3 New Series Books!

There are some great new series books out in late 2016 or early 2017.  These are a few I recently discovered!


The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey

I was looking forward to the new series The Bad Guys and was able to read the first book over winter break. What a fun book!  A few bad guys, led by The Big Bad Wolf decide they want to change their reputations and become Good Guys.  In this first story, we meet the characters and follow them as they rescue dogs from the local dog shelter.  The humor in this book is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.  It is a clever concept with pretty funny lines throughout.  There is a lot of visual support so this will be a good series for transitional readers and beyond. The second book in the series is due out in February!

King and Kayla and the Case of the Missing Dog Treats by Dori Hillestad Butler
I was happy to see that the author of The Haunted Library has a new book/series out. My 3rd graders are HUGE fans of The Haunted Library series.  King and Kayla is an early mystery series--great for readers new to chapter books.  I think mysteries are hard for young readers but this one is perfect. A perfect mystery (missing dog treats), some clues and great visual supports.

A Boy Called Bat by Elana Arnold is more of a middle grade novel that is set to become a series according to a blog post I read recently.  The main character in this series is Bixby Alexander Tam (BAT). In this story, BAT's mother, a veterinarian, brings home a baby skunk. They need to take care of it until the shelter can keep him and release him back into the wild.  But BAT wants to keep the skunk as a pet.  BAT is a great new character.  He is on the autism spectrum which makes this series unique. It is a great series and I think a lot of kids will love this one. Looking forward to the next in the series already!


SaveSaveSaveSave

Happy Birthday to Us!

A Year of Reading is celebrating its 11th Birthday today!  We had no idea how many amazing people we would meet and how much we would learn when we started this blog. Thank you all! And Happy New Year!

Poetry Friday -- One Last Word

One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance
by Nicki Grimes
Bloomsbury, January 3, 2017
review copy provided (thankyouthankyouthankyou) by the publisher

There is so much to love about this book!

First of all, it is a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance poets. A brief history of the movement begins the book, and there are short biographies of each of the featured poets in the end matter.  The importance of this literary movement, in light of current events, should be one we remember and study and celebrate. 

"These literary lights, writing at a time when the lynching of black men filled the news, were more than familiar with racial profiling, racial violence, and every variety of injustice imaginable. Yet they ascended to great heights in spite of it all...Above all, they understood how to make the most of their freedom, despite living in a nation that had not then, and has not yet, fully realized its promise of freedom and justice for all." --Nikki Grimes, in the forward "The Harlem Renaissance"

Also of note are the gorgeous illustrations. Fifteen illustrators contributed to make this book as vibrant in pictures as it is in the words. Short biographies of the artists in the end matter highlight the talents of these illustrators.

Far and away the most amazing thing about this book is the unique (and challenging!) form in which Nikki Grimes writes her poems of tribute -- the "Golden Shovel." For each of Grimes' poems, she takes a line (or sometimes the whole poem) and uses each of the words as the last word in her poem. Hence, the title of the book.

For example, the line "A thousand hearts echo the sigh" from Clara Ann Thompson's poem, "The Minor Key" is followed by this poem by Nikki Grimes:

COMMON DENOMINATOR

by Nikki Grimes

Anger is a hard itch to scratch; laughter a

secret tickle we let out in a thousand

sneezes, sometimes to camouflage cracked hearts;

love, envy, fear--we all hear their echo.

Peel us to the core, we're indistinguishable. Press the

solar plexus of any, you'll hear the selfsame sigh.

I gave this form a try, using the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. I liked adding to a poem of submission an element of strength and endurance. 

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf’s a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day. 

Nothing gold can stay.

WE ARE HERE TO STAY

by Mary Lee Hahn

We'll begin again from scratch, with nothing.

There is not enough gold

in all the coffers of the world that can

stop us. We are here to stay.

Buffy has the Christmas Eve Eve edition of the Poetry Friday roundup at Buffy's Blog. Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza to you!

The Importance of History

My Name is James Madison Hemings

by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Terry Widener

This is the story of a boy who has been born into slavery, but whose father is also his master. His mother tells him that his father is an important man and that someday he will know just how important. 

Eventually, the boy's father keeps his promise and frees the boy and his siblings, but not his mother. She walks away from the plantation and is not pursued. 

The boy's siblings change their names and, passing for white, take on new identities. James keeps his place in the African American community as a well-respected carpenter.

James has a few items that belonged to his father, including an inkwell. He wonders if his father, Thomas Jefferson, used ink from that inkwell to write the Declaration of Independence, or if he used it to record the names of his slaves on his lists of property.

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life

by Ashley Bryan

In the author's note of Freedom Over Me, we learn that Ashley Bryan acquired documents of slavery, including the plantation estate inventory listing the eleven slaves in this book.

Pairs of free verse poems tell about the slaves' lives and work in one, and about their true names, their dreams, hopes and talents in the other.

This important book will help readers understand that there is not one story of Slave or of Slavery. Each and every enslaved person was a unique human being, priceless in ways that no one else could ever own.

These two books can help lay a foundation for a study of the Civil Rights Movement and the importance of holding our nation accountable for the freedoms set forth in our Constitution.

Still Learning to Read: Text Sets That Deepen Conversation Around an Issue

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6.  This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

For the next few weeks, I'll be sharing text sets I've been using to deepen conversation and to help students understand topics and issues more deeply.  One thing I notice about third graders is that they are all about facts. So starting an informational unit of study in reading is tricky as they sometimes think that reading nonfiction is about facts and restating them.  I want them to know that informational reading is far more than that. I want them to move beyond isolated facts and to discover that understanding an issue is different from knowing facts. I want them to see the power of thinking in different ways because of the conversations different texts invite. I want them to see that topics are often the small information of a bigger issue.  I want them to see that the more they read and learn about a topic, they more they will wonder and want to learn more.

So I am pulling together small text sets that help students think in a variety of ways about a "topic". The topics connect to our content requirements and I've thought a bit about the order of the way I introduce the texts. I find that I can introduce a topic or issue in 3-4 days by sharing a text a day and tracking the way our thinking changes over time. Then as the year goes on, I'll continue to bring in books that connect back to that topic in some way, building and growing our understanding of issues as we also grow as readers.

Last week, we read 3 books about water.  One of our science concepts in 3rd grade is that some of Earthy's resources are limited and the understanding of that.

I started by sharing the book Water is Water by Miranda Paul. This is a great picture book that explains the water cycle and the way water changes  in a simple and inviting way. As an added bonus, Emily Arrow has a song (with hand motions) to go along with this book. So we started there.  The conversation was fine.

The next day we moved to The Water Princess by Susan Verde, Georgie Badiel and Peter Reynolds. This story is based on the Georgie Baddiel's childhood and shares the hardship of getting clean water to a village each day. Stories-Especially stories about real people matter for our young children to make sense of topics and issues.  When I read this book aloud, something in the room shifted as kids realized that this long walk to get water was a daily occurrence for children around the world. Instead of talking about what they learned, the conversation was filled with questions and wonders and "How can this still be happening in the world?".  They wondered why it was so hard to get a well. They wondered if children could ever go to school. They wondered why we had such easy access to water. They wondered about wasting water. They wondered how this problem could be fixed.  They talked and wondered and contemplated the issue of water as something they had never considered.  They went back to the water cycle conversation and the idea that there was only so much water in the world and that meant different things to different people.  That we took water for granted and they had never really thought about it. The conversation could have continued all day.

On the third day of this conversation, we watched Ryan's Story from the Ryan's Well Foundation.  Seeing what can be done to help communities and how a well can change so much about a community started another conversation.  The kids were also interested in the fact that Ryan started this work in first grade AND that he has continued it into his adult life.  This conversation centered around the difference that the well made for the community with questions about how many communities needed a well.  

One goal for our nonfiction study was for students to see how our thinking changes and grows the more we learn.  So we tracked some of our thinking and looked back to see how thinking changed and grew the more we knew.  We realized that we had more questions after the 3 texts than we had at the beginning. I worry that often we ask kids to wonder before they know enough to have genuine questions. But after reading and thinking together, they have more questions than any other kind of thinking.

I am collecting texts of all kinds to keep in a mental file of books that can fit into this set. Some seem better suited to older kids or for kids who end up digging more deeply on their own.  Others that we might visit later in the year or that I'll keep in a mental file to build on the conversation and to connect this with other topics we read about are:

One Well: The Story of Water on Earth by Rochelle Strauss

A Cool Drink of Water by Barbara Kerley 

A Drop Around the World by Barbara McKinney

All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon

The Georgie Badiel Foundation

How to Make Filthy Water Drinkable (TED Talk by Micael Pritchard)

Depending on where the conversation goes, there are some articles about water from NEWSELA that might connect to our conversation and learning. Current events around water issues (Flint, Michigan and  the Standing Rock protests would connect to this idea also.)

I think in the past, I found books about a topic and it was no wonder my students were interested in facts.  Now I try to find compelling books that go beyond sharing information. I want to tie in not only information but real stories that bring issues around topics to light.  As readers I want my students to see the power of reading widely and I want them to see how their thinking changes across time and texts.

(Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released in August!  You can order it online at Stenhouse! You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead.)

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

Poetry Friday

Wikimedia

fifth grade --

teaching parrots

to think

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016

One of the many hard things about these times we're living in is how to teach about or talk about our government with fifth graders. 

(Insert several carefully worded and then deleted paragraphs here.)

I'll just leave it at that. I'm sure you can imagine.

Tabatha has the round up at The Opposite of Indifference.

Crabby Characters

Penguin Problems

by Jory John, illustrated by Lane Smith

There's one in every crowd, isn't there? Look at that cover. Everything's just fine with the entire raft (rookery, colony, and huddle, waddle) of penguins. Except that one.

Thank goodness for the walrus, who talks some sense into our crabby, dissatisfied penguin friend. Except in the end...

Hungry Bird

by Jeremy Tankard

Here's another whiney, dissatisfied character (with a bunch of REALLY patient friends). Bird hasn't packed a snack for the hike, but he also doesn't want anything the other animals have to offer. In the end, he does taste their snacks, but when his favorite shows up (a worm)...sigh...

Leave Me Alone!

by Vera Brosgol

Grandmother has had it with all of the bothersome, interfering grandchildren. One day she packs up her knitting and walks off yelling, "Leave me alone!" This is her refrain over and over again as different characters in different settings hamper her ability to sit in a quiet spot and knit. She finally finds peace and quiet in a black hole. Then, in the end...ahhh, finally a character who recovers from a bad case of the crabbies. 

Still Learning to Read: Tools for Revising and Editing

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6.  This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

We are working on finishing up our narratives this month and I introduced some tools that I hope help students see the power of revision and the difference between revision and editing.

We watched Ruth Ayres video on Revision that is the most helpful resource ever on helping kids understand what it means to revise.

I think introduced a variety of tools that could be used for revision.  We discussed how these various sticky notes could be used to help us try the strategies Ruth suggests in her video.

The tools seem to invite a high level of engagement because, let's be honest, who doesn't like a cool, new kind of sticky note?

I also had them reflect on their revisions with this page asking them to share the ways that they revised-why did they make these decisions as a writer?

Then I pulled out a basket of red pens to talk about editing. We talked about the final clean up of a piece of writing once the writing is crafted the way that you'd like it. A final few reads to check for those last editing mistakes and fixing those up.

Last year, I did something similar with students and a few of my students created a video sharing the revisions to their own writing. I think learning to revise is a skill that they will carry with them through their lives as writers and I know these skills and tools will help them grow as writers throughout the year.

SaveSave

(Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released in August!  You can order it online at Stenhouse! You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Poetry Friday -- Some Days

image via unsplash

Some Days
by Philip Terman

Some days you have to turn off the news
and listen to the bird or truck
or the neighbor screaming out her life.
You have to close all the books and open
all the windows so that whatever swirls
inside can leave and whatever flutters
against the glass can enter. Some days
you have to unplug the phone and step
out to the porch and rock all afternoon
and allow the sun to tell you what to do.
The whole day has to lie ahead of you
like railroad tracks that drift off into gravel.
Some days you have to walk down the wooden
staircase through the evening fog to the river,
where the peach roses are closing,
sit on the grassy bank and wait for the two geese.




Some days when you have to turn off the news, you write. We've been having lots of fun with #haikuforhealing. Heidi said it best:

a fine kettle of 

hawks we have here, 

rising on hot air

Outsiders have joined in. There's been a poem in Turkish, and one from @broetry.

Tabatha's recent post seems very apt: Do the stuff that only you can do -- make good art.

Hey, we set a record -- the Poetry Friday Roundup Host schedule for January-June 2017 filled up in a single week! Thanks, everyone! Here it is. If you need the code, just shout and I'll email it to you.

This week, Jone has the round up at Check it Out.

Boy, Were We Wrong!

Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!

Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System!

Boy, Were We Wrong About the Weather!

Boy, Were We Wrong About the Human Body!

I've been using the dinosaur book in this series since 2008 (thank you, Amazon purchasing data for that factoid). It's my go-to book at the beginning of the year when we unpack our misconceptions about scientists (not always wild-haired men working in labs) and the work they do (scientific thinking changes over time as scientists use the/a scientific method to gather data and test theories). After reading this book to my class, I have always made the point that science isn't "finished," that there will be plenty of discoveries left for them when they grow up to be scientists!

Somehow I missed using the dinosaur book at the beginning of the year this year, but I tucked it in as a #classroombookaday. Because of the strong community around this hashtag on Twitter, I was alerted to the other books in the series. I borrowed them from the library, but they are now on my Wish List, awaiting the possibility of holiday gift cards. The solar system book and the human body book will align nicely to our 5th grade standards, and the weather book will be a nice review before our state tests! Win-win-win-win for science and the perfect books for my classroom library!