Monday, December 1, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?


Be sure to visit Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers to learn more about the link up for It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 

Thanksgiving weekend is always a big reading weekend for me. So is Christmas break. I promised my students when I left, I would try and read a book a day, and I did. They looked skeptical, so I am excited to go back and tell them I accomplished my goal. But, I think, the bigger lesson will be to teach them that it was work. Enjoyable work, but work just the same. It isn't that I left them on Tuesday afternoon and had nothing to do for the next five days. 

No. 

I had family staying at our house that I wanted to visit with. 
We had four family gatherings that lasted a minimum of three hours each. 
I had to cook for said gatherings. 
Chris and I went to dinner another night with friends. 
We made a trek to a Christmas Tree farm to get our tree, then put it up and decorate it.
I finished Christmas shopping - online Thursday night, in stores on Saturday.
We went to lunch with family as well. 

It was a packed five days. 


So, how did I manage to read this stack? 
Reading was a priority. Each day I picked what book I wanted to read for that day and I read it. I still watched movies with my family - two - but didn't watch TV otherwise. I didn't use the computer as much. I read.

So today's lesson with my students will be that they can, indeed, read more than they think they can. It is about priorities. 

As for my reading, I highly recommend this stack of books. I can't say that there is one you should read over the others, they are brilliant. Several are ARCs from NCTE. Sorry about that. 

The Witch's Boy is out now. One of my favorite books of 2014. My review for it will be on Nerdy Book Club on Thursday. 

Santa Clauses is amazing. I'm going to share one poem a day with my students from now until Christmas. 

The three ARCs: Gone Crazy in Alabama, Read Between the Lines, and The Honest Truth are books you must purchase in 2015. So, so good. 

Next up in my stack is Egg & Spoon

Have a fabulous reading week!