most frequency?

E!

What happens when E comes down the stairs too fast and breaks her leg?

An E-mergency! E is taken away in the ambulance and A assembles the rest of the alphabet to discuss how they will proceed without the letter E. "Someone is going to have to take the place of E while she gets better. O, you're the obvious option because you're so well-rounded."

This is a VERY punny book. If you don't get that from A's choice of replacement letters, check this out:

I can't wait to share this book with my students. I'll put it under the document camera and we'll study every page for visual and verbal puns. And we'll all laugh when we solve the mystery of why E is not recovering: Who is STILL using Es, even though they've been forbidden so that E can rest and recover??? (oops--so that E can rost and rocovor...)

EDITED TO ADD (in the voices of my students)

This book was really funny!
We enjoyed the book!
The pictures were funny!
The book was really good!
We figured out who was using the letter E!
E never learned her lesson!
The letter O is used for E in this book and that makes the words hard to figure out sometimes.
It's funny that the characters are letters and they sometimes do what their letter says (like...P)!!
The letters sometimes spell funny words like ROAD when they were getting ready to go on a trip or EGGS and OJ when it was breakfast time.
I like how O fills in for E. If that really happened, our names might change!

Friends and Family

2011-12-07T06:18:00.000-05:00

Friends: True Stories of Extraordinary Animal Friendships
by Catherine Thimmesh
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

The first thing you'll do when you pick this book up is look at all of the CUTE photos of unusual and extraordinary animal friends -- monkey and macaque, giraffe and ostrich, capybara and squirrel monkey...and my favorite, the toad and mouse.

Then you'll go back and enjoy the rhyming text.

A friend connects...

A stretch, a slight strain,

a balancing feat,

friends go to great lengths

in order to meet.

(Asian camel and Vietnamese miniature pig)

No matter

who has

a snout

or a beak,

connecting with friends

is something friends seek.

(giraffe and ostrich)

Finally, you'll want to know the story of how each pair of animals became friends, and you'll go back to the nonfiction paragraph below each poem to find out more about the animals, where in the world, and how they became friends.

Little Treasures: Endearments from Around the World
by Jacqueline K. Ogburn
illustrated by Chris Raschka
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Jacqueline Ogburn, author of A Dignity of Dragons: Collective Nouns for Magical Beasts, seems to be the kind of person who loves words, and language, and quirky terms.

In Little Treasures, Ogburn has collected parental terms of endearment in fourteen languages. There are three or four terms from countries as far-flung as Uganda, the Slovak Republic and Argentina. The borders of many countries are dissolved by including terms that Russian-speaking or Arabic-speaking or Hindi-speaking people use. For the non-English languages, there is a pronunciation guide, and for the languages that do not use the Latin alphabet, the term is written in the alphabet of the language, and the pronunciation guide includes a Latinized version of the term.

Through it all, Chris Raschka's illustrations emanate love and joy and playfulness. You'll want to pick up your own "little coconut candy," your own "habibi/beloved," your own "Knuddelbaerchen/little huggy bear" and snuggle and cuddle and call them whatever it is that YOU call your little one.

There are no little ones in my house (well, not counting the cat...), but I can't wait to take this book to school and see if my students can add to this list. One my mom calls me, "pumpkin," is in the book, but "sugar plum" is mine, all mine!

What are YOUR favorite terms of endearment for your children, and what were YOU called as a child?

A FORT OF BOOKS!

2011-12-06T19:16:00.000-05:00

This summer, my friend, Drew Jones (our school's amazing art teacher) created this video at the Ohio State University library. Somehow I missed it until today but I am sooooo happy I found it. And I had to share So lucky to teach with him. Enjoy!

Fortress from Corey Aumiller on Vimeo.

My Next-Read Stack-Winding Up 2011 Newbery Possibilities

2011-12-06T04:53:00.001-05:00

At NCTE, I picked up some great 2012 books that I can't wait to read. I am tempted to move to my 2012 stack. And blog posts such as the one at READ, WRITE, REFLECT about Jo Knowles' new book don't help:-) But I know that if I dig into those, I will most likely never come back to the 20 or so 2011 middle grade novels I had hoped to get to this year.This year, I have read more than any other year. I have read nearly 300 books and have enjoyed almost 100 percent of those books. I give full credit for this to my friends, both local and online and the fact that Goodreads, Twitter and Facebook have all allowed me to find the best books out there. But, with the number of amazing books out there, it is easy to miss some great ones every year.

So, 2012 is only a few weeks away. I still have many, many book from 2011 that I hope to read before I move into the 2012 books. But in reality, I know I can't get to all of them.

There is really no good way to decide how to prioritize my next read stack when it is packed with so many great books. My favorite strategy was the one that John Schumacher used to prioritize his next read stack. It was quite brilliant and I would highly recommend it!

I have decided to use Anderson's Bookshop Mock Newbery List to help me prioritize. From what I hear, Anderson's ALWAYS has the winner on their short list. I've also payed close attention to Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 and the Heavy Medal blog.

I am looking forward to Holiday #bookaday to help me catch up again. I had my own Thanksgiving #bookaday this year and was able to read WORDS IN THE DUST by Trent Reedy, THE GREAT WALL OF LUCY WU by Wendy Wan-Long Shang, THE UNWANTEDS by Lisa McMann and GHETTO COWBOY by G. Neri. I'm glad I spent so much time reading over Thanksgiving as I would have hated to miss any of these amazing titles.

I just finished SPARROW ROAD by Sheila O'Connor last night and loved it. I found this one on the Anderson's list and again, so glad I didn't miss this title. This is for sure one of my favorite middle grade reads of the year.

Below is the rest of my stack and how I have prioritized. I am sure it will change often before January 1, but for now, it gives me a bit of direction.

Must Reads Because I Want to Have Read the Newbery Before It is Announced (There are five from the Anderson's list that I haven't read and would like to.)

THE LUCK OF THE BUTTONS by Anne Yivisaker
THE EMERALD ATLAS by John Stephens
THE APOTHECARY by Maile Meloy
THE AVIARY by Kathleen O'Dell

DRAGON CASTLE by Joseph Bruchac

Books I Must Read Because I Have Kids Who Would Love Them
13 GIFTS by Wendy Mass

THE DRAGON'S TOOTH by N. D. Wilson

ICEFALL by Matthew Kirby

Books I Don't Want to Forget About if I Don't Get to Them by 2011
PIE by Sarah Weeks

THE THIRD GIFT by Linda Su Park

BIRD IN A BOX by Andrea Pinkney

THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF JACK by Kelly Barnhill

THE NO. 1 CAR SPOTTER by Atinuke

A YEAR WITHOUT AUTUMN by Liz Kessler

Early Chapter Books that Will Be Great for Transitional Readers That I Can't Believe I Haven't Read

CLEMENTINE AND THE FAMILY MEETING by Sarah Pennypacker
A VERY BABYMOUSE CHRISTMAS by Jennifer Holm

SPUNKY TELLS ALL by Ann Cameron

2011 YA Books I'd Like to Read
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE by Sara Zarr
THE FUTURE OF US by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Books From Past Years that I Only Recently Learned About

THE CHAOS WALKING series by Patrick Ness

I guess overall, this is a good problem to have-so many great books to read! I will keep you posted and hopefully get through a good bunch of these in the next few weeks.

Your 6th Annual Elf Yourself Holiday Greeting from A Year of Reading!

2011-12-05T20:57:00.000-05:00

Consider this your 6th Annual Elf Yourself Holiday Greeting from Mary Lee and Franki!

Also, consider it a Public Service Announcement...No matter how busy you are, take a few minutes to create an ELF YOURSELF video this holiday season.

Seriously, they never get old--no matter how many times you create them or how many times you watch them! Treat yourself to some fun!

Happy Holidays!

Anna Walker

2011-12-05T05:42:00.000-05:00

I am so happy when I find a new author that I love. Recently, I discovered Anna Walker, an author/illustrator from Australia. How I had missed her books is beyond me, but I am so glad that I've discovered them. In October, when I attended the CAWP/Literacy Connection conference, I was able to hear Sharon Esswein and Stella Villalba (My World-Mi Mundo) speak about writing in the primary grades. They shared many, many books and I spent quite a bundle after their session.

My favorite find from the session was the set of "I LOVE..."(I Love Ollie) books by Anna Walker. These are perfect books for K-1 readers and writers and I purchased the whole set for our school library.

One of the challenges is building a school library collection is in finding enough authentic, quality picture books that new readers can read on their own. Anna Walker's books have everything, in terms of support, that new readers need. And the books are fabulous.

In each of these books, Ollie (a lovable zebra) shares with us the reasons that he loves one specific thing--such as I LOVE TO SING, I LOVE TO DANCE, I LOVE BIRTHDAYS, I LOVE MY MOM and I LOVE MY DAD. Each book focuses on one thing and follows the I LOVE pattern.

These are the PERFECT books to use with young students to introduce the idea of reading like a writer--really thinking about the decisions an author makes. For me, one reason for studying an author is to be able to think about what you can expect from this author in the future. Another is in thinking about what you can learn from the author to try in your own writing. Anna Walker's books are perfect for both of these things.

These books each follow a predictable pattern, they use sight vocabulary that new readers are familiar with. There is rhyming in the books and the pictures support the text. And there is predictability across stories--Fred, the dog is a companion in each book. The beginnings and endings follow similar patterns across books. The books provide lots for kids to notice and to love. With our first graders, I read aloud 3 of the books as we added on to the things we knew about the books. They became fast favorites for every class. As these books invite writing, many students took time in library to create their own I LOVE books, after being inspired by Anna Walker. The books took on titles ranging from I LOVE BASKETBALL to I LOVE MERMAIDS.

I love Anna Walker and plan to buy every book she ever writes for kids. She so understands young children and writes to that audience so well. It seems she is an Australian author/illustrator and I can't see to order some of her books here yet. I need to work on that.

Not only do I love Anna Walker's books, but I think we would be great friends if she were my neighbor. I spent some time on her blog and it is a great celebration of so many things. It is definitely a blog that will go into my reader. So happy to discovered this new-to-me author!

Poetry Friday -- Building Bridges

2011-12-02T06:23:00.001-05:00

The Bridge Builder

by Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

(The answer to the fellow pilgrim's question is here, at the Poetry Foundation.)

Carol has the Poetry Friday roundup today at Carol's Corner.

November Mosaics

2011-12-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

I've had loads of fun with the ComicBook app this month! It's gotten me taking more pictures on my phone because I'll be able to use them in a comic!

Actually, it looks like the company, 3DTopo, has several more apps that I need to look into. Motivational Poster looks like a hoot!

So as you can see, November started with Election Day. We had success at the state level getting SB5 repealed, but at the local level around our area, results were mixed on the school levies.

Above is a nod to the season. The leaves have been down for awhile, but it's only in the last couple of days that it has really FELT like November. (Not that I miss the usual dank chill...)

And of course, November brings NCTE. Here are a couple of collections of Chicago pictures, and one from NCTE itself. You might be able to tell how much I loved the Field Museum!

And here's the "standard" mosaic for this month:

In the top row, you will find a reunion. That's me and a former student, David Donofrio, who has just announced that he is running for a spot in the OH House of Representatives!

We've had an unusually nice November this year -- look at all those blue skies! You might not be able to tell what the first picture in the second row is. You'll need to check it out on Flickr to get the full effect -- the title is Brutus Buckeye Butt and Blimp: Fun With Alliteration.

In the fourth row are two I took from my classroom window. We watched that squirrel napping in the top of the Sweet Gum tree for most of an afternoon. And there's Mr. William, our big handsome kitty, basking in the sun by the back door. We humans aren't the only ones who enjoyed the sunny November!

In the fifth row is Bill, from Literate Lives. (His is the picture in the middle, silly. That other turkey is the one we ate for an early Thanksgiving dinner with friends!) Bill did a family storytelling event at my school and I finally got to see firsthand how he works magic with his Picks from the Pit. I, too, lovelovelove I Want My Hat Back, (Franki's posts here and here) but I love it even more now that I've heard him read it aloud.

And now, on to December! Bring it, Twelfth Month! Show us what you've got! Next week I'm going to review a picture book that's giving me some ideas for a way to spice up my Project 365 for 2012. Stay tuned!

Stories With Surprises

2011-11-30T05:00:00.000-05:00

A Dog is a Dog
by Stephen Shaskan
Chronicle Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

"A dog is a dog, unless it's a...CAT!" And that cat is a cat unless it's a...SQUID! And so on, until...

...Nah, I'm not going to tell you! You have to read it to find out! Suffice it to say that this is a book with a surprise every couple of pages. (That squid came at me from out of the blue!) It's a book about the essential nature of well-known animals, about disguises, and about surprises. I can imagine this book making Franki's Million Times list, or Bill's Picks From the Pit.

NCTE Sessions on Digital Reading/Digital Writing

2011-11-29T04:21:00.001-05:00

Below are two sessions I was a part of for NCTE 2011. One was as part of a panel on Digital Reading. I had a great time working with Sara Kajder, Teri Lesesne and Donalyn Miller on this one. I learned so much from each of them and loved thinking together. My specific piece was about digital tools and how we can use them to create opportunities for deeper reading. When I uploaded the slides onto Slideshare, some of the text was cut off but I think you'll get the general idea.

How Digital Tools Can Help Us Create Opportunities for Deep Reading

View more presentations from Franki22

The other session was one I did with Becky McCraw and Bill Bass. When I served on the NCTE Executive Committee a few years ago, Bill and Becky and I were part of a group that helped to create the Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment. I feel lucky to have ongoing conversations with these two and others in the group about our work in schools around these ideas. One thing we've been talking about is the idea of mentor texts in a digital writing workshop so we shared our current thinking together at NCTE's convention.

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop

3 Great Middle Grade Novels

2011-11-28T05:39:00.001-05:00

At NCTE, I was thrilled to pick up a box full of 2012 middle grade and young adult ARCs. But when I got home, I realized how many 2011 titles I still had on my to-be-read list. I know myself as a reader and once I dig into the 2012 books, I won't take the time to go back to many of the 2011 books. Once 2012 starts, new books will be coming out fast. I am dying to read Kate Messner's upcoming EYE OF THE STORM (which looks FABULOUS!), but am trying to wait to get some more 2011 books read. Since this blog began as a way for Mary Lee and I to share our thinking around and to predict Newbery winners, I made a list this weekend and there are about 20 that I'd love to read before the new year begins. I won't get to them, but thankfully, my Twitter friends are helping me prioritize. Over Thanksgiving weekend, I was able to finish 3 middle grade novels and I loved all three of them.

If you know Jennifer Holm, then you know that THE TROUBLE WITH MAY AMELIA will be a good book. As Betsy Bird says in her review of this book, "Yet thus far Ms. Holm has remained fairly dud-resistant. There’s a level of quality to her writing that pleases consistently" This is the 2nd story about May Amelia. From what I understan, you should read the first one first. But I didn't do that and this one totally stands alone. May Amelia lives in a houseful of brothers and is constantly getting into a bit of trouble. This books is filled with the stuff of real life. I found myself laughing on one page and then crying on the next. May Amelia is a character that I fell in love with in the first few pages of the book.

I had not heard of GHETTO COWBOY by Greg Neri until Colby Sharp mentioned it on Twitter last week. Why this book is not getting more buzz is beyond me. This is the story of Cole, a 12 year old boy is gets himself in a lot of trouble. Finally, his mother has had enough and she takes him to live with his father (the father he has never met) in Philadelphia. Cole's father, Harper, runs a stable right in the middle of the city and Cole begins to take to the horses. This is a great story about a father and a son, a community working to do the right thing, and finding out who you are. And although this is a work of fiction, it is based on a true story. (See video below from Greg Neri's website.)

G. Neri's "Ghetto Cowboy" book trailer from Greg Neri on Vimeo.

I discovered THE UNWANTEDS by Lisa McMann on several Mock Newbery lists. Once the students in our Newbery Club heard about the book, I haven't been able to get a library copy back. It is quite popular with our 5th graders. So, I ended up buying the Kindle version and read it that way. The UNWANTEDS is a great new fantasy. It is a dystopian type story of a place called Quill that gets rid of their "Unwanteds" each year. They get rid of those people that are not obedient, do not follow the rules, have thoughts of their own. And they get rid of them when they are 13 years old. They are taken out of the city to be killed. This is the story of one group of Unwanteds. It is a great good vs. evil story with characters and plot that will hook a variety of readers. It definitely feels like a classic and the story will appeal to a variety of readers. I am always looking for great new fantasies and this is one that I think will be popular for years to come.

Poetry Friday -- Today (Call for Poetry Friday Roundup Hosts)

2011-11-25T08:42:00.020-05:00

One Day

by Robert Creeley

One day after another—
Perfect.
They all fit.

When I first read and chose this poem, I loved it while thinking small -- "One day after another" this weekend, or this school year. But when I went to look for a picture, my eyes gravitated toward the ones I took last week (only last week/already a week ago?) at the Field Museum in Chicago. Then "One day after another" expanded, and I remembered the feeling of minuscularity I got when I walked through the scientific creation story of our planet. The improbable perfection of our planet is quite overwhelming when you slow down and study how everything fits.

I also chose today's poem to honor the march of time since last we queued up for hosting the Poetry Friday Roundups. Is it really possible that six more months of weekly bloggerly camaraderie around poetry have gone by, "one (Fri)day after another"?

Indeed so. If you'd like to host one of the roundups in 2012, leave the date you choose in the comments. This will be our record of "first ask, first get." I'll update the calendar throughout the day (and probably the next couple of weeks), so check before you ask.

Heidi has the roundup today at my juicy little universe.

January

6 JoAnn at Teaching Authors

13 Tara at A Teaching Life

20 Elaine at Wild Rose Reader

27 Jim at Hey, Jim Hill!

February

3 Karissa at The Iris Chronicles

10 Laura at Writing the World for Kids

17 Myra at Gathering Books

24 Jone at Check it Out

March

2 Dori at Dori Reads

9 Myra at Gathering Books

16 Gregory K. at GottaBook

23 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading

30 Heidi at my juicy little universe

April

6 Robyn at Read, Write Howl

13 Anastasia at Booktalking

20 Diane at Random Noodling

27 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference

May

4 Elaine at Wild Rose Reader

11 Irene at Live. Love. Explore!

18 Katya at Write. Sketch. Repeat.

25 Linda at TeacherDance

June

1 Carol at Carol's Corner

8 Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup

15 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading

22 Amy at The Poem Farm

29 Marjorie at Paper Tigers

Riches

2011-11-24T07:02:00.000-05:00

Flickr Creative Commons photo by simpologist

Time has slowed,
stopped flowing
like sand or water or air
between my fingers.

The clock's ticks were
a blur.
Now I feel space
between each beat.

Between each beat
I reach
and catch the coins,
make a stack of riches:

moon's tug
eyes' blinks
Christmas cactus' bloom
heart's thumps
pencil's scratches

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2011

Memoir

2011-11-22T05:00:00.001-05:00

Drawing From Memory
by Allen Say
Scholastic Press, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

"Drawing is never a practice. To draw is to see and discover."

"Painting is a kind of writing, and writing is a kind of painting--they are both about seeing."

DRAWING FROM MEMORY is the amazing story of the earliest years of Allen Say's journey as an artist. It is the story of his relationship with his master, the man who become more than an art teacher to him -- the man who became his spiritual father.

Liberally illustrated with sketches and photographs, this is a book to read and re-read.

We have been working to understand the word "influence" in my fourth grade classroom. Students are asked to identify the influence of the setting of a story. In order to understand that, we are studying lots of ways influence happens. This would be a great book (along with a selection of other books illustrated by Say) to explore the influence of a teacher, of a setting, of friends, of family...

The House Baba Built: An Artist's Childhood in China
by Ed Young
Little, Brown and Company, 2011

This is a fantastic book to compare/contrast to Allen Say's -- a life framed by an early love of art, by family, by war... Whereas Say's book is a tribute to his teacher, Young's is a tribute to his Baba and to the house that unified his family. Say's book is INFLUENCED by his early training as a cartoonist, and reads more like a graphic novel, with clean lines and a crisp white background. Young's is painterly, with thick pages, collages of paint and chalk and photographs, and lots of gatefolds to open and explore. Again, it would be fascinating to read this book along with a collection of others Young has illustrated to explore how these early years made him into the artist he is today.

Poetry Friday -- #NCTE11

2011-11-18T17:59:00.000-05:00

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—

by Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Tabatha has the Poetry Friday Roundup at The Opposite of Indifference. My lateness to the Poetry Friday Party this week is due, not to indifference, but the "opposite of indifference," which in this case is the overwhelming press of Life as I got ready to come to NCTE in Chicago.

Today has been an Extraordinary Poetry Friday, spent in the company of lots of Poetry and Poetry Friday friends, most especially Heidi, of My Juicy Little Universe, to whom I dedicate today's poem pick -- one that found me as quick as I got Internet access (the secret code worked -- thanks, Patrick!) and started looking, and which seems to fit quite nicely with our chat this afternoon!

GASP!! I just went to Heidi's blog to grab the link and look at the image she chose for her poem today...a poem which completely captures how I felt yesterday at the Field Museum...

THE THIRD GIFT by Linda Sue Park

2011-11-17T05:00:00.001-05:00

The Third Gift
by Linda Sue Park
illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline
Clarion Books, on shelves November 15, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

I opened this book excitedly because the author is Linda Sue Park, because the illustrator is Bagram Ibatoulline.

I read, savoring every word, learning about the harvesting of the resin of a shrub native to the Arabian Peninsula.

I was delighted to learn the name for the resin, and the reason that the boy's extra large "tear" of resin is chosen for purchase...and by whom.

I'm not going to say any more. I don't want to spoil the surprise for you. Find a copy and read for yourself.

CROSSED by Ally Condie

2011-11-16T05:40:00.000-05:00

I have been waiting for CROSSED for a full year. CROSSED is the second book in Ally Condie's MATCHED trilogy. MATCHED was a great book-a YA novel that I read and then both my 11 and 20 year old daughters read. We have all been looking forward to CROSSED and have had the date of its release on the calendar for months.

Somehow, I was the first one in the house to get to read CROSSED! I finished it this week and LOVED it. I have to say, I didn't love it from the start. I was disappointed at the slowness and the quietness of this book during the first half, I kept jumping on Goodreads to see what others had said and was not surprised at how many people saw it as so much different, and less engaging than the first book.

But, then I got to the last third of the book, and I now realize I love this book even better than MATCHED. A conversation on Twitter helped me mid-book. Katherine (@katsok) had finished the book and tweeted, "Liked the second 1/2 better than the first 1/2. Also enjoyed the journey of each character." When I mentioned that I wasn't liking Ky during this part of the book, she said, "Aw, I still loved him at the end. Both Cassia and Ky are flawed at times. Need to figure out who they are."

And Katherine was so right. I realized soon after that twitter conversation that CROSSED is one of my favorite kinds of books. It is a book about character and characters' personal journeys. I think MATCHED was such a plot-based book that I was reading this one as the same kind for a while. But when I realized that plot wasn't the key, I read for character and I loved it.

In this book, Ky and Cassia are on a journey. A physical journey. But each is also on a personal journey-one that helps them live out the stories of their lives--a journey that lets them be truthful to themselves about those stories of their past. There are so many lines I wanted to mark in this book--lines that were hugely powerful/ This is a book of growing and a book of choices. I don't want to give much away, but now that I finished this book, I realize that it is actually a much deeper, more intense book than MATCHED was. We learn more about the characters and who they are. We have different hopes for who they might become. That is huge for me as a reader. There is still a good plot and definitely a cliffhanger ending but thinking about it, the book is about Ky and it is about Cassia--who they are together and who they are apart. When I finished MATCHED, I loved it and was happy to pass it along. But when I finished this book, I wanted to talk to others about it. Condie left us with so much more to think about in this one.

So, if you've read MATCHED, know that this is a different read. Know that you might be disappointed during the first bit of the book. But also know that it is worth it because it is no less of a good story. You will come out of the book knowing and understanding each character so much better than you did before. And you'll have lots to think about--so many ideas that Condie has planted about growing and changing and crossing over to who you are. (brilliant title on so many levels, I think) And when you close the book, you will again hate the idea of waiting a full year for the final book in the trilogy! What a LONG wait!

Now time to let the 2 girls fight over who gets to read it next:-)

(And for those of you who haven't read MATCHED, I would HIGHLY recommend both of these!)

Ally Condie has a great blog tour with more insights into the trilogy. The tour posts are listed on her site.

SWIRL BY SWIRL by Joyce Sidman

2011-11-15T05:00:00.001-05:00

Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature
by Joyce Sidman
illustrated by Beth Krommes
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

I am so looking forward to hearing Joyce Sidman speak at NCTE this week. She's the featured speaker at the Children's Literature Assembly Breakfast on Sunday and one of the poets speaking at the CLA Master Class on Saturday afternoon. I will have the chance to meet her in an informal gathering as well. I'll try not to swoon.

Her new book, SWIRL BY SWIRL, is a rhyming picture book that explores the many things a spiral does in nature. Each page has Beth Krommes' characteristic wood engraving illustrations (see one here, on Beth's website).

SWIRL BY SWIRL is a gorgeous, thought-provoking book. I will connect the spirals in nature to the spiral of time found in Steve Jenkins' book JUST A SECOND (reviewed last week) and GROWING PATTERNS: FIBONACCI NUMBERS IN NATURE (reviewed last year).

Reflecting on the School LIbrary: An Invitation to the Possibilities for Learning

2011-11-14T05:54:00.005-05:00

From Hugh's Daily Cartoon Newsletter

This is my fourth year as an elementary librarian after 21 years as a classroom teacher. I enjoy lots about the job of a librarian but one of my main frustrations is the limited time I see students. We are on a fixed schedule so I see each class for 45 minutes every four days. When I started the job, I knew it would take 2-3 years to really build a program and I have to say, that I think that the library is a great place to be. But I don't often take the time to realize what is happening and I really don't always even notice. With 400+ K-5 kids, it is so easy for me to focus on what didn't get done in a week and how much more we wish we could do. This week, I decided to stop and take a breath and notice the little things that were happening in the library. Buffy Hamilton often reflects on her library in this long-term way and I thought this might help me see things more clearly so that we can move forward.

One of the philosophies I have been living on this year in the library is Inviting kids to do things rather than Commanding that they do it. (#invitationnotcommand). (Tony Keefer has a post about this new philosophy and how his class is embracing it in a powerful blog post today.) I want kids to see the library as an Invitation to Learning. I want the library to offer lots of opportunities to kids and to build in authentic choice. I feel like much of my job is to open possibilities for students but not to necessarily "assign" them extra things to do. That is not to say that we never all do the same thing. We have a minilesson type time in which we all gather to learn/introduce/think about something for about 15 minutes each session. With the time limits, this is hard to pull off and it often feels like we aren't getting anywhere. But when I force myself to really think about how it is working, I realize lots seems to be happening. The challenge for me is having enough quality Invitations in the library and to keep options fresh so that kids can find the things that matter to them as learners. Over the years, we have added books, games, building toys, tech tools, etc. Here is some work I am excited about that has happened over the last few weeks--some big things and some great moments:

2nd grade classes are in the midst of a unit in which each child is creating a comic ebook. This is a collaboration between the classroom teachers, the art teacher, the technology support teacher and myself. We've been working for weeks learning to look hard at graphic novels and comics, to think about the characteristics, to think about ways to tell stories in this format and to plan out our stories. This week, the kids started using the draw tool, PIXIE to begin creating. We'll use their illustrations and drop those into Comic Life. Then we'll save them as ebooks to be viewed by others on computers and iPads. A long process but kids are doing a great job and the steps leading up to the actual creation have been worthwhile. The kids have learned a lot and are creating pieces that they'll be excited to share. (This one is a #command-all kids are expected to create this. Once in a while, I am good with that when we all coordinate efforts and when I know the skills they learn will transfer to other learning for years.)

Some 3rd graders are working on book trailers. It is not an assignment--just an invitation for those interested. As a group, we've studied book trailers and I've shared the process I have used in my own creation (much harder than I could have imagined--more to come at a later date...). In the process, they are learning about quality writing of book reviews, finding copyright free photos, using and editing imovie choosing sound that matches feel of book, and more. Kids are learning lots and I think many will choose to create book trailers for our morning news show and for our website.

I am getting ready to begin to introduce Diigo to our 4th grade students. Diigo has a new educator account with privacy settings for students. There are so many options for student research and nonfiction reading with this social bookmarking tool. Excited to jump in. A few students helped me figure a few things out with it this week and they were all excited about the possibilities of the tool. It is fun to watch people when they discover a new tool and imagine what it can do. These 9 year olds said exactly the same things about diigo that I did when I discovered social bookmarking--they can't believe there is something that can not only organize their bookmarks, but also a tool that lets them share with friends and lets them access bookmarks wherever they are. 4th graders seem to be a good age for this since they understand bookmarking, online reading, etc.

The Newbery Club has met twice but I touch base with kids in this group daily. They are in and out of the library trading in books and choosing others constantly from the JOG THE WEB list I created for them to browse. Many have finished 1-2 books on our list of 30 and they are thinking hard about these books. It is fun to see a few like WONDERSTRUCK and BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX being passed around from one child to another.

We have 5 Kindles in the library. We haven't done much with them because of management but since I had so many Newbery Club students interested in reading THE UNWANTEDS by Lisa McMann, Since all of the copies are always checked out, I decided to add that book to our accounts and a few of the kids have chosen to read this one on a Kindle. We met for a while to learn about notetaking and highlighting features. It will be fun to see what they have to say about the experience.

A child stopped me in the hall today to say, "Mrs. Sibberson, I don't know what is happening but I have been finishing a LOT of books this week!" as she flew past.

Several students are using the Popplet App on the iPad to think through books. They are brainstorming thinking, ideas, etc. and are really pushing themselves. Since Popplet invites collaboration, many kids are working together to do this type of thinking.

Kids are playing lots of games and learning a great deal in the process. Games we've added this year that have become popular are Qwirkle and Make N Break Junior. Next week, we'll add 4 Way Countdown. Set has also been extremely popular this year. We finally have several sets of games cataloged and with indoor recess happening more often now that it is November, kids are beginning to check these games out for recess time.

Kids are excited about QR codes. I introduced them a bit and have them sitting around the room a bit. This week, I had 6 QR codes that extended thinking around BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY by Melissa Sweet. After reading the book, kids were invited to use iPods or iPads with QR readers to visit various sites if they wanted to dig deeper--Melissa Sweet's author site, an interview with the author about the book, the Macy's Day Parade website, and a video on how marionettes work are a few options kids had. We also have baskets with QR codes from past lessons that are available in the library. Kids are noticing QR codes out in the world and are bringing those in to share when they find them. It is fun to predict where online they might take us and then to test that out!

Our kids are using building toys in new ways. Flexeez are a new building toy that has become popular. It is fun to see the level of sophistication grow as the time kids have with the toy grows. They are creating some amazing things. One of the things that is happening is that kids are beginning to share with others in new ways. After showing the kids the website I had recently discovered for Straws and Connectors, another favorite building toy, and sharing the "Instructions" pdfs, a few kids began putting together their own sets of instructions to designs they created. These will be posted online soon.

2 groups of students decided to create a series of podcasts for the younger students in our school. They are using Garage Band to create podcast read alouds of several books that will be posted on our website. The first few are basic but they have plans to include sound effects for the next one.

Several book matches were made this week. One of our Wimpy Kids fans is reading WONKENSTEIN and is ready to begin recommending it by creating posters for the library.

A 5th grader happened to pop in the library while 3rd graders were trying to figure out the loops on garage band as they thought ahead to their book trailer. The 5th grader took a few minutes to share the "tricks" that he knew with this group of boys. Plans were made for a future recess time lesson for the younger kids to learn more garage band tips from our 5th grade expert.

We used Wallwisher to record questions we had about our online reading this week. Students loved the tool and saw lots of possibilities.

We used Wordle to think about what we understood about research. Each of the 4th and 5th grade classes brainstormed words they thought of when they thought of research. We turned each set into a wordle. Then each group was able to look at all of the wordles to see how their thinking might change and grow based on others' definitions/thoughts about research. I had never used wordle in this conversation-starting way but it was a great way to build talk and connect ideas between classes.

JOG THE WEB is a new favorite tool. I have used it to connect information for students. We now have a few kids who are beginning to create their own sets of sites on a topic.

Our fall book fair was the biggest ever. Kids bought lots of books. And they bought good books. The way they are thinking about their reading lets me know that they are building habits of lifelong readers. They come in asking for authors, topics, books like another, etc. They have become very purposeful about their book choice strategies and that showed up at bookfair. One exciting thing that I noticed was that kids continued to talk about the books they purchased at book fair for weeks.

Many new Pigeon stories began this week. A few kids chose to write new versions of the pigeon story and they are quite hysterical, as you can imagine. I love that young children will work for days over time on projects that matter to them.

It is a funny place, the library. When you look around each day, the learning happening isn't always obvious. The learning in the library rarely stands alone. It is a place for kids to connect the learning that they do all day and to explore new interests. I am lucky to work in a school where kids have great opportunities in the classrooms and beyond. I am going to try hard for the rest of the year to focus more on all of the things that are happening in the library than on the things I can't get to. I am already looking forward to the next several months in the library. I can see that we are in a good place to move forward. Lots of learning happening when kids are invited to try new things.