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..."

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.