Lit Circle Love

One of my favorite and least favorite times of the year is when my literature and composition class completes a lit circle cycle.  As a teacher, I love the conversations around the books and how excited students get when a classmate brings up a point they hadn't thought about yet.  As a student, sister, friend, I hate that my life becomes even busier for the four weeks that I'm trying to keep up with all six or seven books my sttudents are reading.  However, as a reader, I love that I have a great excuse to put aside time to read six different books!  For our last lit circle cycle of the year, the books I'm reading are all award-winning or nominees. 

As a teacher or school librarian, any of the books below are worth checking out.  Shooting the Moon is an historical fiction novel that could tie into social studies content about the Vietname War.  Savvy and The Apothecary both have fantasy elements tied into and follow female protagonists.  Savvy is a great story for young girls who are just discovering who they are and how they fit into the world, while the The Apothecary is more of a mystery-to be-solved.  Check out the summaries from GoodReads below to find the best new fit for your library.


Shooting the Moon by Frances O'Roark Dowell
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1128364.Shooting_the_Moon?auto_login_attempted=true

 

Saavy by Ingrid Law
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2133795.Savvy
 



The Apothecary by Maile Meloy
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10481268-the-apothecary?ac=1

Simple as Symbaloo

Who knew life could be so simple with Symbaloo?  This on-line website allows users to "tiles" with links to all of your most frequently used websites and it's super easy to use! 
After getting a brief tutorial of Symbaloo's most basic attributes, I was able to join for free and easily had some of the most popular tiles for news, social media, weather, email, etc.  After quickly adding those links with just the click of a button, I could move on to making my Symbaloo more personal. 

By color-coding my tiles, I've been able to add websites that I frequently visit for both my home life and school life.  There's room for 60 different tiles on the first page, which I am quickly filling up as I add tiles I realize I want/need.  I'm amazed at the number of websites I visit in just one day!  For the more advanced users, tools like Webmixes are available and maybe someday I'll make one.

As an educator, I can never find a new technology without thinking how it will impact my students.  Since our district is beginning a one-to-one intiative where each student has a laptop in their hands on a daily basis, websites like Symbaloo are especially interesting.  The whole time I was creating my Symbaloo, I kept thinking how much my students would love and use this tool.  Then I realized, that our district has something very similar.  With http://stuview.unit5.org, students have a pre-made Symbaloo with instant access to websites and programs they frequently use.  The biggest difference is that they can't add tiles on their own.

Igniting a Passion for Reading

My passion for teaching reading has just gone through the roof because I finished reading Steven Layne's Igniting a Passion for Reading.  I've always known that educators who are passionate about books will often inspire that same passion in their students.  Steven Layne knows that too, so his book is full of easy things that teachers and/or librarians could do to get kids excited about books by sharing their own enjoyment. 

Because all of his strategies are amazing, I'll have to narrow it down to a few that I found especially useful.  The "First Read Club" is a a way to get kids to read the new books in a library.  If a student reads a new book first, he or she gets to write his name on a sticker that goes inside the first cover.
"Status of the Class" allows kids and the teacher to quickly hear what is being read in the room.  Each student stands up and says the title, author, and page number of the book they are currently reading.  The reason I love this idea is that it's possible for a student to hear upwards of 20 new titles in a matter of minutes.  It's a great way for kids to build up their "to be read" list. 

There are ton of other ideas in Layne's book - both for individual classrooms and the entire school.  Any teacher could benefit from reading this book, but I think a staff book club would be even better.  Then, all the educators in the building could discuss how it would work in their room.

#Tweeter in Training

Some teachers I eat lunch with have been talking about Twitter for the last month.  As a group, we love to hash tag things like #lovechocolate, #whereareyouspring, and #thingsyoushouldn'thashtag.  All this laughter and joking made me think that I should give Twitter a try, so this week I joined the world as a fellow tweeter.
Joining Twitter was pretty simple.  The website walks you through the steps and really encourages you to follow multiple people.  They have you add friends, celebrities or tv shows, and contacts in your email list.  My primary goal when "following" people was to add a few favorite authors and teacher mentors, but I also added my sister, Runner's World magazine, and Mythbusters:)  It's been fun reading the tweets and checking out the videos and websites people hyperlink.  Veronica Roth had some multiple tweets that caught my eye, and Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle have tons of ideas they're sharing.  Staying up-to-date with Goodreads and Twitter is definitely going to take time, but I think both are worthwhile because of the great resources and recommendations I'm getting.

  Here's a pic of my first tweet - No hash tags yet :)

Reading Rebecca Caudills

Our school is one of the many in the state that are a part of the Rebecca Caudill Award reading program.  Students in grades 4-8 read at least 3 books from an annual list of nominations and vote for the one they think is best.  Each year a new list of 20 books is posted on the programs website:  http://www.rcyrba.org/ and students have a year to read at least three books.  The Rebecca Caudill program is a big motivator for many students because they get to vote at the end and our school offers a party to students who read all 20 books.  The quality of books is also phenomenal and there is a lot of diversity with genres, plots, characters, so every student can find at least one book they really enjoy.  The winner for 2013 was the graphic novel, Smile  by Raina Telgemeir.  Also, the website is very user friendly, which makes it easy for librarians to register and promote the program within thier school.  Finally, students love that they are the ones who vote for the winners and are excited to read the winning novel if they haven't read it yet.

The nominations for 2014 were recently released, so my spring break goal was to read at least nominee.  Since I'm a runner, The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen appealed to me.  Any former track runner would be able to relate to this book.  The main character, Jessica, loses her leg in a terrible accident and goes through the trying process of learning to walk (and run) with a prothestic leg.  I really liked this book because I think any athlete could relate to Jessica even though she's a high school girl because the story really focuses on the problems with her leg, not typical high school drama.  I'm definitely going to recommend this book to a few of my track all-stars this year and my cross-country team in the fall.