Still Learning to Read: Books I've Handed to Kids Recently

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.

It is always around this time of year when I find that handing a book to a child can make a difference for the rest of the year.  This is the time of year when I know readers well enough to chit chat books on the way to lunch or at recess. This is the time of year when I start leaving a book in a child's book bin that I think they might like.  There is something about a young reader knowing that you thought about him/her specifically when you saw a book.  There is something about handing a child a specific book that strengthens a relationship.  This week, I noticed myself informally handing books to children in informal ways.  This is one of the most important jobs I do--so I have to know lots of books. Always. It seems that every year my kids have different tastes as readers, so I can't just recommend the books I've always recommended.  It is always a personal act--the act of recommending a book.  These are some of the books I've handed to kids (or ordered for kids) this week.

So many of my kids have become Raina fans. Raina's name comes up like she is a student in our class!  A few of us  were chatting informally as they came in the other day about them.  They especially love Smile and Sisters.  This week, I pulled out the Babysitter's Club Graphix. (I seem to only have #!--my other 2 have disappeared since last year so I had to reorder!)   Kids were thrilled to know about more books that Raina illustrated and there is a list of people waiting to dig into this series. (I love this kind of recommendation because it builds on what they love (Raina) but also introduces them to a new author that they might fall in love with (Ann Martin). 

One of my students had fallen in love with the Zita books  (By Ben Hatke) and was more engaged when reading them than I'd seen her all year. I remembered that I had received a review copy of Mighty Jack by the same author, earlier this month and I mentioned it to her and left it at her table the next day. She loved it and passed it on to another reader in the class who she thought would love it.

The Little Shaq books went around my room early in the year but they seem to be making their rounds again. Last week, I had a conversation with a student who was reading the 2nd book. We checked and were THRILLED to find out that the 3rd book in the Little Shaq series (Star of the Week) was due out THIS WEEK!  It should arrive today and was the talk of the room.  Not only did I get to hand a book to a child but this also built some awareness for those "hot off the press" books. 

The Treehouse Books were popular in my room last year and I realized they were published about a year earlier in Australia than they are here.  Lucky for Amazon, I can get copies of the books that are not quite published in the US yet which I think is the case with The 65 Story Treehouse which should arrive this week so one of my readers can read this last book (so far) in the series.

I bought the first two books in the new Super Happy Party Bears series after Ann DiBella recommended them on Facebook. I love having new books, doing a quick share in the morning before we start our day and handing them off to the first readers! Kids always love to be the first readers of new books so this is a fun way to hand books to kids.  I need to read this one as soon as I can get it back as it seems like a fun read for 3rd graders.

We visited the Columbus Zoo on a field trip a few weeks ago. My kids aren't reading much nonfiction yet so I picked up two of Jack Hanna's Wild But True books and gave them to a few of the first kids to walk in the room the next morning. I always love to hand books to kids in the morning as they start a buzz in the classroom with lots of kids curious about the books.

My students know me well enough now to know that they don't have to love any of the books I recommend to them. They know that they own their reading and that when I recommend a book, they are not obligated to read it. But, they also know that I think about them and their individual tastes and needs as readers and that matters. Knowing my kids as readers and combining that with what I know about books is one of my most important roles.  And one of my favorites:-) 

(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.)

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Poetry Friday -- Below the Surface

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For Once, Then, Something
by Robert Frost

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

This is a new-to-me Robert Frost poem. Seems important these days to look beyond the surface, no matter how scary that Something is that we might find there.

Irene has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Live Your Poem.

Micro Genres

image from Unsplash

Agrarian Fantasy, Amnesia and Memory Loss Fiction, and Hockey Romance are three of the “Trending Micro Genres” Audible recently identified in an email blast to members. The idea of a Micro Genre got me thinking differently about the books that have been popular in my 5th grade classroom in the first month of school.

As a part of #classroombookaday (the amazing ritual of reading aloud a picture book every day), I have stumbled into these Micro Genres:

UNIQUE RESPONSE TO A PROBLEM

Stuck by Oliver Jeffers
What Do You Do With a Problem? by Kobi Yamada

HUMOROUS NONFICTION

It’s All About Me-Ow by Hudson Talbot
The Disgusting Critters series by Elise Gravel

SAD BOOKS THAT END HAPPY

City Dog Country Frog by Mo Willems
Grandpa Green by Lane Smith

When I look at the books students have chosen for independent reading, these Micro Genres have appeared:

MYTHOLOGY GRAPHIC NOVELS (really a format and not a genre, but let's go with it)

George O’Connor Olympians series

REALISTIC FICTION/MEMOIR GRAPHIC NOVELS (another format, but students are starting to learn that every genre can be found in this most favorite of all formats!)

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier
Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson
El Deafo by CeCe Bell

SURPRISING TRUE STORIES (biography and autobiography, but also historical fiction, because of that kernel of truth)

Growing Up Pedro by Matt Tavares
Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka
Stella by Starlight by Sharon Draper
The Friendship Doll by Kirby Larson

When I was in middle school, my favorite Micro Genre was BOOKS THAT MAKE ME CRY. I read Love Story, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grow, and Little Britches over and over and over again. Stretched out on my bed on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I could re-read one of those books between lunch and dinner, and I relish the tears rolling down my cheeks and into my ears as I read the saddest parts.

I’m realizing that when I have conversations with my students about genre, it will be important to help them stretch their definitions from the traditional but limited ways of looking at genre and format, help them to come up with narrower and more specific ways to think about categorizing stories, and help them identify the Micro Genres that will compel them to read and re-read.

What is (or was) YOUR favorite micro genre?

Books About Reading...Sort Of

Lines, Squiggles, Letters, Words
by Ruth Rocha
illustrated by Madalena Matoso
Enchanted Lion Books, November 2016
review copy provided by the publisher

This is  book about how life in a world of random, meaningless squiggles turns into a life of reading a world full of meaningful text.

The book is also perhaps a commentary on school learning vs. real life learning. The pages where the character is learning his letters in school show children seated in rows of desks, while the teacher displays a chart of the letter and writes it on the board. The dialogue between students and teacher consists of teacher saying, "A is for apple," and the students repeating the sentence. It is when the character leaves school and enters his print-rich world that he can connect his learning to what he sees in his everyday life.

The Polar Bear
by Jenni Desmond
Enchanted Lion Books, November 2016
review copy provided by the publisher

Like Jenni Desmond's 2015 book, The Blue Whale (reviewed here), this is an imaginative work of literary nonfiction, featuring a little girl in a red crown who is reading the same book we are. As we watch her reading, we can see how she's processing the information and making connections to the text. The book is filled with lots of polar bear facts, and in the end, when you understand the bears' dependence on ice for survival, your heart will be filled with much sorrow about climate change and the loss of polar ice.

Still Learning to Read: Organizing Assessments

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.

"Try the Starbucks App. It's life-changing," my brother told me a few months ago. He was right. I can order my morning tea from my house right before I leave and it is ready for me when I arrive.  No more long lines. No more trying to predict how long my morning drive with tea stop will take. My mornings are calmer and more predictable now.  A small change, but life-changing nonetheless!

A similar thing happened a few years ago as I was trying (still...in my 28th year of teaching) to figure out how to manage all the assessments and things I wanted to save through the school year on each child.  I used to have file folders that worked fine but assessments have become a bit more complex.  And for assessments to be useful, I want to have access to them and full file folders are not always that easy to access! Even though much of what I keep, I can keep online,  I like to keep a lot of paper things. I've always believed that every piece of work can tell you something about a child and I know having lots allows me to see change over time.  When I moved to 3rd grade and tried to make sense of our 3rd Grade Guarantee Law, I had to figure out a plan for all the paperwork that went along with that, This new mandated paperwork, along with the daily classroom assessments I have always kept became a bit overwhelming (well, maybe more than a bit...).  I needed a new plan.  Our Literacy Coach, Gretchen Taylor, shared with me the system she had used the year before as a middle school teacher--she had a mailbox/file type slot for each child in her 5 middle school Language Arts classes. That way, when she wanted to add a new note, assessment, piece of student work, etc. she just dropped it in.  Easy and quick and very accessible at all times.

So, I set up the same thing and have kept it going ever since.  I have cabinets in my room for storage. They are above the student cubbies. I have taken over the front portion of 3 of those and house 8 student files in each one.

So each student has a file that I can toss things in when needed. I can also easily access anything I want. This helps me in a variety of ways:

• First of all, I don't have to spend a lot of deciding what to keep. I do that a lot--try to decide if something is worth keeping.   With this system, there is plenty of room to drop things in and there is no reason to keep them forever--I can keep them as long as I need to.  So any student samples that may be worth keeping, any quick checks I do, even a sticky note with an observation about a child can go right in these files.
• This is the perfect system for sharing information with others.  When I get ready for parent conferences, I can pull the pile of information out. I have lots to look at when finishing up comments for report cards. And when the Reading Support teacher or the ELL teacher comes in to look at some of the assessments or wants to add something new, they don't have wait for me or sort through my piles for what they are looking for. They have access to these anytime they need them.
• I rely a great deal on digital tools for collecting and reflecting on work but there are mandated assessments, test reports, reading plans and work samples that are better saved as paper copies--better for me because I can spread them out and look at them when needed. This system lets me look at individual work more easily. It also invites reflection across time.

Because I am a person who make piles and who likes to look again and again at student work, this is the perfect organization tool for me.  It is a simple idea that really changed my teaching life as it made all of the paperwork more manageable and more useful for me.

(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.)

Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released last week!  You can order it online at Stenhouse!

Poetry Friday -- Quite So Much

Quite So Much

If it weren't for the clouds
I wouldn't love the blue
quite so much.

If it weren't for the cold shock
of the first step into the river
I wouldn't love dry land
quite so much.

If it weren't for the surprise of bright yellow fungus
I wouldn't love dead trees
quite so much.

If it weren't for the constant chatter
and the loud enthusiasm of children
I wouldn't love silence
quite so much.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016


Our fifth graders went to Highbanks Metropark last week for a field trip put on by the Ohio River Foundation, a group that works towards "protecting and restoring the Ohio River and its watershed." The Olentangy River, which runs through Highbanks, is a part of the Ohio River watershed. Our students took part in several activities that determined the health of the Olentangy River, and that reinforced the need to conserve our fresh water resources. This poem was inspired by our field trip.


Violet is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Violet Nesdoly | Poems.

My Adult Reading Life

September - May is a frustrating time of year for a teacher to be a reader. Because there is no way to do our jobs within the parameters of the contract hours of our days/weeks, work spills over into our personal lives and threatens to rob us of one of the identities at our very core -- that of Reader. Luckily, I eat breakfast every day and I have a twenty minute commute to work.

I manage to keep a middle grade novel going in 20 minute increments as I eat breakfast. I tell myself that I should weave a professional book into that time slot some days, but I'll be honest -- I rarely do.

My drive time is my adult reading time. I read with my ears. If it weren't for Audible and the TED Radio Hour podcast, I would not have an adult reading life. I also wouldn't have very much to talk about in adult conversations since I'm not a sports fan, I fall asleep when I watch TV or movies, and I don't pay close attention to the news (for sanity's sake).

It would be easy enough not to be a reader, but as a teacher of reading (and as a person whose core identity is Reader), that's simply not an option.

There's no such thing as MAKING time to read. We all have the same number of hours in each day. So it's all about being creative in FINDING time and using it to keep my reading life alive in the September - May drought so it can flourish June - August.

Still Learning to Read: Tracking Our Thinking in Read Aloud

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.

I want my students to have experience with a variety of ways to track their thinking during reading.  There are so many tools and right now, I just want them to see how powerful it is to stop and notice your thinking. I want them to be able to choose tools that work for them and I use the first 6-8 weeks of school to make sure they have experience with several ways to annotate.  Since our focus is on the thinking and process, the tool is really up to the child once they see some  possibilities. So for read aloud this time, I chose the book Lucy by Randy Cecil.  This is a book that I fell in love with this summer.  I chose it for several reasons.

• The illustrations in this book are key. There is a black and white illustration on each page and I want my 3rd graders to talk around both words and pictures. I find that often, at this age, readers are more apt to talk about what they notice or wonder in a visual than in text so this combination seemed perfect. I also know they will naturally find evidence in the illustrations as they talk and the "What in the book makes you think that?" type of conversation will grow.
• I was able to get 12 copies of the book from our public library.  This makes it possible for groups of 2-3 to share a book. 
• I assigned them a Thinking Partner for this read aloud. So they share their book with the same person and will think through this book with one person. Thinking with the same person across a book is different than thinking with different people every day.  There are benefits to both but as we build relationships and conversation skills, having the same partner through the book is important.
• There are 3 characters in the book whose story lines come together--Eleanor, her father, and the dog, Lucy.  As readers begin to read more complex text, I want them to think about characters and how characters stories and relationships are often key to narrative.

So each pair of students was given a copy of the book and a stack of sticky notes and they have been jotting and talking every day before we come together and share thinking as a group. 

The book and conversation are inviting great talk and we are learning so much about tracking our thinking, backing our thinking with evidence in the text, character development and having good conversations. 

(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.)

Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released last week!  You can order it online at Stenhouse!

Hat Back Trilogy

Imagine how much I was jumping up and down (and up and down) when I opened a box from Candlewick and found this inside!! I have been waiting for this book for so long! We Found a Hat by Jon Klaassen!!!!

I am a HUGE fan of Jon Klaassen and especially of his hat books. If you read this blog, you already know this because maybe you read our posts, I Want My Hat Back,  I Want My Hat Back, Revisited, the John Klassen Blog Tour or 10 Books in Which Characters Are Eaten. I have been #teambear from the day I read I Want My Hat Back and this book remains one of my favorite picture books of all time and I've been anticipating the new book since I heard about it a long time ago.

I am not the only one who has been looking forward to this book. The anticipation for this third and final book in this series has been going for a long time.  In February, The Guardian revealed the cover and interviewed Jon Klassen about the book.

The book is officially released next week. The official release date is October 11. I think you'll want to have it in your  hands that day so I'd suggest a preorder! Here is the book trailer for a sneak peek!

I don't want to spoil the book for you but I can tell you that I LOVED LOVED LOVED it. I've given it to a few friends to read and some hugged it before they gave it back. I read it to my class and they loved it. It is better than I could have imagined. A perfect ending to this fabulous trilogy.  It was definitely worth the wait.

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#DigiLitSunday -- Conferring

My fifth graders did lots and lots of work on their narratives of "imagined experiences or events" in their writer's notebooks before we ever brought a draft into their Google Apps for Education account. While we were in the notebooks phase of these pieces, I conferred with writers on an as-needed basis. When we were planning, I could listen in on small group conversations or I could take a pulse during share time to get a sense of who was struggling and needed one-on-one help. I could borrow all of the notebooks for an evening and do a quick read-through of their possible leads to sift for those who needed help and those I could use for minilessons under the document camera.

When it came time for a handwritten draft outside their notebook, I didn't give my students much time to pull together all the bits and pieces of planning, leads, and snippets of dialogue. They had a tight deadline and I was brutal -- meet the deadline or forego Genius Hour. I wanted these drafts to be rough because I wanted them to understand that their work on the computer would be to create a new and better draft, not just type up what they had written on paper and call it good. By having every draft on paper, I could easily carry them all home, read carefully through each draft, and make +/- notes for each child on my clipboard chart. Once they began their drafts on the computer, I would gain the ability to have a quick conference with each student by leaving digital comments on their work.

I made sure the initial session on the computer was a short one. All they had time to do was log into their Google account, go to Drive, open a new Doc, name it with the conventions I gave them, and share it with me.

After that first quick computer session, I used my notes from their handwritten draft and left a comment for each student that might guide their work on this next draft.

Every day or two, I read through each student's work, taking notes on what they've improved and what they still need to work on. I have a little digital conference with every student in the comments, and I know exactly which students need my personal attention, and for what. I can group students who have the same needs and do small group work, and I have digital examples of exemplary writing, along with pieces that (with student permission) I can use in minilessons for craft, revision, and editing.

Conferring is the heart of writing instruction. It's what makes the teaching personal to the words the writer has put on paper or screen. Technology has given us another very powerful way to confer with our student writers.

Poetry Friday -- You Are There

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You Are There
by Erica Jong

You are there.
You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.

Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

I have lived the last two weeks at full tilt. Life has come at me non-stop. It has felt like perpetual motion, but perhaps Jong is right. Perhaps it was just two week's worth of intense arrival. I was definitely there, even though I wasn't here to comment on your posts. 

I'm looking forward to a slower period of arrival. I'm looking forward to visiting the roundup this week and seeing what everyone's up to.

Thanks for your patience with my silence.

The roundup the week is at Karen Edmisten's blog. The one with the "Shockingly Clever Title."

Still Learning to Read: Deepening Our Conversations Around Books

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 2016-2017 school year.

I received a review copy of A Bike Like Sergio's from Candlewick. I immediately fell in love with the book and was anxious to share it with my students. The picture book is perfect for inviting talk around important issues and decisions.  The book trailer is a good sneak peek into what kids might talk about.

When I shared the book with our literacy coach, Lynsey Burkins she reminded me that this author, Maribeth Boeltz also write Those Shoes , a favorite of mine from last school year. I looked up the author and then remembered that she also wrote Happy Like Soccer   I had never thought about the 3 books together but I pulled them out as Lynsey suggested and planned the week's worth of mini lessons around these three book.

My big goals for the week were to deepen our conversations around books and to begin to understand the ways books can change our hearts a bit. I also wanted my students to look across an author's work to deepen their understanding around individual books and issues across books. I knew we'd do rereading of one or two of the titles and I wanted to introduce the idea that rereading helps us deepen understanding. I knew those were my big goals and I also knew that I would have to listen to student thinking to move the conversation forward from where they were in their thinking.

On Monday I read aloud A Bike for Sergio. The big question throughout the book was whether or not Ruben would get the bike or not.  At the end of the book (SPOILER ALERT) when Ruben does not get the bike, my students were livid--I heard comments like "There must be a sequel!" and "That's the worst ending ever." and "He'll get the bike in the next book."  I left the conversation there and told kids that this was a book I'd been thinking about since I 'd read it last week and maybe they'd find themselves thinking about the book and the characters later too.  

The next day, I told my kids that I had been thinking about the book again and that there were some questions I had as a reader that I just didn't have answered yet. My biggest question was, "Was this a book with a happy ending?"  I put that on a chart and asked them if there were things they were wondering now that we had had time to think about the book. Our chart looked like this.

• Was it a happy ending?
• Did Ruben do the right thing?
• Was Sergio happy or sad that Ruben didn't get the bike?
• Is Ruben's family poor?
• Will he ever get the bike?
• Will the lady in the blue coat ever give him something as a thank you?

Each of these questions gave us a great deal to talk about and because there was no "right answer, we could agree, disagree, and change our thinking as the conversation moved on.

We moved onto the next two books by Maribeth Boelts.  We read Happy Like Soccer next and the children felt better about the ending. One child said, "When we read A Bike Like Sergio's, I didn't feel right at the end. When you read a book, you start to really like the character and I didn't feel good about how that one ended but I this ending seemed like a happy ending."

We read Those Shoes on Wednesday.  Our conversations before reading the book focused on what we might expect now that we knew Maribeth Boelts better as a writer. The kids predicted that family would be important in this book. They predicted that by looking at the cover, the child wanted something everyone else had like Sergio. They thought maybe the character would have to decide something important.  

After reading all 3 books, my students shared the following insights about Maribeth Boelts:

• She has a way of writing about characters who figure out how to solve their own problems.
• She writes about kids who want things that other people have.
• Her books are realistic.
• Family is important in her books.

And they still can't decide whether the families were poor or not.  This was a topic of conversation each day and they never came to an answer they were sure of--or what they actually meant by "poor".  

We reread A Bike for Sergio on Friday.  By Friday, the class had pretty much come to a consensus that the book did have a happy ending.  They still hope that Ruben gets the bike someday but they have a better understanding of the decision he was faced with. In this last read, kids stopped me on almost every page, asking me to reread a line that gave them a clue into something they were thinking about--lines they didn't quite get during the first read.  

Reading these 3 books together was a great idea (Thanks Lynsey!). We didn't do much writing or recording during these lessons as I really only wanted to deepen the ways in which we talked about books. Reflecting on the week, I think we certainly deepened our conversations and the ways we talk about books. We also changed our expectations of books and how they impact us. We learned to use what we know about an author to understand important ideas in  new ways.  And we know that there are some books and some things that we'll think about long after we are finished reading. This week, we came to love Ruben and Sierra and Jeremy, characters who I think will come into our conversations throughout the year.

(You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLficuciaryTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released last week!  

You can order it online at Stenhouse!

Which One Doesn't Belong?

Which One Doesn't Belong? is a brilliant new math book from Stenhouse. A MUST-HAVE if you teach math at any age I think.  The book is a picture book to use with kids along with a Teacher's Guide that is really a professional book by Christopher Danielson (whose website is also brilliantly amazing and one you'll want to visit often if you are a math teacher.)

Which One Doesn't Belong? is a book of conversation starters around geometry.  Each page of the picture book gives readers 4 shapes and asks the questions, "Which One Doesn't Belong?"  I know this opener and love it and have used lots of the resources on the website Which One Doesn't Belong? and other resources and I've always found the routine to be a good one for math learning and supporting conversations around math.

But there was so much I didn't know!  This teacher guide--which is not so long but long enough to have depth and lots of new learning--helped me to understand how much more powerful this routine could be if I were more intentional as a teacher. The focus on geometry is interesting to me because it is an area of math teaching that I need to learn more about.  The book has an entire chapter called "How Children Become Geometers". This chapter helped me see the big jump kids do from elementary school to high school geometry and how much better we can do to help them build understanding by understanding the levels of understanding kids have and build around geometry.

The book is not a teacher's manual. Instead it is a way for teachers to use this routine in ways that empower students. Christopher Danielson shares language he uses when he introduces Which One Doesn't Belong. He shares examples from classrooms and he helps us better understand how children make sense of geometry through inquiry. He also puts the teacher in the decision-making chair as he invites us to make our own decisions about which pages to introduce to children when.  He also has tips for creating your own WODB set.

I love the answer key in this book.  The thing about this WODB sets is that they are designed so every answer could be the correct answer. So the answer key shares insights kids may notice about each shape and how they might respond.  It is a great resource and a great place to understand how to create your own sets (and help kids create their own.)

I love so much about this set of books. We had a conversation around the first page of the picture book last week and it was incredible. I introduced it as Danielson suggests in the book and we could have gone on for a very long time with ideas and thinking around these 4 shapes. I am excited to see where the conversation goes over the next several months.  This was a great way for me to take a routine I know and really deepen my understanding of it which will help my students.  Not only that but it helped me understand geometry in general and I now see the connection between this and several of Danielson's blog posts. I can't recommend this book enough.  If you are interested in inquiry based thinking and routines that empower kids AND if you want to learn more about quality talk in the math classroom, you need this book immediately!

Poetry Friday -- Truth

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by tubb

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
by Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

It's data analysis season in our schools. We've been looking hard at the various "truths" that different pieces of data tell us about students. Each one has its own slant, and to get at the core truth of each child as a learner -- the TRUE true, as it were -- there are so many things to consider that we're all feeling a bit dazzled.

But the more we know, the better we teach: "Success in Circuit lies."

Catherine has the Poetry Friday roundup at Reading to the Core.

How Much You Love a Book

Did you ever love a book so much that you deliberately slowed down your reading for the last third so you wouldn't have to come to the final page?

That's why I'm blogging instead of reading -- I'm desperate to find out what happens, desperate to see how Kelly Barnhill completes her masterful weaving of story strands, hopeful that the small stories will be strong enough to heal the big story.

I'm in love with the characters -- the lumpy, multi-armed monster-poet; the adorable little dragon whose sense of self is starting to match his reality; the "mad woman" in the tower ("hope is the thing with feathers..."); the witch who hides in plain sight for the first half of the book, while the one called "witch" clearly isn't. And of course, the girl who drank the moon.

I thought about her on my early morning walk today. There were puddles of moonlight on the street and sidewalks. The moonlight pouring down on me felt substantial enough to catch on my fingers and drink...almost.

While I walked, I thought of the dark cloud that's looming over our country. I'll try to remember this story's insistence on the power of hope. No matter how much darkness there is, hope has the power of light to overcome it.

Thank you, Kelly Barnhill, for this beautiful story. Thank you, Franki, for insisting I read it. I'm not sure when I'll finish the last 30 pages, but I know they'll be magical.



The Girl Who Drank the Moon
by Kelly Barnhill
Algonquin Young Readers, August 2016

Still Learning to Read: Sticky Notes!

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 2016-2017 school year.

This was my favorite weeks so far because routines are set and I am just beginning to confer with kids beyond the initial assessments and reading interviews. We are also starting to build routines around reading behaviors that are part of reading communities. I love this time of the year when I can slowly begin to teach based on some of the information I've gathered and think together about ways to move forward as readers. And it seems that we've already gone through our year's supply of sticky notes!

I had a conference with a student who was reading "fat chapter books". She told me that she knew they were just right because if she missed one word on the first page, the book was too easy, if she missed two words, the book was just right and if she missed three, it was too hard.  This is so typical in the upper elementary grades--readers thinking reading is about "getting the words right".  When I met with her about the book, even though she was halfway through, it was obvious to me that she struggled with comprehension since the beginning. I never "fix" things like this for a child because I am interested in helping the reader grow--I am not worried about whether they understand a specific book. I believe strongly in building agency and I know that if I swoop in in September and tell her the things she is misunderstanding, she will not build the skills she needs to build understanding herself. Instead I file the  information and know where my instruction needs to go. I kept my eyes open during independent reading time and a few days later she was ready to start a new book.  We conferred for the first two days of her reading the new book--one to preview and think about what we knew and wondered from the blurb, etc. Then she started reading with sticky notes placed every few pages to help her keep track of her thinking while she read. We talked about the need for readers to take their time during the beginning of a new book because there is so much to take in and understand in those first few chapters. We've met briefly a few times and this strategy is working well. It is slowing her down and also giving her a tool to hold onto a longer story over time (by rereading the stickies before she starts reading the next day). It is evident that she is comprehending better and she is in LOVE with the book and reading.  

Readers love to share books and some readers LOVE books that are "hot off the press". I am one of those readers. I love to get books the day they are released and I love to read them before anyone else. So when I saw Dog Man from Dav Pilkey was due out,  I preordered it so it arrived on August 30. I knew they would be excited about this book--even if they weren't familiar with Dav Pilkey, this cover and idea would draw them in. They'd know the excitement of getting a book the day it is released! I shared the book and the blurb with students during our mini lesson and everyone wanted to read it.  I typically have bookmarks  that kids can sign when they want to be on a list to read a particular book, but at this time in the school year, I am not that organized. So I grabbed a sticky note and introduced the idea of being on the wait list for a book and that it would make its way around our room. Currently we have 5 books with sticky notes just like this being read by someone.  This idea is one that caught on quickly and is building lots of conversations as kids pass books along.   (I may transition to what Stacey Riedmiller does --raffles off books to first reader of new books--you can read about that here.)

Finally, I discovered this strategy last year.  I met with a reader who was struggling with finding a book he loved and with sticking with a book once he found one.  Sometimes kids are overwhelmed by the choices they have and they have trouble sticking with a book because (in the midst of reading) they see another one that they might like better.  I've found that it's sometimes helpful to plan with the child and to use sticky notes as visual reminders. Many of our kids don't have "next read stacks" as we do and they aren't thinking that maybe they can read a book that looks good in the near future. A simple sticky note on the front of the book with a number, helps students like this prioritize reading and begin to finish books. By deciding which book to read 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, the child can commit to finishing one book, while taking comfort in the fact that the others can be read soon afterward.

Really, what did we do before sticky notes!  Even with all the digital tools my students will use for thinking and annotating, sticky notes are still the most important tool in our classroom.

(You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLficuciaryTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released last week!  

You can order it online at Stenhouse!

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This Is My Dollhouse by Giselle Potter

I read This is My Dollhouse by Giselle Potter as one of our #classroombookaday books a week or so ago. It was quite a hit and it is now making its rounds around the classroom. Everyone was mesmerized by the story.

I must say that the book is a real surprise. By the cover, I assumed this was a sweet story about a little girl and her dollhouse. It is a story about a little girl and her dollhouse but not what I expected.  The book starts with these lines, "This is my dollhouse.  It used to be just a cardboard box."  The first half of the book goes on with the girl describing all the things she did to create the dollhouse by painting the bricks, using various things to create a TV, a stove, etc. It becomes clear that the fun of the play is in the creation and each day she uses things in creative ways to make her dollhouse better.

But her friend has a "real" dollhouse. So she is embarrassed to show her dollhouse to her friend. But it turns out that her friend's dollhouse turns out to be not as much fun and her dollhouse provides endless hours of play and imagination.

There is another fun surprise to this book. On the cover, there is a tiny badge that says, "Look inside the jacket for tips on how to make your own dollhouse!" The back of the jacket cover has step-by-step ideas that invite readers to create their own cardboard box dollhouse.

When I read this book aloud, the kids were fascinated. They loved the ways that she created different things for her dollhouse.  Every kid loves to make new things with cardboard boxes so this inspired so many great ideas. It is a great book to tie into kicking off a  Makerspace too.

I loved the messages this story gave about creativity, imagination and play. I have been spending a bit of time with the professional book Purposeful Play by Kristi Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler and this was a great way for me to bring some ideas about play and making and  learning to my students.

This year's Global Cardboard Challenge is on October 1. This would be a great book to use as you get ready for this global event.

Poetry Friday -- Everyday Miracle: A Septercet

Everyday Miracle

Watching caterpillars morph
from worm into chrysalis
never grows old. Starting small

(teeny-tiny, truth be told)
they adopt a growth mindset --
after egg, it's grow, grow, grow.

They change caterpillar clothes
as they thicken and lengthen.
Then comes the ultimate change --

undigested food is purged,
silk belt is spun, anchoring
caterpillar, who lets go

and leans into the process.
Unseen to observing eyes,
parts that were caterpillar

shuffle, shift, reorganize.
What once began as all crawl
will become fluttering flight.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016



The Ditty of the Month challenge at Today's Little Ditty, issued by Madam Jane Yolen, was to write a septercet, a form she invented in which each verse (as many verses as you want) needs to have three lines, each with seven syllables. It can be rhymed or not. The challenge was also (I just realized) to make your septercet feature reading and/or writing. Oops. Maybe mine is about reading the natural world.

Michelle hosts the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Today's Little Ditty.

The Power of Story

I Am a Story
by Dan Yaccarino
HarperCollins, 2016
review copy provided by the publisher

We've been looking closely at picture book dust jackets (inside and out), covers, and endpapers, thanks to #classroombookaday. I'm hoping the endpapers of this book will inspire thoughtful inferences about what we'll find between the covers. Will there be text that we can quote explicitly to support our thinking?

What will my fifth graders make of a book that chronicles the history of human story telling, from ancient oral story tellers around a fire under the stars to modern story tellers around a campfire under the very same stars?

Will they be in awe of their place in the course of human history as writers and tellers of stories?

What will they make of the little red bird who flies through all the places and times?





This book is making me think again about the TED Radio Hour episode I listened to recently, "The Act of Listening." Especially the parts about the power of Story Corps, and the man who invented it. Because what good is a story without a listener or reader?