Celebrate This Week - Christmas Break

I’m joining up with Ruth Ayres for her weekly link-up, Celebrate This Week. Check out all of the posts linked up at her blog HERE. Thanks for starting this, Ruth!

This is an easy week to celebrate. Parties at school, Christmas break, time with family - what's not to celebrate? I stayed late every day this week at school, and worked when I got home, so I could have my grading done and grades posted when I left. At home, gifts are purchased and presents are wrapped. We are ready for two weeks of relaxation and time together. I cannot wait.

ONE
I love celebrating with my fifth graders. They are so excited to give me gifts - and seem to know me pretty well. I got lots of items I could enjoy while reading: warm blankets, beautifully smelling candles, chocolate, hot chocolate, etc. There were beautiful scarves, mugs, gift cards to head out and eat (and not cook!) I also had several items with the Starbucks logo featured prominently, including all of these gift cards. I cannot possibly thank my students and their families enough. They make my job so much easier.

TWO
I think hard about what book I give my homeroom class, this year it was easy. With the sequel coming out in April, Rump seemed like the perfect gift to give. All of my three classes got the bookmark celebrating the brilliant Brown Girl Dreaming. I hope they might enjoy a little reading time over break.

THREE
We had our snacks and drinks in the classroom yesterday while watching my favorite Christmas movie of all time - Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. This came out in 1978 when I was four. My family used to watch it every year on PBS. When I moved out as a young adult, I purchased it as a video, replacing it with a DVD as technology changed. My own family has it as required viewing beginning on Thanksgiving night. Each year for the last few years I share it with my students. The simple storyline centers around friendship and kindness. While the kids usually look at me skeptically when I pull out Sesame Street, they laugh and smile as they watch the video. I love sharing this favorite with them.

FOUR
I am celebrating by beginning my holiday #bookaday as soon as I post this blog. I'm going to make some tea and curl up with The Lost Track of Time by Paige Britt. Perfect start to my Saturday.

FIVE
Finally, please enjoy this video from my students and me. Happy Holidays! 

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Be sure to visit Mentor Texts  or Unleashing Readers to learn more about It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Super excited that I've passed my summer #bookaday goal and I still have thirteen days left. Last night I finished Muckers, which was book 90 for me. My goal had been 74 this summer. Hard to believe it is almost over.

Here's what I read last week:

Goals for the rest of the week/ summer? Finish up at least three more professional books. (Yardsticks, Morning Meeting, and ??) Also, I have seven state award nominees left to read. They are first up this week. They are:

The Clockwork Three (currently reading)
Saving Zasha
Almost Home
Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Not Reading
Ungifted
Legend
Slob 

Happy Reading! 

Slice 26 - Book A Day

Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth from Two Writing Teachers. For the month of March we are challenging ourselves to write a Slice A Day.

About two years ago I joined friends on Twitter for #bookaday – a creation from Donalyn Miller. The idea was that throughout our summer vacation we’d read a book a day and post about them on Twitter using the hashtag #bookaday. I didn’t know if I could read that much – I mean I read a lot but to average a book a day? That seemed a bit crazy.

My stack from Spring Break

What I ended up discovering that summer was that the more I read, the more I wanted to read. Not only did I manage to read a book a day, I read more!

This past Spring Break I shared with my students my reading goals – to polish off some more Newbery books and read a book a day over break. Did I meet that goal? You bet! I had nine days off – plus a snow day added in for good measure. So ten days to read ten books – done! I ended up reading 16 books – a mix of novels, graphic novels, picture books, non-fiction, and poetry. Pretty good! I didn’t get to every book I wanted to read, but I did read a good amount.

Now begins my favorite part of reading all of these books – heading back to my classroom and book talking them to my students! I can’t wait to see what they’ve read and what they want to share. Who knows? I might have to add some more books to my “to read” list as well. 

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.

Holiday #bookaday, I adore thee. A time to try and power through some of the many wonderful books sitting around my house. And while I didn’t get through every book, I made a nice dent. Or would have if I would STOP. BUYING. BOOKS. Oh well!

So in the last week I read:

My favorite from this week would absolutely be The Raven Boys. WOW! What a book.

Up next I have The Peculiar. Beyond that, we’ll have to see what calls my name from my “to read” shelves.

Happy Reading!
Katherine

Slice of Life - First Day!

Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth from Two Writing Teachers.

First of all, with the begin the year craziness I didn’t get to post my “It’s Monday! What are you Reading?” post. Let me report that now I am officially done with summer and I read 114 books in my 86 days. WOO HOO! J I read  some excellent books this week with no way to pick a favorite, they all rocked. Here’s my week:

Today (Monday) was my first day of the school year. We had meetings all morning and the chance to work in our classrooms in the afternoon. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the first day for students and they will be in our rooms for ½ of a day, then starting Wednesday, we’re back full time!

Instead of writing a slice I thought I’d do a video of my classroom. I’ve done a photo tour before but thought I’d try a video. I still see a million things I need to do, but am eager to meet my students tomorrow. Enjoy! 

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.

I didn’t get a chance to post last Monday because I was hosting a book tour. So here are the books I’ve read in the past two weeks:

My favorites would have to be The Knife of Never Letting Go and Squish #3: The Power of the Parasite. Two very different books but wonderful in their own way.

On a side note, we had #titletalk last night and the topic was graphic novels. I took screen shots of some tweets from Colby Sharp and John Schu:

Truly, I could not agree with their statements more. I just wanted to put that out there for all parents and teachers that are concerned about their children/ students reading graphic novels. They are reading! And graphic novels are amazing. The amount of work you have to do to infer between panels is unreal. The pictures help the students visualize but they do have to read the words as well. My heart breaks when kids return graphic novels to me and say their parents said they couldn’t read “comics.”  And as teachers if we say we value choice in our reading programs, you cannot take away graphic novels from your students.

Beyond that my husband is an excellent example of what I see in my students. He was an excellent student in school, graduated from the College of Engineering at the U of I. He reads almost daily and a steady stream of comic books. The occasional book slips in but he devours comic books. He was the first person to recommend Bone by Jeff Smith to me, and that is where my purchasing of graphic novels began. Please give these books a chance. Your students will amaze you!

If you need a resource for teaching graphic novels, Terry Thompson’s Adventures in Graphica is wonderful. I plan on reading it again this summer.

Finally, I am beginning my summer #bookaday. My school got out for the summer May 25^th and we start back up August 20^th. By my count that is 86 days or 86 books. (My actual goal is 100). Here we go!