At the Scenic City Literacy Conference, Lester Laminack emphasized that our students need to be "residents" of literacy land, rather than visitors or tourists content to walk along the edge. As the school year begins, our goal is to help our kids find the music on the page and fall into books. One way we do this is to hook them with powerful read alouds. We might choose a dependable author or a book in a series that makes them want more.







In The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller says, "...my life is marked by the road signs of my beloved books, each one symbolizing who I was when I read it, shaping who I have become. The uninitiated might say I am lost in my books, but I know I am more found than lost." Don't we want our students to be both found and lost in life changing books?







A book Cheryl began the 6th grade is Priscilla Cummings' Red Kayak. Her ordinary characters are faced with tough decisions. She creates the need for the reader to turn the page so eloquently and forces us to ask, "How does she do that?" and "How can we do that in our writing?"







From one of our favorite authors, Wendy Mass, Cheryl chose Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life for her read aloud for seventh graders. This book about friendship and finding what is lost is packed with memorable truths. Mass is an excellent storyteller and brings it home with, "finding what you've looking for is wonderful, the harder something is to acquire, the more satisfying it is when you finally find it."





Mandy started her 5th graders out with Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher. The characters and the writing in this book make a impact on students right from the beginning. Students can't wait to hear how the day without a teacher develops.





The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau is the book Mandy's 6th graders are enjoying first this year. This book really lends itself to teaching the basic concepts of character/setting/plot. Another reason Mandy choose this book was to introduce students to a series of books with which they may not be familiar. They will also be able to work along with Lina & Doon to decipher the mysterious message found in the book.



Skeleton Creek. Need we say more? Mandy's 7th graders came through the door on day #1 asking about these books. How do you say no to that?! Patrick Carman is a master of suspense that pull those middle grade readers right into the story. The format he has created by meshing written narrative and video narrative is pure genius.

Seeing the Blue Between

We are so excited about this project! (And the prospect of really focusing on the blog since school is well underway!!) This past spring we won a grant from our local Junior League (thanks ladies!). Our project is called "Seeing the Blue Between" taken from the book by the same title, edited by Paul B. Janeckzo. The grant allowed us to purchase a copy of the book for each of our 7th graders. We are spending a week on each poet... studying their advice to young poets, digging into their poems, noticing how they use words, talking and reading poems to each other, finding other poems by the same poet, and discovering who we are as poets.

On Mondays we read the poet bio found in the back of the book, read their advice, and read their poem(s). Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays are spent rereading the poems with talking partners (which is a fantastic tool to build fluency). We are finding that some poems lend themselves to certain mini-lessons that address grammar, some spark ideas for writer's notebooks, while others are simply enjoyed for the week. The plan is to wrap the project up this spring with a visiting poet. The details of that are still in the works, but we should know within the next few weeks who our visiting poet will be. We've participated in visiting author projects the past several years, but never with a poet. We would love to hear about some successful poet visits you may have had!

Our Friday posts will be devoted to sharing how the week went with our poetry and the blue our students helped to discover.

And so it begins...

Today was back to school day for teachers in our system, and our students will have their first day back on Monday. It's an exciting time of year... thinking of new lessons to try, new books to read, new pens & pencils to write with! We're both reminded of one of our favorite poems to use at the beginning of the year, "The Unwritten" by W.S. Merwin.


"Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught..."


Classrooms full of new students are kind of like those pencils. Who knows what brilliance will shine from them this year? They hold inside them words, ideas, & stories that have never been written, & quite possibly, never shared. That's one of the most exciting things about writing with students... to see them realize they have so much potential inside them! That they are indeed writers & have tremendous talent to share.

At The Carle gift shop we both purchased Take Joy by Jane Yolen and Mandy purchased The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton & illustrated by Tony Persiani. We can't wait to use both with students!

The Day-Glo Brothers offers lots of possibilities to use during workshop time. The illustrations have a retro feel to them, and move from black & white at the beginning to bits of day-glo colors as the story progresses. As soon as we got to the end, we knew it was a perfect book to model endings for young writers. We've both talked in the past about how endings are hard to teach. This book nails it! It will be especially helpful with our grade level research papers... helping students see how to wrap important details back together in an interesting & meaningful way. For our science friends there are two pages at the end that explain how fluorescence & daylight fluorescence work. The author's note (Mandy's favorite book feature, by the way) could also be useful during research time. Barton recaps the process of chronicling the story of the Switzer brothers for readers beginning with how his interest in the brothers began and walking through his research process for the book, including his use of primary sources.

Whirlwind to the north...

Our trip to the Boston area was so worth the long (long, long, long) drive! Wednesday we spent walking around Boston. Friday we explored both The Eric Carle Picture Book Mueseum and the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden. If you've not had the opportunity to visit either of these, just put them on your travel list now, because they are fabulous!!



Here are some pictures that sum up our trip...





Boston Common (in honor of our classroom visit with Louise Borden this spring), Bunker Hill, & the Make Way for Ducklings statue in the Public Garden.




As 2 teachers who love (or are slighty obssessed with) picture books we were in total awe of The Carle. From the moment we walked in our jaws were dropped on the floor. We even got to make a tissue paper collage in the art studio!





This cute little guy welcomed us to the library area. Wouldn't that banner be great in a classroom?!




Exterior and interior shot of The Carle. Eric Carle painted the four murals lining the wall. The gift shop, oh the gift shop... books upon books upon books! We were slighty overwhelmed at all the books... everything from picture books, chapter books, graphic novels, writing books, board books... they were EVERYWHERE! It was hard to choose, but we were both happy with our choices (which we'll talk about in our next post). Really, you HAVE to visit this place!



Yertle the Turtle, larger-than-life Oh, the Places You'll go, & the Grinch (with Cheryl trying to cheer him up)



This is the main sculpture... see how the base is a book? And, look at Thing 1 & Thing 2 flying off from the left! Dr. Seuss & The Cat in the Hat working away. Mandy and the Lorax.

This trip was a great way to wind down the summer. Not only did we soak up new & exciting information at our Choice Literacy workshops, but we got to visit 2 places inspired by greatness.