Sunday, September 2, 2012

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?


 I’m joining Jen & Kellee (and many other bloggers) in discussing what we are reading this week. Join us! Go to their site and link up your own blog.



Week two of school is behind me and a glorious three-day weekend as well. The remnants of Hurricane Isaac have been with us here in central IL for the past three days, which has led to some delightful reading weather. I made it through the following books this week:




Hattie and What You Know First were rereads. I didn’t include every picture book I read this week but realized I had never review MacLachlan’s book on Goodreads, so I added it. Both books were brilliant the second time around. (Although MacLachlan’s is more like the tenth time)


Cardboard and Drama are both new graphic novels. My boys will love the action packed style of Cardboard. Drama is amazing. The story of a girl who works behind the scenes at her school’s theater department, this is a perfect middle school story.

The Poetry Friday Anthology is a perfect book for the K-5 teacher who’d like to incorporate more poetry into the week without a lot of time to do it. The book is organized by grade level with a poem per week for the entire school year – for each grade level – with plans! Brilliant!

Finally, Take Me to the River was given to me by one of my more adventuresome students last week. He told me it was his favorite book and begged me to read it so “we can talk”. J How can you say no to it. This is pure Hobbs – fast paced and action packed.

What’s on the reading horizon? Who knows? But, I feel I should own up here. On a previous blog post I said I wanted to be able to say “yes” to these questions each week to have a successful year. Note my answers on each:

·      Did I exercise five times that week? (Goal – three runs, two “other” workouts) Hmm. Does running up and down my 40 stairs to my classroom multiple times a day count? No? Then the answer is 1 workout for the past two weeks. FAIL.
·      Did I get a good amount of sleep five nights of the week? YES
·      Did I carve out time to do what Luke and Liam wanted to do? YES
·      Did I try to go out with Chris once every other week? Yes – 2 weeks ago.
·      Did I find time to read and write each day? Yes – almost a book a day and over eight blog posts/ articles written in the last two weeks.
·      Did I make cooking a great dinner a priority five nights of the week? Yes! And three additional meals cooked for my brother, his wife, and their new baby.
·      Did I feel good about my role in the classroom that week? So far, so good.

So I think I need to focus a bit on the exercise question. All the other ones seem to be doing well but I know if I let myself slide for too long, I will feel horrid and it will be harder and harder to recommit. So I’m promising you, my #IMWAYR friends, that I WILL EXERCISE this week. Please hold my feet to the flames! J

And now, off to read before bed. Happy Monday!