My Online Reading Life

I haven't felt like I've been reading a lot lately.  With the projects and things I have going on, I haven't been able to lose myself in a book like I usually do.  But then I read Donalyn Miller's Nerdy Book Club post about reading fast and short and realized that I have been reading a great deal of short texts. I thought I'd share some of my recent favorites.

I am a huge Carry On, Warrior fan and try to read Glennon Doyle Melton's blog daily. I especially loved this recent post and think it speaks to teachers too.
It's Just as Simple and As Hard as This by Glennon Doyle Melton at Momastery

I am a huge fan of theSkimm and I read it daily. But I recently discovered Skimm Guides. These writers help us out if we haven't been keeping up on an issue that seems important. They've written guides to summarize the issues and what is happening with them. They are so helpful. This week, I read the Guide explaining "The Supremes" and all the current work the Supreme Court has ahead.  It was an easy way to catch up and now I feel pretty smart about it!  (If you do not get the daily theSkimm newsletter, I HIGHLY recommend it. You will feel smarter every day because of it!

I laughed out loud at this Buzzed article--How To Know You've Found Your Teaching BFF. How would we survive without these fabulous colleagues who get us through some stressful moments and who make our jobs even more fun!

Bud the Teacher recently moved to a new role and I love the challenge he gave himself. I think we can all benefit from reading it and giving it a try.

Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia always has wise words and asks hard question. His post What If is an important one.

I've been exploring the new Stenhouse book, Well Played online.  I love the preview feature and have been getting to know the book before it is available. I have trouble reading the entire thing on the site but do like the opportunity to read short pieces as I think about how the book can help me as a math teacher.

Wordless News is a site I learned about from Kristin Ziemke during her All Write session. It is a great site I've been exploring--love the concept and am thinking of ways to use it with kids.

Gardening

Summertime is gardening time for me. Those are my beets (first time I've ever planted beets -- can't wait to roast the root and saute the greens) and my basil (aka Pesto Plants). I also have tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic and onions (also the first time for those), rosemary, parsley (mostly for the black swallowtails), and chives. In the community garden where my environmental club has a plot, we have tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, carrots, onions, and beans.

Here are a couple of great books for the gardeners out there:

Jo MacDonald Had a Garden
by Mary Quattlebaum
illustrated by Laura J. Bryant
Dawn Publications, 2012
review copy from the public library

This picture book follows the traditional rhyme (I dare you to read it without singing it!), but substitutes sun, soil, worms, seeds, water, bird, plants, food, treat, and when winter comes, rest.

There is wildlife hidden in the illustrations. In the back, Quattlebaum includes information about the plants and animals and gardening.

EIEIO: How Old MacDonald Got His Farm
by Judy Sierra
illustrated by Matthew Myers
Candlewick Press, 2014
review copy -- gift from a fellow gardener

In this version, Old MacDonald starts with a house and a big back yard -- a yard that takes a lot of mowing. So much mowing that he gets a goat. After the goat, MacDonald gets a chicken. But not just ANY chicken! This one has a diploma, a suitcase monogrammed with LRH, and a plan that includes improving the soil, planting, and selling the harvest to the neighbors! In the end, Old MacDonald has an urban garden with no less than seven raised beds, plants in containers (and an old bathtub), and rows of grapevines and sunflowers. It's a new vision for what a yard can be. EIEIO.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is Here!

The Farmer's Away! Baa! Neigh!

by Anne Vittur Kennedy

Candlewick Press, 2014

As the farmer drives away from the barn on his tractor, the farm animals (and other assorted animal friends) can be heard exclaiming, 

neigh neigh baa baa quack quack tweet
arf oink ree ree cluck cluck cheep!

And then the fun begins! The animals take a float trip down the river, have a picnic, ride a roller coaster, go water skiing, fly in a dirigible and have a formal evening dance. But all good things must come to an end. Dog alerts the animals

arf! ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF! afr! arf!
ARF! arf! afr! ARF! arf! ARF! arf!

And all (well, almost all) are back in place by the time the farmer has parked the tractor in the barn.

This delightful book, as you can probably tell from my two quotes, is told all in rhyming animal noises! As with all the best picture books, there is as much (or more) of the story going on in the pictures as in the text. You'll have as much fun reading this one aloud as your audience will have listening and joining in!

Just like the farmer is away from the farm, I am away from the blog today. Share your link via Mr. Linky and I'll look forward to reading all of your posts when I am home from the All Write conference on Saturday!

An InLinkz Link-up

Live Photo Blogging From the All Write Conference!

Georgia Heard on Writing Nonfiction through Mentor Texts

"Mentor texts help writers envision the kind of writer they can become"

"We have to make the distinction between NF books to teach writers about craft & those we use for research."

Listening to Jennifer Serravallo talk about Goal-Directed instruction.

Oops! We've been so busy learning in our sessions that we forgot to take pictures and blog! Here we are downtown at Mud Love!

Making Comics with Bitstrips

Near the end of the school year, I introduced my students to Bitstrips. "Introduced" means I showed them where to find all the tools, gave them the login code and got out of the way.

After spending a ton of time creating their avatars, they got down to the (funny) business of making comics. You can imagine that with an available background of a bathroom, there were plenty of cartoons that would appeal mostly to a 10 year-old sense of humor. What surprised me the most were the comics that captured a moment in our classroom

or a moment in their lives

or something completely random that shows they were playing with the tools and wound up making something that made some kind of sense!

Every year, I have students who read graphic novels and want to make their own in writing workshop. I've never had success supporting these students because of the limitations of students to draw their own stories, the limitations of the digital tools I had tried in the past, and the lack of an accessible mentor text for beginning graphic novelists.

I think this coming year might be the year of the student-created graphic novel. Instead of renewing the three subscriptions to magazines no students in my classroom have read for the past two years, I am going to pay for a subscription to Bitstrips (digital tool -- √).

And I'm going to share this book (mentor text -- √) with my writers as a graphic novel/comic strip mentor text:

G-Man: Learning to Fly

by Chris Giarrusso

Image Comics, 2012

The book starts with a longer story, but the ones I really want to share with/study with my students are the 1-2 page "Comic Bits" and the two-panel "Mean Brother/Idiot Bother" strips. Every budding Kazu Kibuishi has to start somewhere, right?

Poetry Friday -- Intention

INTENTION

by Kay Ryan

Intention doesn't sweeten.

It should be picked young

and eaten. Sometimes only hours

separate the cotyledon

from the wooden plant.

Then if you want to eat it,

you can't.

Note to self: don't pave the roads to anywhere with good intentions. Act, do, decide, speak, be...without hesitation.

Jama has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Jama's Alphabet Soup. 

The July-December roundup schedule is now complete! Thank you, Irene, for taking the Christmas Day roundup!

Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall by Anita Silvey

I love Jane Goodall. I love Anita Silvey. And I love National Geographic Kids.  So, UNTAMED:  THE WILD LIFE OF JANE GOODALL was a book that I HAD to preorder so that I had it the minute it was available!  I am so glad I did! I spent much of last evening reading this amazing book!

I don't think there can ever be enough books about Jane Goodall. She is one of my very favorite people to read about.  Even though I have no desire to work outside or to do anything close to the kind of work Jane Goodall does, I see Jane's story as one that invites all of us to make a difference in the work in a way that matches who we are and what our passions are.   I am fascinated by so much of her work--how she discovered her passion, how her passion evolved, how she changed so much about the ways that animals are observed and that she continues to have such a strong voice in the world.

Here are some of the things I loved:

-The foreword is by Jane Goodall and she tells a bit about her life and then gives a personal invitation to join Roots and Shoots.  It is a great message to readers and a great way to begin this book.

-The photos in the book make me happy.  There are some that I've seen before and others that were new to me.

-The book is chronological and starts with Jane's childhood with some facts I already knew from other books and movies. But there were new stories and I felt like I got to know Jane Goodall a bit better--what her childhood was like and how supportive her mother was in her life.

-I loved the chapter on Gombe and the work there but I mostly loved how well the book explains how and why Jane Goodall really has become a celebrity and why her work is so important. I think for young readers, the writing will allow them to see the impact of her work and also understand why it matters.

-There was a section about how scientific observation has changed since Jane Goodall was in Gombe and how technology has made things easier and more efficient.

-There was lots about the Chimpanzees and their personalities and the book includes a Gombe Family Scrapbook at the end--sharing some info about several of the chimps Jane knew.

-The book expanded on what I already knew about Jane and spent lots of time talking about her current work with animals and the environment.  It was interesting to read about the work she is doing to protect chimpanzees being used for research as well as those in zoos.

I really LOVED this book and I think kids will too.  This book was longer than I expected which made me happy.  I am thinking it is perfect for 4th through 8th graders. But I think it definitely has a place in my 3rd grade classroom.   The photos will draw children in but the writing will is done in a way that makes the work of Jane Goodall accessible to young readers. So excited about this book!

Chris Lehman will be Speaker at 2015-2016 Literacy Connection Events

Mark your calendars now!

The Literacy  Connection is happy to host Chris Lehman as our 2015-2016 speaker. As we do every year, we'll host a yearlong study around a professional book. This year, the book will be Falling in Love With Close Reading.  The year will kick off on Saturday, October 3 (in Dublin, Ohio) with a full day session with Chris.  There will be 2 after school sessions offered for those wishing to participate in the yearlong study. Then we will end our year on Saturday, March 12 for another day with Chris Lehman.

I love these events because they start great conversations with colleagues and friends. I wasn't able to hear Chris speak at the Dublin Literacy Conference but everyone who heard him said that his work in close reading is great for all grades K-12.

So, save the date--you can pick and choose the days you want to attend, or like many teachers--attend all 4 for this yearlong study.

More info to come but as you are thinking about your own learning for the 2015-2016 school year, this might be one you want to add to your calendar!

Slice of Life -- The Power of Moments

I wrote a blog post last August about our "failed" fly fishing trip to Vermont. I decided that I wasn't going to let one big expectation for this school year determine whether or not it was a good year. I made the choice to capture one shining moment every day, all year long. I bought myself a little purple journal, and every day I "caught a fish." What a gift I've given myself! Moments that would have been lost in the swift current of the flow of time are saved there for me to look back on and remember. It was a great year, and I lived it one day at a time.

My students and I captured moments every week when we created our "Top Ten" for the weekly newsletter I sent to parents. I have those newsletters archived on my class website.

On Tuesday, in the silence after we clapped the fifth graders out of the building and cheered the buses out of the parking lot, I wrote this Top 10 for the school year:

10  Our Friday routines (Poetry Friday, Top 10 and newsletter, blogging, Genius Hour), including "LUNCH!" and the laughter that brought us every week.

9  The list of read alouds on the closet door. We shared so many great books, and spent an hour finishing our final read aloud on the last day of school.

8  Our "words to live by." I loved that wall full of inspiration.

7  One Little Word. I hope the students will choose another word to live by each January. One word is so much better than a whole list of failed resolutions.

6  Our weird math schedule. At first it was so awkward to have 10 more minutes of math after related arts. But with time and flexibility, we worked that 10 minutes for all it was worth. I need to remember not to get hung up on things that don't work out the way I planned. I need to be flexible and creative and make the most of what I'm given!

5  Book clubs. The conversations and learning were priceless.

4  Open-ended ("rich") math problems. My learning curve for math instruction went steeply up at the end of the year when I started designing my own math problems, rather than finding them online. I can't wait to continue improving my math instruction next year!

3  Choice in writing workshop. The writing the students did at the end of the year, when they could choose their genre and topic, was phenomenal. I need to figure out how to build choice time into writing workshop throughout the year in between our mandated units of study.

2  Genius Hour. What a grand experiment this was! I think most of the students would put it at #1 in their own Top 10 for 5th grade. It was one of the best risks I've ever taken.

1  My class. It took longer than usual for this class to gel as a community, but perhaps it was because that gel didn't come easily or early that it made it so much sweeter when it finally happened. This group was filled with such an amazing collection of smart, funny, quirky, sensitive, creative, helpful, talented, honest, enthusiastic...characters. I am a better person for having spent the year with them.

Stenhouse Blogstitute is Coming!

Stenhouse's popular summer PD Blogstitute will celebrate its fifth year this year! 

Starting a week from today, on June 15th, head over to the Stenhouse Blog for a series of posts from Stenhouse authors -- two per week -- "designed to challenge your thinking and share new ideas that you can incorporate into your planning for the next school year." 

Click here for details!