Amazing Speakers at IRA in Phoenix

The Two Sisters -- Joan Boushey and Gail Moser
I missed hearing them at the Dublin Literacy Conference on Saturday, so I went to their session on Monday morning! (I was completely absorbed in their talk -- and glad to even have a seat!! -- and I forget to take a picture. I borrowed this one from their Daily 5 website.)



IRA has a special interest group that is similar to NCTE's CLA -- the Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group. They sponsored a session titled Multiple Pathways to Global Literacy: Breaking Boundaries with Literature.

One of the featured speakers was Kashmira Sheth, author of Blue Jasmine, Keeping Corner, and other books featuring Indian characters.

Kadir Nelson spoke about how he became an artist, and how, more recently, he has become an author as well. He told us about a mistake in the painting of Slim Jones on the title page of We Are The Ship, but he made us promise we wouldn't tell, so I'm going to keep my word!




Nikki Grimes was inspiring, mesmerizing, passionate, and (not surprising) poetic. She has a new series of early chapter books coming out in May that looks really fun -- Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel.





Astronaut/Teacher Barbara Morgan did her best to describe for us what it's like to travel 5 miles per second, to see the earth from space (we should call our planet Ocean, not Earth), and to wrap our minds around the wonder that is space: space is all that we don't know.




We ended inspired by Greg Mortenson, co-author of Three Cups of Tea. His story of fighting his publisher over the subtitle of his book really sums up his perspective. The publisher wanted Fighting Terrorism One School at a Time, but Greg wanted Promoting Peace One School at a Time. They compromised, and the publisher got their way for the hardback. In the event the hardback didn't do well, they agreed to change the subtitle for the paperback version. The hardback did not do well; the paperback made it to the NYT Bestseller list. It's about perspective, and he understands the importance of focusing on the goal he wants to ultimately achieve -- it's about the schools and it's about the possibility for peace that comes when we educated the children of the world...especially the girls.

The other exciting thing that happened at this conference was that the list of NCTE/CLA Notable Children's Books in the English Language Arts for 2009 (comprised of 30 2008 books) was chosen! Stay tuned for details!!

DUBLIN 20th Annual LITERACY CONFERENCE-Love how connected we are!

So, I went to hear Samantha Bennett talk about "Next Generation Workshop: Time for Students to Understand" on Saturday. The session was amazing. She helped me really think through the big understandings we want for our students. She talked about knowledge, skills/strategies and understandings. I worry that we have gotten away from planning for big understandings. I am thinking hard about what this means for the library and my own teaching. Planning for understanding is far different from planning for passing a test.

She said, "Understanding is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one know."

I have heard this quote before but she set it in a context of workshop and teaching that gave me some new thinking.

Katie at Creative Literacy was also in the session. She blogged about it earlier this week, sharing another of my favorite quotes.

"There's no such thing as the perfect lesson, the perfect day in school or the perfect teacher. For teachers and students alike, the goal is not perfection but persistence in the pursuit of understanding important things." (Tomlinson and McTighe)

Here's the best part--Seems that Laura at Pictures, Words and Wisdom read Katie's post and did her own reflecting from Bennett's talk. I SOOOO love that the 21st century tools allow this kind of connectedness and collaborative thinking.

If you have not read THAT WORKSHOP BOOK by Samantha Bennett, it is AMAZING! I plan to reread it now that I have some different ways to think about it after hearing her talk.

20th Annual Dublin Literacy Conference -- Barbara O'Connor

What's almost as much fun as a group of bloggers who come to the same conference?


A group of bloggers who finally get to meet one of their favorite authors...who is also a blogger!


I'm not sure if we were more excited to meet Barbara O'Connor, or for Barbara O'Connor was more excited to meet us! Let me tell you, there was a lot of hugging and squealing whichever way you look at it!

I had the great honor of being Barbara's personal assistant for the day. I got to hear how the book MISSING MAY by Cynthia Rylant changed her life. I learned that Loretta is her favorite character in her own book GREETINGS FROM NOWHERE. And I was treated to her reading from all of her books, especially her work in progress, which features a frog in a pot of soup and something that falls off a train -- but she's not telling what!

Post Cards From Phoenix

Sometimes it's about the sights...

Phoenix Sunrise

Sometimes it's about the feel of the sun on your winter-pale midwestern skin...

Palm Trees and Sunshine

Sometimes it's about the heavenly scent of orange blossoms...

Orange Tree (With Functional Sundial in the Background)

And sometimes it's about the surprises...

Those Blooming Bushes are Rosemary!!

(...if only I could send you the smell of sunbaked rosemary accompanying you for an entire block of your walk back to the hotel...)

Thought for the Day

ART IS A GUARANTY OF SANITY
Phoenix Convention Center

20th Annual Dublin Literacy Conference -- Grace Lin

The Friday before the conference, featured author Grace Lin was the visiting author at our school. Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students were captivated by her presentation on her book A YEAR OF THE DOG. They loved getting all of the inside scoop on which parts came directly from her life and which parts were invented or changed.

And of course, they loved when it was time to
learn to draw a dog the way Pacy draws dogs
in the book.

You start with a 5, then add the top of the dog's
head and its ear.



After the neck comes the collar and tags,
the body, the tail, the spot and the bark!







The students all took their drawing lesson very
seriously!

They even learned to make some Chinese characters.
(Unless, like this girl, they can write in Japanese
and they already knew the characters!)



As a special treat when the dog drawing lesson
was over, Grace read a chapter from her new
book, WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON,
which comes out in June.

My special treat was getting an advanced copy of the
book from Grace the next day at the conference! I can't
wait to read it!


Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
by Grace Lin
Little, Brown Young Readers
June, 2009
Review copy compliments of the author

20th Annual Dublin Literacy Conference Series

Saturday's DUBLIN LITERACY CONFERENCE was great fun! So many great speakers and authors. This year was the 20th year for the conference. It is a conference planned by teachers in the Dublin City Schools. Between 600 and 800 teachers from around Ohio (and beyond) attend each year. This year's was another great year of learning and conversations.

Many of the concurrent sessions are run by classroom teachers, librarians, administrators, etc. We also hire keynote and featured speakers for many of the sessions. This year, we had 4 professional authors and 5 children's authors. Throughout the week, we will be sharing highlights, new books and new thinking from this year's conference.

I picked up Asma Mobin-Uddin's upcoming book A PARTY IN RAMADAN. A great book and so happy to have a copy. This is the story of Leena, who is invited to a party on the first day of Ramadan. The story takes us through Leena's day--fasting while at a party with friends. As a reader, I learned some of the things that are important about fasting on this day and what the day might be like for some children. A great story by a great author. This book is due out in spring. If you don't know her other books, MY NAME IS BILAL and THE BEST EID EVER, they are all great books --I can't keep the Eid book in the library. The author's website is also full of great resources--children's booklists, columns, information about author visits, and more. So glad I was able to get to know this author and her newest book!

Poetry Friday -- Sleepers Awake

SLEEPERS AWAKE
by John Ashbery

Cervantes was asleep when he wrote Don Quixote.
Joyce slept during the Wandering Rocks section of Ulysses.
Homer nodded and occasionally slept during the greater part of the Iliad; he was awake however when he wrote the Odyssey.
Proust snored his way through The Captive, as have legions of his readers after him.
Melville was asleep at the wheel for much of Moby-Dick.
Fitzgerald slept through Tender Is the Night, which is perhaps not so surprising,
but the fact that Mann slumbered on the very slopes of The Magic Mountain is quite extraordinary—that he wrote it, even more so.
Kafka, of course, never slept, even while not writing or on bank holidays.
No one knows too much about George Eliot’s writing habits—my guess is she would sleep a few minutes, wake up and write something, then pop back to sleep again.
Lew Wallace’s forty winks came, incredibly, during the chariot race in Ben-Hur.
Emily Dickinson slept on her cold, narrow bed in Amherst.
When she awoke there would be a new poem inscribed by Jack Frost on the windowpane; outside, glass foliage chimed.
Good old Walt snored as he wrote and, like so many of us, insisted he didn’t.
Maugham snored on the Riviera.
Agatha Christie slept daintily, as a woman sleeps, which is why her novels are like tea sandwiches—artistic, for the most part.
I sleep when I cannot avoid it; my writing and sleeping are constantly improving.

I have other things to say, but shall not detain you much.
(those other things are here)



Cuileann has the round up this week is at The Holly and the Ivy.

SHOULD WE HAVE PETS? A PERSUASIVE TEXT

I have loved SHOULD THERE BE ZOOS? for years. This book was written by Tony Stead and a class of 4th graders. The persuasive essays argue for or against zoos and it is one of the best mentor texts I have found for persuasive writing for elementary students. Last month, a member of the English Companion NING shared a related title SHOULD WE HAVE PETS by Sylvia Lollis, Joyce Hogan and her second-grade class. My copy arrived in the mail today.

SHOULD WE HAVE PETS is clearly modeled after SHOULD THERE BE ZOOS? Another great sample of persuasive text but one written by younger students. This one follows the same format of SHOULD THERE BE ZOOS? Pairs of children share their own opinion on whether or not we should have pets and focus on one reason to support their argument. At the end of the book, the writers ask you to form your own opinion based on what you read. They also share the process they went through when writing the book. A glossary and index are included.

The thing I like about this one, that seems different from the other, is the use of visuals. The students use photographs to add more meaning to their arguments. For example, when Franklin and Roshanda argue that we should not have pets because so many people abuse their pets, 3 photos of animals being treated poorly add to the information in the text. I can see minilessons on the ways that visuals support an argument because the photos are used very purposefully in this book.

It is hard to find good persuasive text for young students so I am definitely glad I found this one. Anxious to share it with kids!

Engagement

Last weekend, I read two posts that really resonated for me.

The first was Katie's post, describing a conference with a young writer who has grown so much this year, but who was not able to put into words what she does well as a writer.

The second was Carol's post, in which she shared some of her thinking about reading engagement. (She has since expanded her thinking to include what we do as teachers to promote reading engagement. Check it out -- it's great!)

My 4th graders always have a hard time putting into words what they do well as readers. It's something I work on with them every year. At the beginning of 4th grade, my students typically think reading is simply about knowing the words. I was positive that this group has come long way from that, but when I gave Carol's Reading Engagement Survey, I learned that they haven't come nearly as far as I would have thought.

The first thing I noticed was in the free response questions. 8 of 19 students who took the survey were proud of or needed to work on fluency or word recognition. Nearly half of my students are still focused on reading at the word level!

Overall, read aloud was the highest area of engagement for my students, with a total score of 67. No surprise there -- I clearly value read aloud. Two other items -- reading longer independently and not wanting to quit reading at the end of reading time were also high with 62 and 63. We have often talked about their growth from the beginning of the year when they could only sit still for 15-20 minutes.

What did surprise me is that two of the items that probe the social aspects of reading -- talking easily about favorite books, authors and genres, and sharing books with "reading friends" were two of the lowest with 47 and 42. In my mind, the class has come a long way in developing as a community of readers who know each other's tastes and share and talk about books regularly. What have I not done to express this as a valued behavior?

This survey has taught me that I need to be far more explicit about the behaviors of an engaged reader. I need to build in even more time for talk in our reading workshop, and I need to teach my students how to talk about books.

I can't wait to have conversations with each of my students to learn more about their answers.

The behaviors on this survey are not what is "valued" about reading according to the achievement tests our students are required to take. But they are certainly more important in "growing a child's reading heart" and in nurturing life-long readers.