October Mosaic

Row 1: 1. Giants, Midgets and Oddballs at Ochs Fruit Farm in Lancaster, 2. Ochs, 3. Go This Way, 4. Mums, 5. More Wag, Less Oink (Fairfield County Fair)

Row 2: 1. Piglet Plea, 2. Goat Grin, 3. Fair Rides, 4. Stick Horse Race, 5. Sunflower Seeds (all Fairfield County Fair)

Row 3: 1. Goldenrod, 2. Preying Mantis, 3. Last Sunflower, 4. Heroic Grasshopper, 5. Last Coneflower (all school Land Lab + Yucca in the next row)

Row 4: 1. Yucca, 2. This one has a story. So our master bath is decorated with a bird theme. We've lived in the house for almost 17 years and I just noticed that there are two birds in the marbling of the vanity -- a short, stout Twitter-like bird on the right, and a caricature of partridge on the left. Imagine all I'd see if I really paid attention!!! 3. Fin du Monde beer bubbles, 4. Food For Thought tasting event at Old Worthington Library -- Bleu Cheeses, 5. Now Panic and Freak Out (we resisted buying this at Sur la Table when we got the new bowls...but it was hard not to...)

Row 5: 1. The five bowls that replaced the one I broke, 2. Which Contrail Do You Leave -- Delicate, Bold, or Meandering?, 3. X Marks The Spot Where The Moon Is, 4. Tic-Tac-Cloud-o (all three cloud pictures were the same morning -- inspirational sky!) 5. Celebrating Josie!

Row 6: 1. Who Made This Nest?, 2. Our Punkin', 3. Sunflower with new filter app, 4. Apple Crisp with new mosaic app, 5. Starbucks with new mosaic app


You can see the pictures full-size on Flickr.

My two new favorite photo apps on my iPhone are FilterMania 2 (I could play with this one all day!) and Mosaicam (shoot a mosaic rather than having to go back afterward and build it).

Saturday Celebration

Ruth, you inspire us in so many ways!

This week, I started 15 Minute Friday writing with my class. We logged into our Kidblog, opened a new post, set the timer for 15 minutes, and WROTE.

Here's the first celebration: when I said go, the only sound I heard was the clicking of keys on keyboards. You know that feeling of tension in the room when someone is frustrated? There was none of that. EVERYONE wrote. Here's mine:

I can’t get the look on C’s face out of my mind. He was frustrated and confused in math, and rather than helping him, I just said, “Hmm…you’ll have to keep thinking about that,” and walked away from him. It killed me to do that. And if I would have looked back, I’m sure he would have been shooting daggers into my back.

However, after working ten more minutes, I broke into a wide smile when I heard him say softly to himself, “Oh! I get it!”

Thats what it’s all about for me.  That lightbulb moment. That obvious memorable moment when learning happens.

Because here’s what I believe: I believe in the power of learning. I believe that intelligence can grow. I don’t believe that we are born with all the smarts we’re ever going to have.  Learning sometimes hurts. It’s like growing out of a favorite pair of shoes or jeans. You wear them and they get tighter and tighter. Your toes hurt and you’re uncomfortable. Your bare ankles show. But…ahh…when you get your new shoes or jeans, they feel so good. They fit. Same thing with new thinking. The old thoughts are tight, but when that new learning or understanding comes along…ahh…it fits. It feels so right.

STOP

The first thing I celebrate about this new routine in our classroom is that my writing will live right there alongside theirs. I have been using my own writing in minilessons more and more often, and I am putting that writing in posts on Kidblog to create an archive of minilessons and anchor texts. 

Next celebration: I just finished reading through all of their posts and comments, and let me just say that mine aren't the only anchor texts on the blog! Wow! What a great way for them to read quick examples of each other's writing and learn from each other!

Celebration #3: They were so surprised at how much they wrote in 15 minutes (me, too!) and where their ideas went once they got started. Many think they have the seed for an idea they'll want to pursue in writing workshop!

And finally: It is going to be so powerful to have these weekly bits of writing to use for formative assessment, conferencing, minilessons, and small group work in writing workshop!

Thank you, Ruth, for your 5 Minutes on Friday writing, which inspired this new RICH-ual in my classroom!

Check out all of the Saturday Celebrations at Ruth Ayres Writes.

Poetry Friday: Leaf Hurricane

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Paul Stevenson

LEAF HURRICANE

Clouds darken
Wind gusts
leaves swirl
I twirl

          My wild spinning dance
          Is magic to me
          I dance with the wind
          I dance with the leaves

Rain spits
wind gusts
leaves swirl
I twirl
   
          I dance with the wind
          I dance with the leaves
          With every spin
          My spirit flies free

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013


This poem was inspired by the children who danced yesterday (all recess long) in the leaf hurricane that forms on the playground in the corner by the cafeteria and art room windows.

Linda has the Poetry Friday roundup at TeacherDance this week. Have another handful of candy corn, and head on over for the after-Halloween party.

Ghosts

Ghosts
by Sonia Goldie
illustrated by Marc Boutavant
Enchanted Lion Books, November 26, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

This book holds explanations for all of those unexplained happenings in life -- GHOSTS! The ghosts of the chimney, TV, behind-the-curtains, and garden, along with the more ordinary ghosts of the attic, basement, night...and MORE!

Here are a few excerpts to give you the feel of this book:

The Ghost of the Kitchen

SQUAFUMPF...The door of the 

refrigerator is pulled open.

PLOP! A package falls

to the floor. Who's that

moving around in the kitchen?

It's a gluttonous ghost that devours

anything and everything

that's white. Sugar: YUM!

Milk: SLURP!

.
.
.


Don't you love the sound of the refrigerator door? So perfect!


The Ghost of Gray Days

It's cold and damp and rainy. It's gray.
Dull gray. Neither black, nor white, but
gray: gray skies, gray clouds, gray air,
even gray wind. Weak, tired, down in the
dumps, and grumpy -- this is what the ghost
of gray days is like.
.
.
.



This is a fun book with lots to look at and and small caption-y text. It will be released too late for Halloween this year, but (at least according to the book) ghosts are everywhere all year long...if only we pay close enough attention!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN to all of the ghosts and goblins and trick-or-treaters in your world!

Emma in Buttonland

Emma in Buttonland
by Ulrike Rylance
translated by Connie Stradling Morby
illustrated by Silke Leffler
Sky Pony Press, October 1, 2013review copy provided by the author

I have already proclaimed my love for fantasies "with small worlds, or toys that come to life, or characters that shrink."

Emma in Buttonland is my newest favorite in this sub-genre of fantasy. I wrote in my Goodreads review that this book is "part Borrowers, part Wizard of Oz." When I checked out the only other review (so far) for the book, that person said the same thing!

Emma is stuck at her aunt and uncle's house while her mom is on a trip to Africa. Her aunt and uncle are preoccupied with their jigsaw puzzles, leaving Emma free to wander through their rambling, many-roomed house. She discovers a locked room, and the lure of adventure is too much. She swipes the keys from the sleeping cook, opens the door, and discovers a room full of buttons. Boxes and boxes full of buttons. When one of the buttons speaks to her, and then when her fingers touch it as she reaches under a cabinet to grab it after it runs away, the magic begins -- Emma shrinks to button-size and enters Buttonland!

The first character she meets, Louise, a small silver button with a large red hat, introduces one of the main themes throughout the book: What does it mean to be VALUABLE? Louise is on a quest to discover her value.

Next, she meets Gustav, a button from a pair of lederhosen. His quest is to find his true love, his matching button, Constance.

Both accompany Emma on her quest to find the gold button that made her shrink so that she can touch it again and perhaps be restored to girl-size.

The book is illustrated with full-color illustrations, mostly along the bottom edges of the pages. The illustrator, Silke Leffler (according to the back flap) was "trained as a tailor and then studied textile design." There couldn't have been a more perfect pick for an illustrator! Her collages bring all of the fabrics, sewing notions, and different buttons (and other small lost items) to life.

I can't wait to book-talk this in my 5th grade classroom. I've got several readers who I think will love it as much as I do!

2 New Favorite Nonfiction Authors

This summer, I did a Choice Literacy workshop for teachers around Nonfiction. I spoke in the morning and Andrea Smith spoke in the afternoon.  It was a great day of learning as I always learn so much from Andrea. But the big surprise was the books.  I have been on the lookout for better nonfiction for years and I love my collection lately.  I brought crates and crates of books for my part of the presentation.  Andrea also brought crates and crates for her part of the presentation.  The room was filled with amazing nonfiction for children.  And here's the thing, there was almost NO overlap in the books I brought and the books Andrea brought.  We each had a great collection of DIFFERENT books!  Needless to say, it was an expensive afternoon of amazon ordering but I discovered some great new books.

Now, well into the school year, I've realized I have 2 new nonfiction authors thanks to this workshop.

Suzi Eszterhas is an author I discovered while I was getting ready for the workshop months earlier. I don't know where I read about or saw her newish series EYE ON THE WILD (Eye on the Wild: Lion)  but I fell in love immediately.  This series currently has about 6 books--each about a different animal in the wild. Each book begins when the animal is a baby and takes it through adulthood.  The text is narrative and very well written. There is enough on the page for my 3rd graders, but not so much to make it overwhelming. And Eszterhas's photos are amazing. I checked out her website as I am a new fan and loved learning about her other work. The part of her website that was most fascinating was the section on tours and workshops. I would NEVER want to go on any adventure that observes animals in the wild, but I love that she does and that we get to learn from her brilliance!  Two more books in this series are due out in 2014 and I am very happy about that!  And I definitely want to go back and check out her past work in Ranger Rick and Time Magazine! Love finding a new favorite author.

The other author was one I discovered from Andrea at the workshop.  I knew Markle from The Case of Sandra Markle was an author I didn't know as an author--I had a few of her books but had never really looked at them together to see what Sandra Markle was about. Well, what a happy discovery!  Sandra writes great nonfiction books for kids around a variety of science topics. The thing is, all of her books have different illustrators/photographers, so it is hard to notice that they are all by this wonderful author. Go through your classroom or school library and I bet you have lots by this author.  I love her work because she really makes things more interesting and very accessible to children. Her take and focus on big topics narrows things down so kids can really understand.  Her language is beautiful and can be used in any minilesson on craft.  I currently love her Animal Predators series.  Owls in this series is one a few of my students have loved.
the Vanishing Tree Frog but hadn't paid attention to how many other books she wrote that I loved! 

Falling in Love with Close Reading by Chris Lehman and Kate Roberts

WOW!  That was my first reaction to Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts--and Life as I started reading it this weekend. My husband and I went to Boston for the weekend, just for fun.  This was my airplane reading and within the first few minutes, I turned to my husband and said, "WOW! This book is amazing already!"  This is a book that so many of us have been waiting for and I was so happy to get mine just in time for a plane trip--what better way to dig into a great book than to be able to read uninterrupted for 2 hours straight?  I was able to read the first half of the book on the way to Boston and the rest of the book on the way home.  WOW! I so love this book!

I have been loving all of Chris Lehman's and Kate Roberts' work for a while and I  became even more interested when I heard them speak at NCTE last year.  I have read their books and followed both of their blogs (http://christopherlehman.wordpress.com and http://kateandmaggie.com).
I loved Kate's blogpost on The Nerdy Book Club Blog this summer. And I loved this Choice Literacy article by Chris Lehaman on research. I even did podcast on Close Reading with Chris and Kate for Choice Literacy  this summer.  I am an official fan, no doubt.  Needless to say, I have been anticipating this book for a while and ordered it the day it came out directly from Heienmann (as I didn't want to have to wait an extra day to get it from anywhere else.)

But even with all of that anticipation and all that I already knew of Chris's and Kate's work, I was still amazed at the brilliance.  Within the first few pages, I was totally hooked on the thinking that Chris and Kate share and I knew that this was a book that would have a huge impact on me and on my teaching.

First of all, the foreword by Donalyn Miller is incredible.  A great set up for the book and the context. In the foreword she states, "Students deserve instruction that moves them forward as readers and thinkers and values their unique experiences and needs."  For so long I've worried about the ways in which "close reading" in the Common Core is being interpreted and implemented but Donalyn's foreword reminds us that we can teach our students to read closely AND to fall in love with reading--that the two actually go hand-in-hand. She introduces the premise of the book and why this work is so important. I savored the foreword a little before I moved onto the book.

On the first page of this book, Chris and Kate state, "We know, in our bones, that loving something or someone involves knowing that thing or person very well.  Returning to it repeatedly, gazing at it for hours, considering each angle, each word, and thinking about its meaning.  Our connection to the written word can be as deep as a love affair."  So, the authors argue, teaching readers to look at texts closely, "is an opportunity to extend a love affair with reading."  Page 2 and I was hooked.

There are so many things I love about this book. First of all, the authors dig into the whole idea of Close Reading--its roots and what it has come to mean with the CCSS.  Then they move to sharing their vision of students developing habits of close reading--doing it without us in their own reading lives.

The rest of the book takes us into classrooms and the thinking behind Chris's and Kate's work with students around close reading. These chapters include actual language to use, texts that work, and insights into the purpose. For me, these chapters really changed my stance about how to work with kids around this complex idea. They teach us how to help students read with a lens and to find patterns in their discoveries--and then to develop new ideas because of the patterns they see.  They carry this ritual throughout the book as we hear their language as they work with kids around text evidence, structure, word choice and point of view. They also share their insights about helping students read closely across texts.

This book is packed and I have underlined, starred and noted so many things that I can't begin to share all of my thinking. I know it is a book that has already changed the way I will work with children and I know it is a book that I will dig into again and again as I play with some of the concepts they understand so well.

Really, this is a must-read professional book--one to put on the top of your pile immediately!

If you finish the book and need more of Chris's and Kate's thinking OR while you are waiting for your copy of the book to arrive, you can spend hours and hours and hours reading the amazing thinking that was part of the Close Reading Blog-A-Thon.

Don't forget to add their session to your NCTE13 Convention Planner!  Their session looks great!

And, of course, you'll want to follow Kate (@teachkate) and Chris (@iChrisLehman) on Twitter!
(Rumor has it that there is a Twitter Chat coming up soon about this book --check out #FILWCloseReading.)

Saturday Celebration

1. An "all's clear" mammogram. The James has a billboard ad campaign right now with the catch-phrase, "There is no such thing as a routine mammogram." So true, whether or not you were diagnosed with breast cancer with your very first mammogram. I'll breathe easier (and remain vigilant -- do your monthly self-exams, friends!) for another year.

2. An absolute show-stopper of a rainbow on the way home from my mammo/onco visit. The colors were so bright and it was so solid-seeming that you just wanted to reach out and break a piece off to taste. I wanted to stop and take a picture of it, but by the time I got off the freeway and found a place to pull over where I could see it clearly, it had faded. For a moment I was sad, but then I reminded myself that some memories need to be kept in my heart, not my iPhoto files.

3. No school on Friday. Time to rest, reboot, and reflect on how I can adjust my teaching so that I can better meet the needs of my students while doing all of the things I'm "supposed to be" doing.

4. Thursday, I asked my students to help me with this reflecting and rethinking. I projected a blank document with MORE OF THIS typed at the top and LESS OF THIS typed in the middle. 

LESS OF THIS stayed blank. MORE OF THIS included: independent reading time, book clubs, writing time, choice time, ways to use their devices, science. 

Could I have been hit over the head any harder with what I know to be right and true? Thank you, Universe, for the loud and clear message. Time to stop SAYING I trust the process and time to LIVE it. I'll put into place what I know needs to be there, and work backwards to get to the "supposed to be-s."

Happy Saturday! Happy Fall!

Visit the Celebration Roundup at Ruth Ayres Writes. Thank you, Ruth, for keeping us focused on the CELEBRATIONS in life. It makes all the difference in the world!

Poetry Friday -- Halloween Night

Halloween Night
by Marjorie Dennis Murray
illustrated by Brandon Dorman
Greenwillow Books, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

I have a big collection of Night Before Christmas variants. What great fun it is to have one that is set on Halloween night!

It begins,

"Twas Halloween night, and all through the house
Every creature was stirring, including the mouse.

The walls were aflutter with little brown bats,
While hordes of black spiders crept out of the cracks.

By the fire in the kitchen, the witch stirred her brew;
To make it more smelly, she threw in a shoe."

There are zombies, mummies, green creepies, ghosts, and ogres all making preparations for the trick-or-treaters. When the costumed children show up, there's a moment when the whole book stands still, and the reader knows it could tip either way -- the kids come in...or the kids run away.

You'll have to read it to find out how it ends, but you'll want to read this one aloud in a darkened room with a flashlight at your chin.

Happy Halloween!



Irene Latham has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Live Your Poem... where she's celebrating her 1,000th post! Congratulations, Irene!

Byrd & Igloo: A Polar Adventure

Byrd & Igloo: A Polar Adventure
by Samantha Seiple
Scholastic, 2013
review ARC provided by the publisher
review by Aloysius J. Wald

It is not our policy to accept unsolicited guest reviews, but when you live in the same house as a reader whose knowledge of the history of Arctic exploration would rival that of the historians who run the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University, and a book about Byrd shows up in a box of ARCs...well...let's just say that such a book moved to someone else's reading pile in a flash.


Samantha Seiple’s adventure history/biography, BYRD & IGLOO, A POLAR ADVENTURE, tells the story of Richard E. Byrd and his Polar explorations while accompanied by Igloo, his fox terrier. Not much has been written of late about Richard Byrd. His explorations were, largely, events that occurred late in the golden years of Arctic and Polar exploration. You could even make the case that Commander Byrd was the transitional figure between the time of absolute, blank map, first boots on the territory exploration, and the modern, mechanized scientific explorations that continue today.

The element of adding the companion dog, Igloo, to the mix and giving him a voice in the proceedings is something a bit new in this type of a history. While Igloo’s thoughts are highly anthropomorphic, it seems perfectly appropriate to the 8 to 12 age group for whom the book is written. This approach is important in light of the lack of newer material and general unfamiliarity of present readers regarding Commander Byrd and his accomplishments. Igloo helps to draw readers in who might otherwise reject a book on Polar explorations that occurred eighty years ago.

Ms. Seiple’s previous book, Ghosts in the Fog, provided history regarding the little examined Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands during World War II. In both of her historical works, she illuminates less known incidents in history. This is most welcome. The occurrences in both books are parts of larger historical events, in the case of Polar exploration, extending over centuries. Delving into more obscure aspects of history are not only entertaining in and of themselves, but provide both an entry point for the study of the larger histories of the subject and give a sense of the entire subject in microcosm.

Utilizing her background as a librarian and researcher, Samantha Seiple has accessed a great deal of resource material from the period of Byrd’s Polar work, which gives the book a contemporary feel, putting the reader in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Those readers who are drawn to additional readings in the subject of Polar exploration will discover a vast and complex topic. Readers who read Byrd & Igloo for an enjoyable story about mischievous dog will be rewarded with a good story.

For most readers in the 8 – 12 age group, BRYD & IGLOO, A POLAR ADVENTURE, should prove to be a good read.