A Year of Reading Turns NINE!

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Will Clayton

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A YEAR OF READING! Our blog is NINE years old!

The thing we are most proud of in this nine-year run of blogging is that our blog has been a useful resource to teachers, media specialists, librarians, home-schoolers, readers, and writers around the world.

We each have lists of our own personal favorite posts -- both our own and each other's.

In honor of our blog birthday, here are our blog readers' NINE most popular posts of "all time:"

9. From 2011, Mary Lee's Home "Work" post, in which she shared a shift in her thinking about which kinds of work students do outside of school is most valuable and celebrated the most in our classrooms.

8. From last fall (2014), Franki's post New Baskets for our Third Grade Classroom. This just goes to show that our blog readers are always on the look-out for new books and new ways to think about organizing classroom libraries.

7. From 2012, Mary Lee's First Read Aloud of the Year post describes not just what she'll read aloud, but her criteria for choosing a first read aloud.

6. From 2010, Franki's 100 Things About Me As a Reader. Something as simple as creating such a list reveals much about you as a reader. Be inspired -- give this a try!

5. From 2006, the post that really launched our blog into the Kidlitosphere, our 100 Cool Teachers in Children's Literature post. We are up to 145 Cool Teachers (in order by author's last name).

4. From last July (2014), Franki's post about a new series of informational books, the Did You Know? series. Is this post popular because of the series of books, or because it is a common way to start a search? Who cares?!? Lots of people have seen this post!

3. From April 2011, Franki's Poetry Picnic post describing a week of poetry activities in the school library back when she was a media specialist.

2. From 2010, Franki's Pebble Go post. Pebble Go is a subscription-based online nonfiction tool for students in grades K-3.

AND OUR TOP POST FOR THE ENTIRE NINE-YEAR HISTORY OF THE BLOG IS...

1. From 2008, with over 100,000 hits, Mary Lee's Simile and Metaphor Poems post! Not surprisingly,  this post gets a lot of attention in the spring during Poetry Month, and when teachers across the country are reviewing figurative language before state testing.



THANK YOU, BLOG READERS, FOR BEING A PART OF THIS AMAZING CONVERSATION ABOUT BOOKS AND TEACHING, POETRY AND LIFE.