Trucktown Debut!

It was a big week for us in Columbus. Jon Scieszka and Loren Long stopped by Columbus on their book tour for their new, amazing series for young readers--TRUCKTOWN!


They visited our school on Thursday, thanks to Cover to Cover Bookstore and Simon and Schuster. To get ready for the visit, I read the new book SMASH! CRASH! to lots of K-2 classrooms. I got the same feeling when I read this book as I did when I read Mo Willem's DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS to young children when it first came out. SMASH! CRASH! begs for child participation--yelling Smash! Crash! is part of the fun. But there is more to this first book than that.--great fun characters that are predictable in their actions, some great humor, fun fonts , and amazing illustrations. How three illustrators can come together to create one illustration is fascinating to me. And the result is amazing. If you know the work of Loren Long, David Shannon, and David Gordon, you can see in each illustration, what each person brings to the art. The colors, the characters, even the lettering is quite engaging.

The visit was great fun! Loren Long spoke to our K-2 students at Chapman. He drew a truck--showing them how he did that, read the book (asking them to join in when it was time to yell CRASH!), and spent time answering questions. Loren came dressed in his Trucktown Mechanic Suit which added to the fun.

Both Jon and Loren spoke at Cover to Cover and it was standing room only. The audience's reaction to the book was extremely positive as the kids joined in and laughed throughout the book. If either of them come anywhere near your city, go see them!

Jon, our new National Ambassador for Children's Literature, talked a bit about what we can expect from Trucktown in the next few years. I think he said that there will be 50 TRUCKTOWN books over the next few years. More picture books likes SMASH! CRASH!, some easy chapter books that young children can read on their own, board books, and more.

I am a huge fan of kids reading books where they know and love the characters. These Trucktown characters are certainly characters that we will all find ourselves falling in love with--my current favorite is IZZY the Ice Cream Truck. (After seeing Loren Long act out Izzy'a part, Izzy may be my lifetime favorite character!)

You can tell that Jon Scieszka did a great deal of research before embarking on such a project. These book are very inviting for the kids he wrote them for. In a Columbus Dispatch article announcing his visit to Columbus, Jon spoke a bit about his platform: The article said that his message is that: Adults should back off from making kids read the "right" books, expand the definition of reading to include all mediums and technologies, stop demonizing television and, above all, read themselves.

Perfect timing for a series like this and a perfect team to create the series. I can't wait to see the rest of the series!

Another Teacher to Add to the Cool Teachers List

Mrs. Baker from The Wednesday Wars definitely deserves a place on our list of 100+ Cool Teachers in Children's Literature. What a great teacher--someone who helps students find out who it is that they are. I LOVED her! She may be one of my favorite teachers of all time.

And I LOVED the book--definitely deserving of the Newbery Honor that it received last week.

With all of the new books that have come out recently, let us know if you know of any more recent teacher characters that belong on our list!

Congratulations, Mary Lee!

Woooohooooo! We just found out that Mary Lee Hahn has just been selected to serve on the Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts Committee sponsored by the Children's Literature Assembly of NCTE. This list is always one I look forward to each year.

I can't think of a better person to serve on this committee! They are lucky to have her join them.

January Carnival of Children's Literature -- Book Awards Edition

It's up at Wizards Wireless!

30-Day Challenge: Boot Camp and Struggling Readers

In late December, I decided I would join a one-month Women's Boot Camp to start exercising again. The bootcamp starts at 5:30 am each day so I figured that not much would interfere with that time! I was inspired by HipWriterMama's Fall 30 Day Challenge. Then, lucky for me, HipWriterMama announced her 2008 New Year's 30-Day Challenge so I immediately joined. My theory is that the more public I make this venture, the better chance I have of sticking with it.

HipWriterMama wants an update check-in each Monday. Friday marked the halfway mark of the first month of bootcamp. Getting up at 4:45 has been an interesting thing. But Bootcamp is a pretty fun time--even though I am totally and completely out of shape. I plan to sign up and pay for the February session this week.

Funny thing is that I have learned lots about teaching. As adults, we don't often put ourselves in positions where we struggle. Most of us have found work that we love and that we are pretty good at. Same thing with hobbies. So, participating in the class as a "struggling exerciser" has been a challenge. But I have learned a lot about what my struggling kids in school must go through each day.
I wrote an article about my first week at bootcamp that was posted on Choice Literacy's website on Saturday. It compares my experience with bootcamp to that of my struggling readers in reading workshop.

I haven't lost as much weight as I was hoping but since I am trying to make this a new habit, I am okay with that, I guess. I feel better, have a bit more energy and am hopefully healthier.

Graphic

This is our blog.
Want to see what yours looks like? Give it a go. Have patience. Watch the design emerge.
Thanks, Megan. Thanks, Tricia.

Poetry Friday -- Work

For my grade level, after a release day of intense work:

To Be of Use
by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

(the rest of the poem is here...roundup is at Farm School.)

"To the Ends of the Earth" Awards

I've been thinking a lot about the school librarian who wore a plastic tiara to school on Monday. She won a huge award for writing some short vignettes for her 5th graders to read aloud. She wanted to help to bring medieval England alive for them. She went To the Ends of the Earth for her kids, and she won a big award for it.

I'd like the para pros at my school to win a To the Ends of the Earth Award. They work with the trickiest kids (behavioral and learning challenges) every day and they are always cheerful, always patient, and always trying to find one more little thing that we can do to nudge these kids along.

A plastic tiara to the school nurse, who works tirelessly on behalf of the needy families in her district, tracking down beds, and washers and dryers, and warm clothes.

An interview on the Today Show for the ELL teacher who advocated to keep a second language learner out of special education. She knows that in the next five years, his English will develop at a faster and faster rate, if we just give him time. She also knows that if he ever goes back to his native country (a real possibility) with a special education label, it is likely that he would get NO education. (Now, if only we could only convince the NCLB'ers that he should be able to take a test that shows what he CAN do, not a test in a language he hasn't yet mastered.)

A special To the Ends of the Earth Award for the primary teacher who kept a school chess club alive even though she herself does not play chess, and another to all the teachers and librarians who support students in after school activities (or lunchtime poetry clubs) that develop them as thinkers and learners.

Please join me in handing out To the Ends of the Earth awards. Who are the people in your schools, who work with your children or with the children of others, who deserve a plastic tiara for the day?

Hmmm....

So, how did I do over here in "attempting to have read the Newbery" land?

Newbery:
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz
Haven't read it, but it was one of the four last-ditch-effort books I TRIED to get at Cover to Cover on Saturday. They were sold out. I have one on hold.

Newbery Honors:
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis Also on my last-ditch-effort list.
The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt
Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson Again, on my last-ditch-effort list.

Caledcott:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick YAY! Not only have I read it, but my students have all read along in a shared read aloud.

The Caldecott Honors are a moot point for me. I don't follow picture books so much.

The Cybils had some canny nominating committees:

The Newbery winner Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a Poetry finalist
Newbery Honor title Wednesday Wars is a YA finalist
Sibert Winner/Caldecott Honor title The Wall is a MG/YA Nonfiction finalist
Caldecott Honor Knuffle Bunny is a Fiction Picture Book finalist
Odyssey Honor audiobook Skulduggery Pleasant is a Fantasy/Science Fiction finalist
Printz Honor title Your Own Sylvia is a Poetry finalist
Printz Honor title Repossessed is a Fantasy/Science Fiction finalist
Sibert Honor book Lightship is a Nonfiction Picture Book finalist
Geisel Honor book Vulture View is a Nonfiction Picture Book finalist
(thank you Jen and Tricia for cross-referencing all of these)

**Edited to add: The above info was also at the Cybils site. Shame on me for not looking there first!**

If you want to know the truth, the best part of the day was getting the results by text message as I sat at my desk working before school. Whoever it was at ALA who thought that one up deserves a prize all her/his own!

Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop

Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop: Making Informed Instructional Decisions in Grades 3-6

by Franki Sibberson and Karen Szymusiak
Forward by Nancie Atwell
Scholastic, 2008

Review copy compliments of the authors.

This is the right book at the right time for teachers of middle grade readers. The authors have set out to do nothing less than start a revolution in this crazy world of politics-driven standards, accountability, and testing, testing, testing.

Instead of looking at what our students can do and scaffolding them as they move forward, standards, tests, and measures are forcing us to use a deficit model of assessment -- and we wind up focusing on what kids can't do.

We've written this text to turn the tide. (p. 7-8)

Sibberson and Szymusiak begin by reminding us of the particular instructional needs of readers in grades 3-6, as they did in their 2003 Stenhouse book, Still Learning to Read. The shift from reading predictable primary texts to reading complex intermediate texts requires readers to acquire more sophisticated reading strategies.

We cannot prepare students in grades 3-6 for every challenge they will encounter in the books they read. Our goal shifts from preparing them for a text to preparing them for any text. (p.11)

As the authors lead us through in-depth discussions of the various routines and structures of the middle-grade reading workshop, the emphasis is continually on the kind of data and information we can gather about our students at that particular time. They never depart from their message that our stance when assessing readers should be what students can do, whether we are listening to conversations, observing, having an individual conference, looking over the students' reading interviews or logs, taking a status of the class before independent reading time, or any of the countless other times that we assess our students as a natural part of living in the same classroom with them throughout the day. And they never stray from the stance that the purpose of any and all of this assessment should be to inform our instruction of individual children, small groups of children with the same needs in a particular area, or our whole class.

This is a very user-friendly book. There are lots of samples of student work (not all pretty, and at a variety of levels -- just like you would find in your classroom), an abundance of text boxes with bulleted points for easy reference, and short lists of books throughout that support the facet of reading workshop being discussed in the text.

With the myriad of opportunities for day-to-day assessment in the reading workshop comes the challenge of record-keeping -- finding or creating the right forms, and remembering that

For our record-keeping system to inform our instruction, it should be ever changing...I have to remind myself often that there is a difference between record keeping and assessment. Just because I haven't written it down doesn't mean I haven't assessed a child. (p.51)

A generous 18-page appendix gives reproducible examples of the forms Franki has developed over time for her classroom. (But don't forget that notes-to-self jotted on stickie notes are sometimes the only form you need!)

New middle grade teachers, this is a book that will help you to implement your reading workshop. Not only will you understand each of the components of the workshop format, you will know why they are important to student learning, and how you can use assessment within each component to plan for your instruction in a meaningful way. Experienced middle grade teachers, this book is a breath of fresh air -- a reminder of the value in all we do, and chock full of new ideas for tweaking and polishing our workshops to make them more effective than ever before.