This week's post is brought to you by the first week of school, my daughter's first week of kindergarten and the public library. It was amazing to be back in the classroom last week, but man, was it busy! On top of the first week of school, our district hosted the Canadian Student Leadership Conference (CSLC) so we had almost 1000 high school students from all over the country descend just as we were trying to get up and rolling. To add to the fun, my principal, who is brand new to our school, was one of the organizers of the conference and Kristi and I both hosted 5-6 students in our homes; pretty sure none of us got much sleep at all last week! The books for this week are an assortment that have popped up throughout the week; they come from our first assembly (thanks Karen!), my daughter's recommendations and books that we took out of the public library in a moment of quiet just before the storm hit. Enjoy! Walter the Farting Dog (William Kotzwinkle & Glenn Murray) - Our new principal decided that a great theme for this particular start up was Happiness and in that vein she chose Walter the Farting Dog to read to the entire school. Well, the giggles and guffaws coming from 350 kids were definitely enough to inspire even the most curmudgeonly to smile. While I don't think that these books are particulary well-written (the story line meanders a bit aimlessly in an effort to maintain the joke), they certainly do make kids grin and giggle. A great choice for a just for fun read-aloud, a personal book bin book or perhaps even as a mentor text for older students who just don't know what to write about (after all, if you can write multiple books about a farting dog, you can write a book about just about anything). Tickle Monster (Josie Bissett) - This is my 5 year old daughter Maryn's pick. Without prompting she explained that she suggested it because after you read it you would probably want to tickle someone and that's fun. It is a very cute book that comes in a gift pack with furry blue monster hands with cut outs so you can stick your fingers through to tickle - fun! The rhyme in this book just rolls off your tongue as the Tickle Monster goes through all of the body parts he is going to tickle. A great one for working on prediction and rhyme with young students, as there are strategic pauses just before the monster announces which body part he is going to tickle. Beware though, you may have a giant tickle fight erupt in your room after reading this one! Silas' Seven Grandparents (Anita Horrocks & Helen Flook)- This was a random choice off of the bookshelf at the public library but wow, is it fabulous! My father puzzled for quite awhile over the logistics of having seven grandparents and my two daughters love all of the adventures the seven grandparents take Silas on. I love the fact that Silas' family will resonate in some way with almost every student in your class, as he has a truly multicultural set of grandparents who do such a wide variety of activities. The message is lovely too - while many blended families struggle over who gets to see whom when, Silas knows he is loved ("times seven") and figures out the perfect way to ensure that he gets to share that love equally. A great book for making connections about family and lifestyle and it's Canadian to boot! Clancy & Millie and the Very Fine House (Libby Gleeson) - This is another great book for connection, but also for transformation. It follows Clancy as he adjusts to moving to a new house; one that his parents love but that just doesn't feel like home to him. But when Clancy makes a friend, he discovers that his new house might just be ok after all. The illustrations are beautiful, with whimsical clouds that just beg for kids to notice them and laugh. Definitely a good choice for discussions about change, love and the important things in life. As an aside, in searching for the picture for this one, I noticed that Carrie Gelson, from There Is A Book For That, featured this one in Jan 2013. Great minds think alike! You can read her post here.
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What are your 3 favourite go-to sites for help/tips/resources in your teaching? My top 3 (well, 4) sites are perhaps not what one would consider the most scholarly or professional of locations for finding help/tips/resources but they are so incredibly useful that I can't possibly help but mention them. As long as you promise not to judge me, here they are: Why Pinterest? The range of resources available on Pinterest, plus the ease with which you can curate them and share your own content makes this one of my top sites for educational resources. While the resources you find are mainly links to blog posts and activities, it is not uncommon to find links to scholarly articles and websites. Pretty much your one stop shop for all things educational.
Why Teachers Pay Teachers? The quantity of high quality resources available on this site is staggering. If you know what you want, you can most likely find it here. A word of caution: just because someone made it all pretty looking and many people have purchased it does not make it educationally sound. Do your research first to be sure that what you are buying fits best practice and will ensure a great learning experience for your students. Why Facebook & Twitter? As mentioned above, there is plenty out there on the internet that may or may not be educationally sound. Facebook and Twitter provide a constant stream of excellent articles and blog posts; follow the right people and you will always have access to the best and brightest minds, working on cutting edge projects. Not to mention the fact that both sites are designed to constantly multiply the people that you are exposed to, resulting a steadily growing list of experts that you have daily, if not hourly, updates from. So much for monthly journals! Well, we're finally back to school! To celebrate, I want to share some books that are just great for back to school. I know that this may be a little late for some of you but they are still great books that can be shared at any time of the year. One Green Apple (Eve Bunting) is a beautifully written and illustrated exploration of the experiences of immigrant children in their new schools and countries. Told through the eyes of Farah, a young girl who speaks little English, it explores the thoughts and emotions that run through her head as she tries to understand a new language and a new culture. Not only wonderful for all of the connections some of your ELL students may make, it is also brilliant for transforming the thinking of your non-ELL students. Discussions stemming from this book will range from how to treat newcomers all the way up to a deeper understanding of the underlying similarities amongst all human experience. Truly a book for all ages. I Am Malala (Malala Yousafzai & Patricia McCormick). I ordered enough copies of this book for Lit Circles and I am so excited about it! By now, Malala's story is well known - a young woman standing up for her right to an education is shot at point blank range and lives to tell about it. I firmly believe that we need to help our students develop an understanding of the world around them and provide them with the tools to think critically about the issues. Books like this one are an excellent vehicle to begin those discussions. I am really looking forward to those discussions! A personal connection - our school has been actively involved in fundraising for Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan since it was started by a young woman in a nearby school. A natural fit, don't you think? Priscilla and the Perfect Storm (Stephie McCumbee). Switching gears entirely here, this book (and it's associated activity guide) is a great one for teaching emotional intelligence. In this book, young Priscilla is a perfectionist who has a tendency to lose it if things don't go as planned, catching every one around her in one of her "perfect storms". Through some coaching from her mom, Priscilla learns to control her emotions and prevent the storms before they happen. Lots of learning to be had here, particularly for those little ones who have difficulty controlling their emotions. Would work really well with The Way I Feel and The Way I Act (Janan Cain; see Kristi's previous post here) to create series of lessons about managing your emotions. I can just imagine some of the fun role-playing that could be done! The Garden In My Mind: Growing Through Positive Choices (Stephie McCumbee). From the same author as Priscilla comes this book about making positive choices. I like the flower garden on your head analogy - "grass withers and flowers fade every time a bad choice is made - and the fact that it gives some concrete steps for making positive choices. The final message is also a great one as it encourages students to help one another build healthy, beautiful gardens in their minds. It is a bit long, so might have to be broken up for younger students but there are lots of activities (either ones you come up with yourself or in an accompanying activity guide) that can be done to help students work on their garden. I would pair this one with one of Julia Cook's amazing books (to be featured at a later date!) - It's Hard to Be A Verb, My Mouth is a Volcano and more (also published by Boys Town Press) - to create another series of lessons, this time focused more on controlling your behaviour, rather than your emotions. For everyone going back to school this week, we wish you the very best. It will feel so wonderful to be back working with the kids again!
What does it mean to be present? - By Rana Diorio Sometimes a book falls into your lap that is perfect for the very moment that you are in. This happens to be one of those books. What does it mean to be present is a beautiful book for any age. It speaks beautifully to a problem so many of us face, busyness. Today as I was trying to write this, (while dealing with dinner, my children arguing, our oldest's grad meeting (Yes our oldest graduates this year!!) and my husband's business) I giggled thinking that this was the book I was going to be writing about. How do we remain present when life is moving at a break-neck pace? I can't wait to read this book to my kids (and my students) and have all the conversations that I know will arise. This book is a great one for Inference, Questioning and Transform. It also might just become my go to gift book, to both kids and adults alike!!
This week we bring you some great books about those hallowed repositories of the written language - libraries. As the kid of a career librarian, I have many, many fond memories of days spent "at work" with my mom, set free to roam the stacks, browsing through books at my leisure. My daughters love the library and beg to go to storytime on a regular basis. These books, culled from my mother's collection, are regular requests from my daughters when we visit my mom and dad. Each one has a different rhythm, a different feel but each one showcases the buildings that for me hold so many memories - the library. Library Lion (Michelle Knudsen) is such a beautiful, peaceful book with beautiful, peaceful illustrations. It opens doors to discussions about rules and rule-breaking, about acceptance of differences (after all, who lets a lion in to the library?!) and about making a mistake and making amends. Paired with other books, Library Lion really does lend itself to a wide variety of emotional intelligence themes. Used well, it could be an excellent book for transforming students' thinking about who belongs where, understanding and acceptance. The alliteration of the title just cries out for young writers to come up with their own places and animals (Starbucks Starfish, anyone?), creating the starting point for some fun and interesting stories, with equally fun and interesting drawings. Then again, it is such a calming read that maybe you just want to read it in that lull that comes right after lunch. The Library (Sarah Stewart) is a quirky little gem of a book. The main character, Elizabeth Brown, is not interested in any of the things "normal" children want to do; she only wants to read. And as she reads, and reads, and reads, she accumulates such a vast collection of books that she ends up trapped in her own house. What she does with those books is suggested by the titile. The rhythm of this book is wonderful and Elizabeth Brown will resonate with your little ones who always have their noses in a book. Again, great for discussions about differences and making a difference (a perfect pairing with Miss Rumphius!) and transforming thinking. Wild About Books (Judy Sierra) is just pure fun! Completely different in tone from the first two books, Wild About Books is for noisy reading, with a rollicking rhyme that just begs to be emphasized with the pacing and pitch of your voice. It's message is also different from the first two, as it focuses on learning to love reading and subsequently writing. It does open the door for discussions about differences though, as each group of animals choose to read different books. A great one for beginning of the year activities about choosing "just right books", it might even encourage your students to work on building their own classroom library! Have you got any favourites about the library? We'd love to hear them!
It’s Monday, and we are excited to participate in a weekly event with a group of bloogers who love books as much as we do. With school start up around the corner (we hope!), we have been revisiting some of our favorite books for setting the stage for learning in our classroom. Since our classroom happens to be Literacy classroom that the majority of our school visits we look for books that will appeal to a wide variety of grades. It’s Hard to be a Verb - Written by Julia Cook Definitely one of my new favorite finds (really anything by Julia Cook). Her messages are easy for kids to relate to and often have teachable moments at the back which are kid friendly. In It’s Hard to Be a Verb, a little boy with some “wiggle” issues learns to understand himself better. This is an excellent book for connecting as so many of our little people deal with the “wiggles”. My son LOVED that there was a book with a character that dealt with some of the same issues that he does. When I read this book to my students at the end of the year last year the connections that were made were excellent and the class ended up brainstorming their own ideas for dealing with the wiggles. This will definitely become one of my first reads to my students this school year (and every year).
The Kissing Hand - Written by Audrey Penn Definitely a tried and true story for the first days of school. Guaranteed to make parents cry and comfort kids. This adorable story about a little raccoon’s first day of school is an excellent read for Kindergarten. My grade one daughter still asks for a kissing hand every once and a while when she’s feeling worried about us leaving. The activities that you can do with this book are endless. A great book for connecting!
There are so many amazing reads out there and one of the things I love the most about my job is the discovery of new books. If only I had just a wee bit more time to read them!!
This week I wanted to share with you a couple of wonderful reminders of summer that are just fabulous for making connections, talking about word choice or simply just reading for enjoyment. Since I already mentioned My Brave Year of Firsts (which features some great summer activities like cliff jumping), I'm digging a little deeper in to my collection to find some beautifully written gems. The first book I want to share with you comes from Orca Publishing, a Vancouver-based publisher that puts out some fabulous books. Jessie's Island (Sheryl McFarlane), is a beautiful ode to life on one of BC's Pacific islands. For any child (or adult) who has ever visited (or lived!) on an "island in the middle of nowhere", Jessie's Island will bring back memories of days spent wandering the beach, paddling in the water or simply watching the boats go by. This book has such a peaceful rhythm to it - I find it very soothing to read! In addition, the language she uses lends itself very well to upper elementary lessons on word choice. If you are using this book as a mentor text for writing, be sure to check out Sheryl McFarlane's website, as her description of how she began writing this book is just about the perfect way to get kids writing themselves! Definitely an enjoyable what-I-did-this-summer reading and writing lesson could come out of this book. In much the same vein, Time of Wonder (Robert McCloskey) shares the story of summer on an island in Maine. The language in this book is absolutely beautiful as well and connections abound. Again, another great mentor text for word choice in the upper elementary classroom as McCloskey's text really brings to life the goings-on in the book (including the hurricane!). The only caution I have is that this book is quite long so you may need to break the reading of it in to parts for younger kids but there is fun to be had for them as well, finding all the treasures in the pictures and searching for the young children and their dog on each page. My final book is a great read-aloud for the grade 3-5 set. Summer in the City (Marie-Louise Gay, David Homel) tells the story of a young boy whose family (sounding very much like the Griswold's of National Lampoon's fame) decide to take a "stay-cation" and stay home this summer. Home is Montreal, QC, so this book is a great one for all those kids who spend their summers in the city, although the hilarious antics that happen throughout the book may be a little more than your students got up to this summer! I recommend it as a read-aloud because it is highly entertaining and I love to read funny books aloud; so much more fun, don't you think? Happy Reading!
Here in BC, we are on the Back to School countdown (I know some of you have already headed back and that seems really early to me. It is still far too hot here!). We have just a couple more weeks before we head back to Pro-D and classes so I thought it was appropriate for this week's IMWAYR post to feature some fun back to school books for the younger set (although we all know that those older guys love to be read a good picture book every now and again, right?!). My choices this week: My Brave Year of Firsts: Tries, Sighs and High Fives (Jamie Lee Curtis & Laura Cornell) - This is not only a great book for back to school but also for connecting. I bought it for my daughter because there are just so many things in this book that she has recently experienced or will be experiencing in the very near future. All kindergarten, grade 1 and grade 2 students should be able to find something to connect to in this book - first day of school, first lost tooth, first bike ride (and crash) and so much more! Although the rhyme is a bit awkward at times, it's still a fun book to read and the illustrations are a hoot! I even found a Bravery Certificate tie-in (check it out here) - super cute for using when the little ones do something new. Definitely a great read for your literacy and social-emotional development programs. The Kissing Hand (Audrey Penn) - This beautiful book tells the story of Chester Raccoon, who isn't quite ready to leave his mama and head off to school. Told simply and gently, this book will help kids understand that they can hold special people in their hearts and draw strength from them even if they aren't right there. Beware: this book might make you cry! Another great one for social-emotional development as well as connecting (although tread carefully if you have a few who are still struggling to adjust to being away from mom all day; you may have a few tears). There are lots of tie-in activities to be found on the internet for this one and there is an iPad/Android app with a read-to-me option for enjoyment at the Love to Read station or at home. Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready For Kindergarten (Joseph Slate) - Despite the fact that every time I read this book I wonder what kind of magician Miss Bindergarten must be to be able to get her classroom all ready in just a few hours before the first day of school, it is a fun read. The rhyming text bounces along and is simple enough that young children will be helping you out in no time, while the colourful illustrations provide lots to look at. I personally like how the alphabet appears in obvious and not-so-obvious ways; each animal's name (Adam Krupp, Brenda Heath, Christopher Beaker, etc) appears alphabetically but so does the type of animal (Adam is an alligator, Brenda a beaver and so on), giving kids lots of opportunities to practice the alphabet in a fun way. Again, lots of tie-in activities on the internet and, bonus, it's a series so your kids can be reading Miss Bindergarten books all year! On the adult reading side of things, I didn't get finished Emancipation Day (Wayne Grady) so I'm still working on finishing that one off. It is definitely getting more interesting though, so that should help (that and my upcoming flight and camping trip!). My friend invited me to join her book club and the choice was Think (Lisa Bloom), so I've started that one. My husband is getting a kick out of me reading it because I can't make it more than two sentences before I have to comment on something ridiculous Bloom has said (my apologies if you're a fan but man, I cannot handle a book premised on the idea that women need to appear less dumb that then uses words like "celebs" on a regular basis. The hypocrisy is killing me). That one doesn't get read right before bed!
For next week, I think we might continue the back to school theme a little bit, but maybe with some books for older kids. See you then! I came upon this great little meme while taking a stroll through the amazing Adrienne Gear's website & blog (if you aren't familiar with Adrienne Gear, you need to check out her Reading & Writing Power books. Trust me.). Hosted by Jen of Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee of Unleashing Readers, It's Monday, What Are You Reading is the YA offshoot of Book Journey's adult IMWAYR. And wouldn't you know, I had to jump on that train! And I'm dragging Kristi along with me. I mean, we love kid lit, right? (We love adult lit too but honestly, I'd rather write about kid's books.) It really is a perfect fit! So, from now on, Mondays = IMWAYR. For our first IMWAYR post, I would love to share a YA series that I just ripped through (I love camping for all the reading time!) and two wonderful picture books that my 5 year old got for her birthday. The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima was quite an enjoyable fantasy read. My best description of it is Diana Gabaldon for teens; all of the key elements are there: magic, romance, war. As with the Gabaldon series though, I felt it dragged on too long and could have been wrapped up in at least one book less. That being said, it was entertaining and kept me turning the pages.
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Welcome!I'm Bryn, teacher, mom, book lover, athlete. I am passionate about living life with my family, teaching and learning something new all the time. I hope you find something that speaks to you here on my blog and would love to hear from you too! Categories
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