Donalyn's New Book-Reading in the Wild

I feel like I can call her Donalyn, because I feel like I know her just from reading her books. I haven't been so excited for a package from Amazon since the last Game of Thrones came out on DVD! :)

I am not even exaggerating when I say the Book Whisperer changed me as a reader. I think I've told this story before, but I'm going to bore you with it again. :) I loved reading as a child and as a teen. My mom read us daily-- the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe series/Beverly Cleary/Judy Blume. We made frequent trips to the public library-my sister and I both learned to read before we were 3. As a teen I remember reading while sitting outside my homeroom before school started and through study hall. There are books that I have read with characters that still haunt me today. As I got older and I think having to read more for work, reading just wasn't fun for me anymore. A confession: I went several years after college without reading any books at all. *gasp*

In the Book Whisperer, Donalyn's passion for reading was truly palpable--I was a bit jealous of that. Maybe I was missing out on something. So I would challenge myself to read a book in a week or read 5 books over the summer (I'm actually a pretty slow reader so that was a challenge for me).  I would even listen to them in my car (which I know some people don't count, but I count it-listening to the Book Thief in a German accent was better than I ever could have done in my head!). This past summer I almost made it to 10 books! I carry a book in my bag now at all times- waiting rooms, jury duty-it's always there if I have some extra time. My puppy loves to sit in the front yard and just watch the world go by, I will take my book out there and read while she does so (my neighbors probably mistakenly think I'm actually a very literate person). I'm on Goodreads now and even post on Facebook when I have a good title to share. I have tried for the past several years at my school to get a book club going (to no avail)---but I feel like I'm part of a reading community again! 

We had training this summer where we heard lots of statistics, but the one that stuck out most to me was that out of the teens they surveyed, only 30% read for enjoyment! I find that so sad. So this book was a good read for me, addressing how we can fix that. A couple of things that Donalyn points out that I completely agree with. Kids are learning to love reading "in spite" of schools. All those reading logs and reading passages-are we truly instilling a passion for reading in our kids that way? We recently adopted AR and I'm having a hard time encouraging their competitive spirit to get points and preventing them from getting burnt out. I don't like the idea of how they roll their eyes when they read a book and it's not on AR-I read this for nothing! Um, did you like the book? Yes. Well, then it wasn't for nothing. Some will page through a book and go take the quiz without really reading it. I found some ideas in this book to help me fix that.

I'm going to have the kids share more about the books they read, make commercials for books, give them time in class to make recommendations to their friends-discussing books is half the fun of reading. I also now have a new way for my book club kids to track what they read-that was always a very difficult thing for me.

One thing she advocates is reading aloud to your students-- which if you read my blog at all, you know I'm a huge proponent of that myself. I read chapter books to my kiddos and sometimes we get so invested in characters it's actually hard to say good-bye to them. She gives good advice about choosing the books you read to your kiddos. She had good suggestions for how to model even your thinking when choosing a book and deciding to abandon it if need be (I loved the anecdotes she had from her students). My kiddos are just starting to self-select when they go to the library (do you know how many copies of books about wrestlers we have in our library book basket right now? :) I think I've always taken it for granted, that other than telling them to look at the reading level-I never really taught them about how to go about choosing a book for themselves. Making sure they understand how to make time to read. And giving students time to read independently, which I have been doing more of ever since I read her first book. 

We took advantage of the still spring-like weather at the beginning of the week:

Overall, I definitely think the advice is skewed more to middle/high school teachers and I did like the first book better-- but I was definitely inspired again with some new ideas to try so I think it's worth reading, especially if you liked the Book Whisperer.

Turkey Rigor

Thanksgiving is quickly approaching (thanks Captain Obvious, right!?)! We haven't had a day off since September 13th, so needless to say I think the students and teachers have started their countdowns. :)

So as I plan for the upcoming weeks, I thought I'd share my ideas for spicing up those Thanksgiving activities with a little bit of rigor, it was actually harder than I thought it would be to come up with ideas:

1) New uses for pilgrim hats or cornucopias.

2) Rules for being a turkey (and not turkey on the dinner table turkey, but we learn about wild turkeys).

3) Critical thinking questions: What would have happened if the Pilgrims had not made the voyage over? Would Native American culture be different? Our culture?

4) Compare the perspectives of a house and a tipi.

5) Changes over time-comparing a pilgrim or Native American child to themselves today

Legend of the Bluebonnet Extension

Of course, being in Texas, we have to do the story The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie DePaola. 

This is a pic of my sisters (yes, I said sisters-they are my mother's children-when I come over they say "Sissy's here!") in the bluebonnets here in Texas.

 I really like this story because the message is one of unselfishness. I asked the kids to think of their most prized possession and what would grow from it if they buried it in the ground.

bubbles and envelopes....

Free-Writing

I know we give our kiddos lots of opportunities to read independently on their level-but do we give them enough time to just write independently?  I can remember being in one of my all-time favorite classes, a Themes class my senior year in high school. I didn't like when we just had to write stories without that prompt, but I know that it made me a better writer. Learning strategies to be able to break through that writer's block I think is very important.

On Fridays, I like to incorporate art into our lessons. One way I justify that is through language arts objectives. See, they paint something and then write a story about it. I was so busy trying to keep track of the wet paintings and cleaning up spills, etc. that I really wasn't monitoring what they were writing like I usually do. When they were done, they put it in our basket for finished work and moved on to workstations. I took their papers home with me to grade and was really, really impressed by some of the stories they came up with! They are using titles and adjectives (without really any reminders about that)-they are creative. So I know it's hard to read their writing in this format-but I just had to share!

I talked to them about Seurat and one of my favorite paintings of his:

We tried painting in that same style:

So cute--she means "dusk". :)

My painting is a vase...

We've been working on adding suspense!

She was having so much fun mixing the primary colors!

I made flying ice cream and a rainbow.

...the rainforest and the trees and roses.

Once there was an enchanted forest that had fairies that sparkled and moves as they walked. :)

Teacher in a butterfly sunset-one not raining day ;) a sunset, bu she had to leave for a meeting. She got there and she never saw it again. But she saw a new one every day and she was happy! :)

 Once there was a tree and he was lonely.....

Gratitude

I ran across this article yesterday:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/

I know especially this time of year, we think a lot about things we are grateful for...but I wonder what would happen if we expressed gratitude for other people every day of the year! I love the story in the article about the school where this worked. There are statistics that say something like 75% of people feel unappreciated in their jobs...I think that probably goes double for teachers! I know we all put in so much extra time and effort (not to mention money) planning activities or facilitating for clubs and often it seems to go unnoticed. I came in to my room after dismissing my after school Journalism Club meeting to find this on my from one of the students-she must have written it as they were lining up:

It's nice to be appreciated! :)

I try to model that for my kiddos as well. This year, I posted an example earlier in the year, we started gratitude journals-I love reading their entries. We make things for our support staff on the holidays and I am a big fan of thank-you cards (I blame my mother-that was always a required activity after receiving gifts from relatives!:). I write them to parents who show up for meetings or class presentations-last year 2 of my parents gave me a set of cards as an end-of-the-year-gift-I thought that was very meaningful. They obviously recognized that I would use them!

I know I probably don't say it often enough, but I'm incredibly grateful for you guys in the blogging community! I literally follow hundreds of blogs, but with some people I feel like I collaborate more with you guys than I do my own team at school! I get so much inspiration from the ideas put out there-it has definitely made me a better teacher. :)

Freedom....

I don't know why but that George Michael song just popped into my head, do you remember that one? I'm telling you my brain is like 75% song lyrics! :)

In honor of Veteran's Day I decided to have my kids write the answer to a very open-ended question---what does freedom mean to you? Now I know this is a tough concept for especially the young kids to understand, I think because they don't know any differently-they very much live inside a bubble. I often bring up the fact that believe it or not, people don't have the same freedoms we do everywhere. I was very heartened to learn that the kids in my student book club for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders had actually heard of Malala and knew her cause (have you read her book by the way, unbelievable the courage a little girl can have). 

We definitely have to work on things like handwriting and presentation (I really want them to love writing, so I'm really trying to find a balance for revisions-I hate to make them redo it over and over ), but I was happy with the variety of answers I got. We're making these into our first class book of the year!