Poetry Friday: A STICK IS AN EXCELLENT THING: POEMS CELEBRATING OUTDOOR PLAY

Most people who know me know that I do not love the outdoors. I much prefer being inside, even in nice weather. A character flaw, I know.  But I did spend a great deal of my childhood playing outside. We lived in a house on the corner--which meant we had a big yard.  Our yard was a gathering place--for kickball, and swinging, for neighborhood carnivals, and playing "gas station" in the driveway.  We had Kool-Aid stands and we sold painted rocks.  We caught lightning bugs and played jump rope.  It was a good yard and I guess, there was a time when I did prefer to be outside. Who knew?

The new poetry book, A STICK IS AN EXCELLENT THING by Marilyn Singer (illustrated by LeUyen Pham) makes me happy.  It is all about playing outside. And it is about the real play that I remember from childhood.  Blowing bubbles and playing jacks. Hanging upside down on monkey bars and playing Monkey in the Middle.  Every page celebrates some part of play--the timeless games that kids have played forever.

The book begins in the morning and ends at night. It celebrates all of the play that happens on a perfect summer day.  Singer and Pham are two of my favorites and I love that they've paired up for this one!  This is a great book for the (hopefully) upcoming spring weather. A fun book to share with children as summer draws near and one they will enjoy throughout the year!

Myra has the Poetry Friday roundup at Gathering Books today.

Presidents' Day Picture Books

Looking at Lincoln
by Maira Kalman
Penguin Young Readers Group, 2012

If I had to pick one word for the feeling I get when I read Looking at Lincoln, it's meditative.

You open the book to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address printed on the endpapers. Then, the story begins in the voice of a small girl telling about seeing a very tall man one day who reminded her of someone, but she could not think who. Of course, it was Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States.

The girl goes to the library to find out more about Lincoln. The facts she learns are printed in standard font, but her response / reflection / interpretation of the facts is printed in handwriting. The sort of conversation that the girl has with the facts is absolutely charming. It's like looking over her shoulder as she learns about this great man.

In the end, after Lincoln's death, she says, "But a great man is never really gone. Abraham Lincoln will live forever. And if you go to Washington, D.C. in the spring you can walk through the cherry blossoms and visit him. At his memorial you can read the words he wrote near the end of the war. '...With malice toward none, with charity for all.' And you can look into his beautiful eyes. Just look."

(Looking at Lincoln was more thoroughly reviewed at Jama's Alphabet Soup earlier this week.)

George Washington's Birthday: A Mostly True Tale
by Margaret McNamara
illustrated by Barry Blitt
Random House, 2012

George Washington gets the final word in this book. He tells the truth. He tells us that this book is a work of fiction, even though there's a lot of truth in the story. He goes on to tell us what parts are true, and to point out that "It's funny to think that a story about the truth was actually not true!"

This is the story of a 6 year-old boy who is afraid that everyone has forgotten that it is his birthday. On most every spread is a text box that explains a fact or a myth about Washington's life that is related to what's happening in the story. George gets so frustrated at one point that he loses control of the axe he's using to help his father prune cherry trees and he chops one down. (Myth. The truth, though, is that  Washington was always very truthful.)

At the end of the story, George finds out that no one has forgotten his birthday, and, of course, no has forgotten his birthday for hundreds of years now!



Happy Presidents' Day on Monday!  

CHOPSTICKS X 2!

What are the chances that I buy two books titled CHOPSTICKS on the same day?

CHOPSTICKS is a new book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Last year, when Amy visited our school, SPOON was a big favorite. Kids loved it!  Amy mentioned this companion book when she visited and it has been a long wait. (but well worth it!)  I picked up CHOPSTICKS at Cover to Cover this week.  It is a book full of fun. The story is about a pair of chopsticks who do everything together.  But then something happens and they have to separate a bit and explore the world on their own.  As with all of Rosenthal's book, there is lots of fun and subtle word play. For example, on the top corner of the cover, Spoon says, "Not exactly a sequel to SPOON. More like a change in place setting." Lots of other fun words spread throughout. Scott Magoon has done the illustrations for this one too so it is a great companion to SPOON. (And Spoon does make a few guest appearances:-)

This is a great story with a good message about friendship and life:-)

The other CHOPSTICKS I bought was a young adult novel. It is by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral.   I've read it once but need to reread it.  It is fascinating to me.  It not only looks like an amazing story, but the format is new and different. The story is told through photos and news articles and text messages and letters and more. It is different from any book I've ever seen and I am anxious for both the story and the experience of reading something in such a unique format.  There is also an app that is available which is another way to experience the books. The Youtube videos, etc. are embedded in the app. This was one of those books I have to reread.  I read reviews and saw some new insights and once I revisited a bit, I can see some new things. I am all about reading books with new formats so we understand what it is our kids are reading and what is possible, and that's why I picked this one up. But I loved the story and I loved Glory, the piano prodigy--the main character in the book.




You can see the trailer here:

2011 Cybils

The 2011 winners have been announced!

Go on over to the Cybils website, take a peek, and come back to comment -- Any surprises? Any particular favorites?

I was lucky enough to be able to work with Poetry Organizer Jone Rush MacCulloch (Check it Out), and Judges Julie Larios (The Drift Record), Diane Mayr (Random Noodling), Laura Purdie Salas (Writing the World for Kids) and Andi Sibley (a wrung sponge) in the final round judging of the Poetry category.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This is my first time to take part in It's Monday! What Are You Reading, sponsored by Teach Mentor Texts.

My current audio read is Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. It's been rough going the past couple of weeks, with Louie Zamperini on a raft in the Pacific and then in Japanese POW camps.

I'm not sure what my next audio read will be...Bill Bryson? The Art of Fielding? Black Swan Green (re-read/listen)?

On my to-read pile are a couple for my classroom:

I'm an avid reader of the Magic Tree House series. This one will be a quick 15-20 minute read.

One of my students read No Ordinary Day, and we compared notes on what it was like to read a book that wasn't particularly fun to read. For V., this book started out hard, but got better and happier as she read. For me (listening to Unbroken), the reading started happy and then got hard. On her recommendation, this book has made it to my TBR pile.

Another recommendation has come from my brother. He saw the play Wit and then read the script twice through, in back-to-back readings. It's been since college that I have read a play, but I'm intrigued because of David's strong recommendation. I have the movie on reserve from the library, but I won't watch it until I've read the play.

The final recommended book on my TBR pile comes from Franki -- the ARC of Wonder is tempting me, but I'm going to make myself wait to read it until I've finished the other three.

Poetry Friday -- It's Not Easy Being Me

SELF EMPLOYED
by David Ignatow


For Harvey Shapiro

I stand and listen, head bowed,
to my inner complaint.
Persons passing by think
I am searching for a lost coin.
You're fired, I yell inside
after an especially bad episode.
I'm letting you go without notice
or terminal pay. You just lost
another chance to make good.
But then I watch myself standing at the exit,
depressed and about to leave,
and wave myself back in wearily,
for who else could I get in my place
to do the job in dark, airless conditions?

No photo, no commentary, no connections. Just the hope that you, too, gave a little snort of laughter at the end, and made the same promise to treat your self a little nicer today.

Laura Purdie Salas has the roundup today at Writing the World for Kids.

Ignite Presentations With 4th graders

Our 4th grade team is working on a 4th grade project around Making a Difference in the World.  We began this project last year and it was inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  The project combines social studies (citizenship, economics, etc.). literacy and art.  This year, we've changed a few things and added a few things.

Our 4th graders are busy creating products to be sold at our annual Art Show in March.  Students are using art time to create their own products that will be marketable to the audience. I can't wait to shop!  Last year, each child donated money earned to an individual cause--one that they cared about and had researched. We changed this a bit this year. Our entire 4th grade will be donating one cause for the money. But we wanted kids to know that money was not the only way to make a difference. We want the to understand there there are lots of ways to make a difference and raising awareness about an issue is one of them.

So, each child has been researching a cause that matters to them. These topics range from homelessness to distracted driving to foster care to pediatric cancer.  Kids have spent the last several weeks learning about these issues and collecting information using diigo (more on that at another time!).

This week, kids will begin to create IGNITE-type presentations to educate others about these important issues.  As a team, we decided on an IGNITE presentation for several reasons.  If you aren't familiar with IGNITE presentations, they are similar to Pecha Kucha sessions but in Ignite, presenters use 15 slides and each slide is up for 15 seconds.The Ignite tagline is "Enlighten us, but make it quick." I love that and it seems that there is a lot to learn when given these parameters.  This seems doable for 4th graders and it is an authentic genre.
We knew that this format would support our teaching goals--research, nonfiction writing, visuals to support message, etc.  We have noticed that although our students used keynote, the presentations are text, rather than visual driven. We knew that an assignment like this could really improve the way they thought about creating presentations of all kind.

One challenge was to find samples for the students. Since many of them were not familiar with Ignite presentations, we wanted them to spend time studying the craft of the format before they jumped in. Finding Ignite presentations (or PechaKucha) so students could get a feel for the type of work they would be doing was a challenge--many are geared to adults and not appropriate for children. However, we did find several that we used and the conversations around what was possible with these have been wonderful. One of my goals when it comes to digital writing is to collect great mentors for kids--pieces that writers can study as they think about their own decisions as writers. For this project, I found four very different presentations that have helped us think through decision making when creating this type of piece.  Each of these four slideshows is very different and each opens up different possibilities for our stuents.  The four we have focused on are:

Clowns Without Borders: Pecha Kucha


Why Blog? Ignite by Chris Lysy


Ignite: Jessica Harvey: My Beautiful Wheelchair



And, How and Why to Make Video Games by Peter Justeson


This week, students will begin their work on their Ignite presentations.  I am working on one myself and we've created some planning templates to help students move forward with these projects.

This page has 15 squares on 2 pages for students to think through and plan their presentation as a whole.

Each student will receive 15 of these half sheets for detailed work---visual, script, and notes.

I think that this project will help students learn a great deal as researchers and writers, but I think they will also learn a great deal about visuals, creating powerful presentations, and presentation skills that they will be able to carry with them no matter what they create in the future.

I'll keep you posted!

CCIRA Slides on Slideshare

I finally had a chance to post my slides from CCIRA to my Slideshare account. You can find them there now.

I AM DIFFERENT! CAN YOU FIND ME?

I Am Different! Can You Find Me? 
by Manjula Padmanabman
A Global Fund for Children Book
Charlesbridge, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Recently named on USBBY's 2012 list of the 36 most outstanding international books for children and teens, I Am Different! Can You Find Me? is a celebration of languages and differences.

Each double-page spread features an illustration that has some sort of repeating pattern, and a page about one of 16 different languages spoken in the US. In each illustration, one part of the pattern is different. On the language page, the sentence, "Can you find me?" is written in the featured language.

On the language page, readers are given the sentence in it's own alphabet, transcribed into English, and with an English pronunciation guide and a note when the script reads right to left in the native language. There is also a short paragraph about the language and a bit about the culture of the people who use it. Where applicable, several English words that come from that language are given.

I love it that some of the indigenous languages of North America have been included, as well as American Sign Language.

The afterword states, "Language helps people connect with one another. How we name things -- people, places, animals, toys, even thoughts and feelings, can create special bonds within our communities. By learning languages that are different from the ones we grew up speaking, we can better understand how others see the world."

Spreading better understanding about how others see the world could be the mission statement for The Global Fund for Children, which is the nonprofit organization who developed this book and many others. For more information, check out their website: Global Fund for Children.org.

Other reviews:
Paper Tigers
BookDads

It's Monday: What Are You Reading?

It's been a while since I've participated "It's Monday: What Are You Reading?" hosted by TEACH MENTOR TEXTS! I haven't read a ton in the last few weeks but wanted to recap the last few weeks now.

I read two books that are MUST READS--OPENING MINDS by Peter Johnston and WONDER by R.J. Palacio.

CHOICE WORDS by Peter Johnston is one of the most powerful professional books I've ever read. It is a book that changed who I am as a teacher and it is one I revisit often.  So, I was thrilled to see that Peter Johnston had another book about the language we use with children.  OPENING MINDS: USING LANGUAGE TO CHANGE LIVES is out this month from Stenhouse and it is brilliant. I had planned on reading it quickly--in a sitting or two.  But I found that I had to read it over a week or two. That I had to read and then reflect and process.  Just as in Choice Words, Johnston packs a ton into a small book.

I didn't have huge expectations for this one.  CHOICE WORDS was so life changing for me that I would have been happy had Johnston have rehashed that. But this new book is just as powerful of a read, if not more powerful.  Johnston talks again about the messages our language gives to our students. He talks about the subtle differences in the things we could say to children and how they impact their learning, most particularly their sense of agency.   He focuses on learning but he also focuses on giving kids a voice. He talks about collaboration and creativity. I need to revisit this book after I've lived with what I've learned for a bit. I am already paying closer attention to the things I say to children every day and how I could rethink some of the phrases I use.

With OPENING MINDS, Johnston adds a new layer to what we already learned from him about the importance of the language we use with children.  This new layer has given me a great deal to think about and it will definitely make me a better teacher.  I so love this book. (You can order it directly from Stenhouse and preview the entire book online there.)

Another must-read in my eyes is WONDER by R.J. Palacio.  I have only been hearing wonderful things about this book so was excited to read an ARC.

Several others have written about the book:

Attack of the Book

Random Acts of Reading

Kirkus Book Reviews

Readaraptor

The Book Armada

Here is the official Book Trailer for Wonder:



This book would make a great read aloud or book club book. So much to think and talk about.  A definitely 2012 favorite already:-)

I also read an ARC of Patricia Maclachlan's upcoming book, KINDRED SOULS. This book reminded me of the books I read when I fell in love with Maclachlan years ago.  This book is about a little boy and his grandfather, two kindred souls.  The book has themes of joy, loss, family and love.  It is a quiet book, and reminded me a bit of reading Sarah, Plain and Tall.  I love how Maclachlan keeps coming back to the same life themes in different ways over the years.

I also read a few picture books.
EXTRA YARN is a great story with a great message. Not only that, but it was great to see that even after the bear ate the rabbit in I WANT MY HAT BACK, that it was only a temporary thing and they are now friends again. See, they were merely playing. That Jon Klassen is genius..

DEAR CINDERELLA by Julie Olsen is a book of letters between Snow White and Cinderella. It is a fun "retelling" of the stories. And I can never have enough pink/purple sparkly books in the library. I try to only pick those that are quality and this one fits both categories:-)

I read two ALA award winners.  TALES FOR VERY PICKY EATERS was a Geisel award winner and a Pura Belpre Honor for illustrations was THE CAZUELA THAT THE FARM MAIDEN STIRRED by Samantha Vamos.

I'm not sure what's up next. Some books I've previewed/read a bit of include BEAUTY QUEENS, THE MIGHTY MISS MALONE, THINKING FAST AND SLOW, SIX INNINGS and WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING.