Life on Mars

I'm struggling to maintain a reading life these days. I get 40 minutes a day in the car with my audio book, but LIFE has made it hard for me to read much with my eyes. Luckily, I have avid readers in my classroom. 

When I got this ARC, I knew exactly which student should read it. Her first apps on her new iPad were space apps. Her persuasive essay was about why she should go to space camp. Her passion is All Things Space, and if she doesn't wind up with a career in space science, I will be amazed. Here's W's review of Life on Mars.

Life on Mars

by Jennifer Brown

Bloomsbury USA Childrens, August 2014

ARC provided by the publisher

I really loved the book Life on Mars by Jennifer Brown. When I first saw the book I thought it will be a non-fiction book but when I started reading it I figured out it was fiction. This book is about a boy named Arcturus Betelgeuse Chambers, most people call him Arty. Arty was named after the Alpha star in the constellation Bootes. The Alpha star is the brightest star in the constellation. All of the Chambers family is named after stars. Arty’s sister Cassi is named after the star Cassiopeia. But Cassiopeia dosen’t like being called by her name she likes to be called Cassi.

Arty has been working on something to connect to Mars, and find Martians. The machine he has been working on is called CICM, it stands for Clandestine Interplanetary Communication. Arty and his friend Tripp thinks that Arty’s next door neighbor, who they call “ Mr. Death,” is a zombie, because every night he goes behind their house in his black hoodie with his trash bag and a box and comes out in the morning.

Aunt Sarin has to stay with Arty and his sisters while their parents go to search for house in Las Vegas (A really bright city where you can’t see stars because of the light pollution.) But when Aunt Sarin has to go to the hospital because she is having a baby, Arty has to stay with Mr. Death.

Arty discovers that Mr. Death loves space just like he does, and they become friends. Arty and Mr. Death work on CICM together and decide to name it HUEY instead of CICM. Arty soon discovers a terrible secret about Mr. Death.

Nonfiction: Writing Great Leads

We are finishing up a unit of study on nonfiction writing.  In the midst of our study, it became clear that my students needed help learning to write well-crafted introductions.  As 3rd graders, they don't yet have much experience with this so many of their drafts began with sentences such as "I am going to tell you about..."  So I started to share some great nonfiction leads and we studied those. But it wasn't until I discovered the introductions in the National Geographic Kids Everything books that things started to fall into place.  

I have purchased several National Geographic Kids Everything (National Geographic Kids Everything Rocks and Minerals: Dazzling gems of photos and info that will rock your world) books this year. They are really well done and all focus on topics kids love.  The text is challenging but accessible and they immediately draw kids in.  So, as I was looking for good leads to share with kids, I pulled on from the shelf to see what type of intros they had as I hadn't paid much attention before.  Well, I was thrilled with what I read. The lead in every single one of these books is incredible!

For example, here is the lead to the book about Rocks and Minerals.  Take a minute to read it.

A pretty solid introduction into the topic.  Clear and well crafted. And then it ends with a little humor.  As we read on, we realized that each and every introduction does a little content-specific wordplay in the introduction as a way to transition into the story.

Over 2 days, we studied 6 introductions from this series and kids played with all they were learning. These were the perfect pieces to study and they helped kids really understand that a lead was not necessarily a first sentence, that it needed to be organized and set up the piece, and that it could use humor to do so. 

I have to say, I didn't really expect to use this series as mentors for writing but these intros are amazing.   haven't discovered many other introductions for my 3rd graders to study, that are as strong as these.  

Corkulous for Read Aloud

I have been thinking about ways to use digital tools in authentic ways in literacy workshop. With a few laptops and a couple of iPads in the room, I am finding some challenges.  Recently, I read Katharine Hale's post "Digital Corkboard:  A Game Changes for Readers" on her fabulous blog, Teachitivity. We don't have Corkulous on our student iPads but I put it on my teacher iPad and decided we'd use it for read aloud. I have the board on my iPad and I am projecting on to the Smartboard with Air Play/Air Server.

We started out on Day 1 previewing our new read aloud How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O'Connor.  We started off with 2 columns--things we know after previewing and questions we have. 

It was on Day 2 of reading How to Steal a Dog that I saw the possibilities of a tool like Corkulous.  I've always believed strongly in charts and writing to deepen thinking while reading.  And I've been thinking hard about how to make charts better after reading Smarter Charts.  But as we started talking on Day 2, I realized that even though this chart wasn't "up" all day, kids were using it differently as we talked.  Kids started connecting comments we made on stickies and I was able to move those around/rearrange them so threads of conversation emerged. That's always happened a bit with traditional charting during read aloud, but in a traditional way that makes it harder for kids to follow. With Corkulous, I could move and change our thinking as we went.

Since kids had no experience with Corkulous, I was playing with sticky color, arrows, labels, etc. just so they could see all that was possible.  With the projection, they could see the way I used the tool AND the way it was supporting our thinking.  By later this week, our board continues to change. In the bottom right, you'll see the arrow stickies listing Georgina's possible character traits. This started as a conversation about Georgina being sneaky . Then one day, a student decided we should take one of the traits off because the more we read, the more we realized it didn't describe her anymore.  Then kids started talking about which words described her best so we rearranged the arrows--those few on the left are the ones that seem to capture Georgina at this point in the story, based on what we know about her.

Read Aloud is a huge anchor in our classroom.  It is the time that we come together as a community and dig into one book, learning from everyone's thinking.  For that reason, charting has always been key.  But with Corkulous, even after just a week of Read Aloud. I am seeing that yes, this is a game changer.

First of all, the size of the chart makes it very engaging.  I could technically create something like this on chart paper or a board but the size of the Smartboard makes it readable to everyone.  And I can zoom in to the section of the board we are talking about.  I can arrange and rearrange thinking and kids are seeing how writing and talk change thinking and how our thinking changes over a book.  Kids are not only adding to the conversation about the book, but they are suggesting things that  should do with our board--"Move that orange one that says....to the place where we are thinking about Georgina." or "I think we should delete the sticky that says Georgina is naughty.".

I've always believed strongly in Readers' Notebooks as a way for students to capture their thinking in writing.  Now, there are so many other options available with digital tools.  I love this tool for the conversations and understandings that are happening because of it.  And I also love that it is modeling another tool that supports readers in digging deeper in their reading.

I continue to find that when I play with new digital tools, focusing on the learning makes it almost risk-free.  I know my focus is on reading and thinking so if this tool hadn't worked so well, it would have been okay because my focus was on the literacy learning, not the tool.  Although the tool is very cool, the power has been in what it has done for our conversations and how we've been able to capture that as a community.

(I'm hoping to have Katharine's students talk to my students after we've played with this a bit--to share ways that they are using the tool to clarify and deepen understanding.)


Check out other digital literacy posts in the roundup at Reflections on the Teche.

Poetry Friday -- Show Your Work!

As recently as the middle of last month, I was in a stew over how often or even whether I should share my original poems on the blog. Louise Borden tweeted me about a poetry contest sponsored by Garrison Keillor and when I thought about the poem I most wanted to submit, it was one I'd posted on the blog. I asked around a bit to confirm what I already knew: a poem that is posted on the blog has been published. Period. Can't even take the post down to reverse the action.

Maybe, I thought, I should only post bits from Big Name Poets or poems from the Public Domain. Maybe a poem a day for Poetry Month isn't such a good idea. Maybe I should keep my poems unpublished on the blog just in case...in the event that...

And then I read Austin Kleon's new book, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered

and received such sage advice as, "You can't find your voice if you don't use it." and "Don't be a hoarder." (Ouch. It sounded like he was talking right to me!) Kleon talks about the importance of people knowing your work so that you can build some kind of audience or following or network. So that you can, at the very least, gather (or via the Internet, "gather") together with your fellow "knuckleballers" -- the others who do whatever kind of thing it is that you do.

I realized that I owe everything I am as a writer, a poet, and a member of this glorious group of knuckleball poetry fans called Poetry Friday to going public with my work. What exactly is it that I'm waiting for when I hoard my work? Nothing comes from nothing, and amazing and never-before-imagined opportunities have come from showing my work.

So I'm back on board with a poem a day for Poetry Month. I haven't decided exactly what that's going to look like or where it will be found, but I've got a couple of weeks to nail down the details, right?

And here's one of the (previously hoarded) poems I wrote for Laura's Pantone® Color Month:

Hope is the Color Green

Hope is the color green.
It comes to us washed by wet weather, or by tears.
It comforts the valley first,
then climbs the mountain with steady assurance,
accompanied by bursts
of wildflower happiness in its midst,
while above the haze and mist
a benevolent aqua sky persists.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

Pantone® colors: wet weather, aqua haze


This week, Margaret has the Poetry Friday roundup at Reflections on the Teche.

Founding Mothers

Founding Mothers: Remembering the Ladies
by Cokie Roberts
illustrated by Diane Goode
Harper, 2014
review copy provided by the publisher

In 2005, NPR political commentator Cokie Roberts wrote a 384 page adult book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation This picture book version of her work gives ten famous (and not so famous) women a double-page spread, and highlights Women Writers and Women Warriors with paragraph-length blurbs. The ten ladies are Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who at 19, while running three large plantations while her father fought for England against Spain, succeeded in raising indigo for the first time; Deborah Read Franklin, Ben's wife, who ran all his businesses in the States while he was in England; Mercy Otis Warren, an influential writer; Phillis Wheatley, a poet and a slave; Abigail Adams, letter-writing wife of John; Martha Washington, who spent every winter of the eight years of the Revolutionary War in military camps with husband George; Esther DeBerdt Reed, writer and fundraiser for the Revolutionary War effort; Sarah Livingston Jay, wife of John Jay; Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of General Nathaniel Greene who, when running the plantation after his death, helped Eli Whitney with his cotton gin invention; and Dolley Madison, brave wife of James.

As the review in the New York Times points out, this book would be a whole lot more useful with a table of contents and a more discernible organization.

That criticism aside, this book provides some nice short texts about historic women. I can imagine students being charged with placing each woman on a continuum of influence, based on the information given by Roberts in the text, and arguing for their placements. I can imagine students choosing a woman to research in more detail, and then debating with another student about whose woman was the most influential. Even just the conversation about what makes a person influential would be fascinating, as would a discussion of the problem of how to know historic women deeply when they often did not leave a trail of primary source material for historians to study.

This book would also be fascinating to use in a study of the art of calligraphy. Diane Goode's pen and sepia ink illustrations in the style of the period, and her reproductions of each woman's signature made me want to get out my pen nibs and resurrect the skill I learned in high school art class.

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science!!

218 poems by 78 poets!

The same wonderful format as the K-5 and 6-8 editions, with a poem a day for each grade level AND a "Take Five" instructional focus with connections to the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

PLUS...NEW FOR THIS EDITION...

Illustrated student editions by grade level, without the Take 5 teacher notes, and WITH bonus poems!

Order yours now at Pomelo Books or on Amazon.

Yes, you can find my poems in this edition...SIX of them this time! 3 in first grade and 3 in third grade!

World Read Aloud Day

World Read Aloud Day is tomorrow! If you don't know about World Read Aloud Day or its sponsoring organization LitWorld, you should check out their website asap.  (In December, I posted information on how to register for the event.)  This is one of those amazing events that you can participate in in so many ways. You can make it a huge event or a little celebration.

I am celebrating with my students tomorrow by beginning the conversation of Reading as a Gift/The Gift of Reading.  I'll kick off the day reading Reading Makes You Feel Good by Todd Parr .  Even though it is a simple book, it should start lots of great conversations. Then I'll share a few videos --one from the LitWorld site and one from Kobo Books that was a Mother's Day video.

I'll also share a few videos that were shared on the WRAD blog--where authors gave their time to read aloud.  I think these 3 videos will help kids understand the idea of this being a global celebration. They will also hopefully begin to think of reading as a gift.

We are giving the gift of reading and receiving the gift of reading on World Read Aloud Day.  We'll spend a bit of time in the morning reading to our Kindergarten students.  Then we'll have a short Skype visit with author Barbara O'Connor who is giving her time to classrooms in celebration of World Read Aloud Day.

I think these few things will begin a larger conversation that will hopefully continue throughout the year--the rights of all people to read and the idea of reading as a gift (to give and to receive).  I am hopeful that kids will come up with ways to give back to our own school community with the gift of reading in some way.   I'm not sure exactly where the conversation will go but I am anxious to celebrate and see where the conversations take us!

Thank you LitWorld for inventing such a wonderful day!

A Melissa Stewart Week

One of my goals this year was to find more nonfiction authors and series that I knew and loved.  I realized that there were so many fiction series and authors I knew and loved, but that was not true of nonfiction. I tend to talk to my students about nonfiction differently than I talk about fiction. I tend to talk topic and rarely know the author. I also hadn't realized how important nonfiction series books could be for upper elementary readers.  So I knew I needed to find more of those.

This week, I realized just how much I love Melissa Stewart.  I knew that I liked her and her name was one I knew as a nonfiction writer, but until this week I had no idea just how many amazing nonfiction books she has written for upper elementary students.

Here is how it happened.  I have a student who loves sharks, dolphins and ocean creatures. I am always looking for new books for him and I happened upon Shark or Dolphin?: How Do You Know? (Which Animal Is Which?) I am trying to add books that are meant to be read cover to cover and this one looked perfect.  I noticed that it was by Melissa Stewart so I figured it must be good. I ordered the book and noticed there were lots of other books in the series. I decided I'd check it out before I ordered the others. Well, the book arrived and it is amazing.  Each page compares a feature of sharks and dolphins and tells how they are different. The text is accessible and the book is packed with information. Even for readers who know lots about sharks and dolphins, my bet is that there is something new in this book! This is definitely a series that belongs in elementary classrooms so I ordered a few more.

A few days later, the book Feathers: Not Just for Flying arrived from Amazon. I forgot that I had preordered it when I read a review for it online.  (I don't often preorder books but this one sounded too good to miss and I was afraid I would forget about it.)  WOW! What an amazing read. Again, Melissa Stewart organizes the information in a way that is accessible, yet packed with information. The book goes through the many uses for feathers--who knew? She gives specific examples for each way feathers are used and the illustrations by Sarah S. Brannen are a perfect match.   I hadn't paid attention to the author when I preordered the book, so when I saw that it was Melissa Stewart, I noticed a little pattern.

The next day, my Scholastic Book Club order arrived. My students didn't order this month but there were a few things I wanted for the classroom. One item I purchased was a set National Geographic Readers set with books like National Geographic Readers: Dolphins. They seemed like a good addition in terms of topic and accessibility and I've been so impressed with everything National Geographic lately that I added them to my order.  What a surprise that every book in the pack was by Melissa Stewart? (and that I noticed!)

Finally, my kids have been reading lots of books in our "Birds" basket.  We have a bird watching area at our school that we are starting to help out with so they've been very interested in anything birds. I have a decent collection of books in this category as it goes well with our science too.  As I was straightening up the basket, I noticed A Place for Birds, a newer book in the basket and noticed that it was again by Melissa Stewart!  Browsing online this week, I realized that this too is part of a series--the A Place For series.  I will definitely have to check more of these books out.

And today, as I was writing, I popped online to see if there were possibly any more great titles I was missing by Melissa Stewart and it seems there is a Good Question Series (How Does a Seed Sprout?: And Other Questions About Plants (Good Question!) that looks like another perfect series for this age.

Finally, I visited Melissa Stewart's website today so that I could link it for this post and again I was floored. Not only does she have a great website with great information. But she has videos that share her revision timeline, video minilesson and more. Her website is a treat in itself. I am trying so hard to do a better job of nonfiction craft minilessons in writing and I am so happy to have discovered these videos!

Really, Melissa Stewart's work is amazing and even though I knew it before, I didn't realize how many things she had that are incredible. Because she has different illustrators and because some of her books use photos while others use illustrations, it isn't obvious to a reader like me that she is the author. I am so glad that these Melissa Stewart events happened so I could finally see her entire body of work and make the connections. This experience made me realize again how little attention I've paid to nonfiction authors' names as I read and share nonfiction with my students.  So glad to see that is changing. Melissa Stewart is definitely one of my favorite authors for nonfiction in elementary classrooms!

Celebrating The Nerdy Book Club with a Donation to LitWorld!

We love that even though our blog birthday was on January 1, we are celebrating it all year!  On our 8th Birthday, we decided to celebrate 2014 by celebrating others who inspire us every day. Each month, on the 1st (or so) of the month, we will celebrate a fellow blogger whose work has inspired us recently. We feel so lucky to be part of the blog world that we want to celebrate all that everyone gives us each day.

This month, we are celebrating the team at the Nerdy Book Club: Donalyn Miller, Colby Sharp and Cindy Minnich.

The Nerdy Book Club is the most democratic club on the planet. "If you love books, especially those written for children and young adults, then you are an honorary member of The Nerdy Book Club."

The Nerdy Book Club blog is the most democratic group blog on the planet. Want to write a guest post? Go on -- submit one! FIVE HUNDRED FIFTEEN other writers have written for The Nerdy Book Club blog! Join them/us!

The Nerdy Book Club is huge -- when last I visited, I was greeted by the proclamation that "You and 2,781 others like Nerdy Book Club." There are nearly 70 Nerdy Book Club Bloggers in the blogroll

Have you been to a Nerdy Book Club meet-up at a national conference like NCTE recently? Readers and authors fill a room and spill out into the adjacent areas. It's such a happy gathering with lots of hugging and laughter and photos that go straight to FaceBook and Twitter. There is no need to be a wallflower at a Nerdy Book Club meet-up. Everyone has lots in common: books, reading and readers. 

We are honoring the Nerdy Book Club by making a donation to LitWorld in their name.  We love LitWorld and this month seemed the perfect month to donate to them as March 5 is World Read Aloud Day ! If you have no plans to celebrate World Read Aloud Day in your classroom, you might want to change your mind!   World Read Aloud Day is "about taking action to show the world that the right to read and write belongs to all people."  What an amazing cause. LitWorld has lots of other amazing projects too.  And we believe in all of them.

Here is a little glimpse of the vision and work of LitWorld:

Celebrate!

Join others who are celebrating this week at www.ruthayreswrites.com

I'm not just celebrating this week, I'm celebrating this MONTH.

Goodbye, February! Been nice to know you! We had some fun times...but mostly we had snow and cold. I know you can't help being who you are. It must be rough to be post-holiday and pre-Spring. You have to wait four long years to special in any way. But you know what? Even though it feels like a grueling effort to make it through your days, you actually help me to fine-tune my Signs-of-Spring Senses. Just the other day, for instance, when you gave us that glorious spring preview and we were able to have salmon on the grill for the first time since fall, I heard the robins singing in the dark.

In this mosaic, we begin with wing tracks in the deep snow that seemed to last forever. The rest of the first row: award winners in our classroom library, a message from the Universe that I have yet to decode, TED notes made with my...new pens... ROW 2: ...that bleed through but I don't care. Community band at Old Worthington Farmer's Market brings me joy every week (their tribute to Pete Seeger made me teary), another message from the Universe that couldn't be clearer (and it's just a tiny bit ironic that I took a PICTURE of it, eh?), the sky at Gene Barretta's airport vs. the sky in Columbus (he was the only author who didn't make it to #DubLit14). ROW 3: #DubLit14 -- student work, authors, celebrities. ROW 4: The last of the snow (or, based on the current forecast, should I say, the last of LAST MONTH'S snow) looks like a beached whale at our curb, auto tracks in a dusting of snow, (next 7) this is a visual rendition of That Silence I wrote about here (and I promise this is the last time I'll link to that review), LASTLY: a mosaic of the March Birthday Cake: "The Making." In the March Mosaic, you'll see March Birthday Cake: "The Icing and Eating."

A better view of the photos in this mosaic can be seen on Flickr.