Dublin Conference

We love road trips and visiting new places...so Mandy and Cheryl are very excited about the Dublin Literacy Conference (which you can read more about here and here) on February 26! Not only do we get to meet favorite hero authors and illustrators like Wendy Mass, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Brian Pinkney, and Kelly Gallagher, but we get the honor of sharing some things we are doing in our classrooms...just around the corner! We are always looking for innovative teaching strategies to share with our students and can't wait to visit Ohio!

During our presentation we will be sharing a few of the workstations that we incorporate into our middle school language arts classrooms: travel, comics, fairy tale, and bookmaking. These are stations we've developed based on our personal interests and the interests of our students. These are some of their favorite stations to visit and we're looking forward to sharing these bits of our classrooms with everyone. We will be bringing student samples, photographs, & portable stations. We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Please write

I just finished this with my 5th graders today.  We read a few pages everyday before lunch and then they would giggle their way down the hall.  Ms. Wurtz hides a notebook in the room with a note telling the first to find it to "have fun", "talk to each other", & "sign your name."  Well, needless to say, things don't quite work out... at first.  My students really got the humor & I was happy when they pointed out how they could tell which character was writing based on the word choice.  The book ends with an imaginative narrative the students work together to create, & my class commented right away that it reminded them of the writing we've practiced all year for their state writing assessment (just a few short weeks away!!!)  Please Write in This Book was a perfect read for this group!  Just hearing them laugh everytime I said "posterior", yes meaning bottom, made it worth reading.  The book is perfect for sharing about voice, writer's notebooks, & imaginative narratives.  I love Mary Amato's website!  She has lots of neat stuff that I know students will like navigating.
My favorite part of the day?  When one of the boys looked up at me & said, "That would be so cool if you hid a book like that!"  My response?  "How do you know I haven't?"  Because, of course I have!!!!  Cannot WAIT for them to find it!

return

Today was the first day back after Christmas break.  I had fun sharing the books I'd read over break and hearing about my students adventures.  One book I read was Killer Pizza by Greg Taylor.  Definitely a killer book!  My 7th graders asked for it to be their new read aloud & I was more than happy to oblige.  It has a little bit of everything... thriller, suspense, comedy, romance.  I'm anxious to get their take on it.  The prologue completely hooked them! 
I read 14 chapter books over break.  I'm still sorting through them in my head & saving them for another post later this week.
Happy New Year!

Snow day!!

Ahhh, snow days! Time to tackle the "want to read" stack that has been patiently waiting for just the day. Cheryl is in the middle of Ingrid Law's Scumble, her companion book to Savvy. Once again, Law has come through with rich characters like Marisol, Mequite, Rocket, Fish, Gyspy, Fedora, and Ledge. Her way with words is truly unique as the story is told by newly, thirteen year-old Ledge, "If I were invisible, Mom wouldn't know that I'd ruined my clothes skidding to catch the falling jar. I wouldn't have to be Ledge the not-so-supersonic runner, or Ledge the have-to-be perfect kid all the time. I could anyone I wanted to be, because nobody would be watching." Ledge is not happy with his new "savvy" that he has received, or the fact that there is a curious Sarah Jane who is trying to blackmail Ledge with Grandma Dollop's wedding jar. Can't wait to finish.

Mandy was able to finish two books. The first was Sabotaged the third book from Margaret Peterson Haddix's "The Missing" series. The time travel & historical mysteries aspect of this series is what makes it particularly intriguing to Mandy. Althought she enjoyed this third installment, dealing with the Roanoke Colony, the time travel details may bog some readers down. Jonah and Katherine find themselves on yet another journey through "broken" time. It's up to them, Andrea, and Dare (a dog) to fix time. And, of course things don't go smoothly for them!

The second was falling in by Frances O'Roark Dowell. Isabelle Bean has always felt different from everyone around her. On a seemingly ordinary day she opens a seemingly ordinary door and falls into an anything but ordinary world. She soon discovers that the village children flee from The Witch on a regular basis. Along the way Isabelle pairs up with Hen, a local girl. Throughout the story the narrator pauses the narrative to address the reader. It gives some insight into the story and is an interesting twist. Isabelle and Hen soon discover there is more to the story of The Witch and find themselves in the middle of a life-changing turn of events.

Guess what tomorrow is? Another SNOW DAY!!!!

Title I Conference

Today we had the honor & privilege of presenting a session to fellow educators at the East Tennessee Title I Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We chose to share our experience with Expedition Days. Our Expedition Days take place every Wednesday. This is a day set aside for exploring informational text. Students use Wonder Books as a place to organize & gather their discoveries. They also use their books to keep track of topics of interest.

If you are just visiting our blog after attending our session... welcome & thank you! We hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did. Be sure to check back every Wednesday for more expeditions!

Jerry Pinkney

Tuesday evening we had the amazing opportunity to hear the award-winning Jerry Pinkney speak at Saint Anne Catholic School in Bristol, Virginia. This marked the third time we've been able to hear an author speak in conjunction with the school's Judith Rosenfeld Memorial Author's Day Program. Mr. Pinkney began his presentation by sharing the role art played in his early life. While sharing about growing up in a small house with a large family he talked about how his "private space became the space of a sketchpad." He went on to share that he enjoys talking walks and looking for inspiration (an idea Mandy has recently been reading about in poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge).

We both enjoyed hearing about the process of story from an illustrator's perspective. He shared how he always strives to suggest emotion and invite the reader into the action. "To capture feeling and emotion is a different investment than action." Do we not try to share these same ideas with our students and their writing?

We can't wait to share his personal stories about his art with our students.

What we've been reading...

Cheryl and Mandy were counting down the days for Mockingjay's release. Suzanne Collins nailed it in her final book of the Hunger Games series. Her compelling characters, endless surprises, and a perfect ending made it hard to let go when the book was finished. Her intensity and tension builds throughout the novel, finally subsiding on the last page.

Patrick Carman's long awaited Crossbones was a hit with seventh graders, and the frenzy continues as they wait for the final installation of the Skeleton Creek series.

A favorite classic, "Priscilla and the Wimps," Richard Peck's first short story, provides many hours of classroom discussion about bullying. I love listening to the giggles and watching shocked faces as the realization of the last line sinks in.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is packed full of amazing "I wish I could write like that" language! She says, "You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky..."