Next Moves

As the summer draws to a close, I have begun reflecting on my summer of reading. The most striking feature was my failure to read one book for each day of summer. While I'm not into making excuses, I do think that the why's of this can inform classroom instruction.

So why?

Well, I was busy. There were two weeks when I was doing MIMI, which sucked up most of my spare time. Then there was the week I was recovering from getting my wisdom teeth out. Then, there were all the days I was called by a friend to do something that sounded exciting, so I set my books aside and did that other thing instead.

We tell our students that they need to be reading every single day so that they can become better readers, but we (for the most part) are not doing this. We hold our students to a different standard than we hold ourselves. How do I justify this for myself?

I don't really know. I do know that I read a lot -more than most people I know. But I don't read every day. And yet, I'm a better reader now than I was when I joined Goodreads in January 2011, and a better reader of children's books now than I was at the beginning of the summer. I think I'm realizing that the message doesn't need to be "Read every day," but maybe, "Read more than you did before." I made a goal to read 20 books in 2011 (I didn't count children's books, but I only read four or five of those that year) and I achieved it. This year, before I decided to read every day over the summer, I set a goal to read 60 books (counting most children's books). Next year, I'll probably set a goal to read even more. Or I might set a goal to read different genres than I'm used to reading, or to finally tackle David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which has sat on my bookshelf for close to two years.

When I think about teaching reading in the future, especially independent reading skills, I think I want to talk more about goal setting, and then how we set up a plan for getting there. When I set up my reading goal for this year, I originally only set it at 22 books. But then I realized that I was spending a fair amount of time with children's books as I prepared guided reading lessons, so perhaps those should count as well. However, children's books are much shorter, so if they count, then there should be more books in the goal. Hence 60 books. I think in the future, I'll set the goal even higher, knowing that I'll want to spend a fair amount of time reading children's literature.

Finally, I realized how important it is to continue reading books that are at your own reading level, not below. While I found a lot of joy in reading books meant for kids, I also missed the complexity of thought involved in adult books.

Moving forward, I think I want to keep reading and writing about children's books. I suppose this means I have to change the title of the blog, of course, but that's a small obstacle. I'm also forming a book club with some friends, so it will be nice to be practicing some of the skills I try to teach my own students. If anybody's out there, keep checking back to see more about the books I'm reading and my new endeavor with my book club.

Sequels Are So Tricky...

I pilfered this book out of the guided reading library, which I figured was a thanks to me for sitting through six hours of professional development on the second floor of an un-air-conditioned building. I'll return it in the morning.

Anyway.

I loved the original book in this short series, The Chalk Box Kid. I read it as a second-grader and thought it was an okay book, then read it this past year as an adult, so I actually understood it. I loved it. I loved how simple the language was and how effective it was in expressing loneliness.

The sequel, The Paint Brush Kid, was still a good book, just not as good. It's an interesting read, to be sure. Gregory and his friend Ivy offer to paint the house of an old neighbor and paint a beautiful mural of the man's childhood in Mexico. Then the state says they're going to tear down to house to build a freeway, so the town must band together to save the house.

I guess what didn't translate into the second book was the main character's internal struggle, and the process of growth he goes through in the story. Maybe this second one was a bit more exciting, but it didn't have quite as much literary merit (although both books are leveled at an M, so I'm assuming literary merit is not a criteria for leveling). I guess I would continue to use the first book as a guided reading book, since it has some things kids can really dig into, and use the second book as an independent reading book.

One For the Tomboys

It's been a while since I ran out of books that I had brought home from work for myself to read. I didn't get a chance to stop by my school, so I waited until this little goody showed up from amazon (after I ordered it, of course).

I absolutely adored this book. Marty Mcguire (the title character) loves spending recess looking for frogs, and spends her weekends searching for crayfish and pretending to be Jane Goodall in the forest. Then, she is cast as the princess in her class's third grade production of The Princess and the Frog. At first, she's convinced there's a mistake, but then she learns how to make the play be all her own.

It's an adorable little book, and it's part of a series, so there's more adventures to read about. The book gives girls a role model for somebody who enjoys getting a little dirty, and gives a different perspective on what makes something "girly." In some ways, this book makes it seem like it's fun to be a tomboy. Given the fact that middle-grade girls have some pretty outstanding female role models (Katniss Everdeen, from The Hunger Games, for example), it's exciting to see that there's another such role model for younger girls. (This last sentence, of course, leaves out Bella Whatsherface from Twilight, since her character wouldn't be a good role model for even the most faint-hearted Victorian-era girl.)

One of my favorite parts of the book is that a lot of the harder vocabulary words are defined right there in the book. For example, it talks a lot about "improvising," which isn't a word younger students would necessarily know. However, the author, Kate Messner, defines the word right in the dialogue of the book, making it seems effortless to teach students a new word. The word keeps popping up throughout the book in different contexts, reinforcing its meaning. Part of this genius with vocabulary is probably due to the fact that Kate Messner is an elementary school teacher, so she knows what words will trip students up and how to define them in simple, understandable ways.

Although it doesn't have a level on Fountas and Pinnell, it seems to me to be an N or O -something along the same lines as Amber Brown, only slightly more difficult. Regardless, it's a great book for the early-chapter books students who need a relatable, interesting character to learn from.

Throw This on the Pile of Read Alouds...

Oh man, this book got me in all my happy reading places.

I pilfered this book from my mom's classroom library, which I thought was only fair, given that I'd leveled and labeled (using the most elaborate book-labeling system known to teachers) well over 100 of her books. This copy would become mine, except that she wrote her last name across the top of it, easily identifying it as not my book. Clever girl.

Anyway, Drita My Homegirl by Jenny Lombard is one of my favorite books I've read this summer. The story centers around two fourth grade girls. Drita is Albanian. Her family has just fled Kosova (she explains that Kosovo is the English way of spelling it) because of the recent surge of violence there. They settle in New York, where she meets Maxie. Maxie is one of the popular girls in class who makes fun of Drita at first. Then, the teacher assigns Drita to Maxie as a social studies project, and Maxie begins to learn just how difficult life has been for Drita, and how much they actually have in common.

The book might have a theme that has been done over and over again (on the outside we're different, but on the inside we're all the same), but the author is so effective in her story telling that I just didn't care. I got all choked up in the latter parts of the book as the girls try to work through the pains they have suffered in their short little lives. Then I felt all giddy and warm as the book came to a rather predictable ending.

From a child's perspective, however, it's not played-out and it's not predictable. My guess is that, even though it's a higher reading level (T, according to Fountas and Pinnell), many students could benefit from hearing this story. Either they relate to what Drita has gone through (many of my own students have recently immigrated from Haiti, so they can relate to Drita's status as a refugee), or they could benefit from learning along with Maxie the importance of reaching out to those we can't always understand. I definitely want to use this book as a read aloud. Not only do I think it has actual literary merit, I think it should also be used to help build a better understanding of each other. The themes of this book are relatable to all the kids, and I think it's important that they hear all these themes.

Looks like I have to buy own copy...

Tesseract!

First of all, let me say that I do not remember there being so much stuff about God when I originally read this in fifth grade. Granted, A Wrinkle in Time was probably a little bit ahead of my reading level, so there's a lot of stuff I missed. However, I completely missed the God stuff.

Does it really add to or subtract from the book for me? No. In fact, I'm not sure why it's there. I think Madeleine L'Engle could have gotten to her point about Love in a much more straightforward manner by leaving out the God stuff, but that's just my opinion. I also haven't read the other books in the series, so I don't know if this comes into play more later on.

This is, obviously, a classic. And for good reason. It's a great science fiction novel. I just don't really like science fiction that much, so this didn't really get me all excited in my reading-places. I felt obligated to reread it, since I know there are a lot of really strong readers going into one of my school's fifth grade classes who should probably give this book a shot -I thought I'd try to speak intelligently on it. Now I think I'll just let them read it and make their own connections. I don't really feel like I have a lot to say about it. Clearly, I'm a realistic fiction addict. At least now I can admit it.

The thing that makes me anxious about this book in terms of classroom use is who is really going to be able to read it. It scores a W according to Fountas and Pinnell, but even that is a little bit generous. I feel like maybe it should really be an X, although I don't read that many books at a W, so I can't be sure. The language structure and the vocabulary use are all pretty difficult to understand, as are the who's, what's, where's, and why's. I guess I can attempt it with my students who are already scoring reading levels of X and Y (of which we have three) and see if they can handle it.

As the summer starts to wind down, and I get busier with getting my classroom together, I'm also noticing that I'm more resistant to wanting to read children's books. I have a long (and ever-growing) list of books on my Goodreads account of adult books I'd like to get back to. I haven't had much time for them this summer, since I've been so busy with children's books. However, I do have some books from my school's guided reading library that I want to get through, so those can by my project in the coming days. As well as just trying to get the library put together *insert panic-faced emoticon here*

Oh Man, Series Books Will Be the Death of My Sleep

My sister, an avid science fiction and fantasy reader, has been complaining as of late that all sci fi and fantasy books are part of a series only because the author wants to make more money. Therefore, she hasn't read a sci fi or fantasy book in at least two months (which is the longest she's ever gone since discovering the genres in seventh grade). (As an aside, that was also the time that my parents started to worry about her strange sleep patterns.)

Well that all well and good in theory, but then you come across a series you get hooked on and suddenly all of your book-principles go right out the door.

No hard cover books? Broke that rule.

Material with some kind of intelligence? Broke that rule.

No series books by authors who are clearly banging out these series because Johnny's gotta go to Yale? Broke that rule.

But it was so worth it.

It was so worth it I stayed up TWO HOURS past my (old person) bed time of ten thirty.

I've been reading The Son of Neptune, the sequel to The Lost Hero, the first book in Rick Riordan's The Heroes of Olympus series. I bought it right after I finished The Lost Hero, but didn't get around to starting it until last week. I got hung up on a couple of other books, so I picked this up tonight around page 250 and just kept going until it was done. Did I mention I was only supposed to read for 20 minutes before bed?

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed it. While the last book talked about Jason, Piper, and Leo and their quest to free Hera, this book picks up after that book chronologically. Percy (yes, that Percy Jackson) has had his memory wiped and has been hanging out with some wolves, training for who-knows-what. He finds his way to Camp Jupiter, where he meets Frank and Hazel. Frank is the awkward son of Mars, the God of War, and one of the most important gods to the Romans. Hazel is the previously-dead-but-now-resurrected-for-reasons-we-don't-know-yet-this-early-in-the-book daughter of Pluto, God of the underworld. She did some bad stuff in her last life that plays heavily into this story line. These three demigods must go up to Alaska on a quest to destroy a giant who will play a role in the end of the world as we know it.

Despite my hope for a nifty resolution quickly so that I may get on with my life and go back to being scornful of all things fantasy, I was not given one. In fact, the series will have five books in it and won't be done until 2014 (thank you, Wikipedia). So I can add this to my list of love/hate fantasy books that I love because they are exciting to read, but hate, because I don't want to wait five years for the next book (I'm looking at you George R.R. Martin and your shenanigans with A Dance With Dragons). The upshot is that I know the next book, The Mark of Athena is coming out in October, so I only have to wait a couple of months.

Again, is it necessarily high-quality literature? No. Is it exciting enough that I want to stay up two hours past bed time to finish it? Yes. Will I be mad because my students come in bleary-eyed from staying up too late reading this? Absolutely not. Because I will be in the same boat. After I've announced a surprise "Let's all read at the exact same time for as long as it takes before I get bored!" time so I can inch ahead of them in the book.

Too Much! (Chocolate) (And Books that Need Laminating)

Today's story was a cautionary one: The Chocolate Touch. John Midas is a young boy who is obsessed with sweets. His absolute, most favorite sweet in the whole wide world? Chocolate.

One day, he finds a shiny coin in the street with his initials on it. He finds this to be interesting, so he picks it up, and takes it with him to a new chocolate store he sees while he is supposed to be visiting his friend Susan. At the chocolate store, he buys a piece of chocolate. The next day, everything he eats turns into chocolate. At first, this is a gift but, much like King Midas before him, he sees there are greater consequences to what he has done.

The book is a cute little cautionary tale about the consequences of being too greedy. And of eating too much chocolate. It comes across as a little old-fashioned (the characters have names like John, Mary, and Susan, and the mother encourages John to eat a healthy breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice, and milk), but is still an enjoyable read. I also don't think kids will necessarily pick up on the fact that it was written so long ago (1952). This is another one of the books that I picked up to try and boost certain sections of my classroom library (leveled at an N), and I think it's a good addition. It is definitely enjoyable enough to read as an independent book. I think it is also a strong candidate for guided reading -there is a lesson for discussion at the end, as well as opportunities for discussing how and why John changes throughout the book. The language of the text isn't necessarily anything special, but taken on the whole it can make for a worthwhile discussion.

On a different note, now that it is August, I have begun work on setting up my new office. I'm teaching ESL this year as a push-in specialist, although students will probably be in and out of my room on a regular basis. I am therefore setting up my own classroom library and will allow my students to check books out with me.

As I prepared this library, I decided to laminate the books to make them last longer. I bought a 36 foot roll of clear laminating stuff, which showed up in just 2 days, thanks to the amazingness that is AmazonPrime. My project for tomorrow is to cover all of my books (that I have at home with me) with this material in an attempt to make them last longer. I buy almost all of my books brand-new, so the longer I can keep them in tip-top condition, the better. I already covered my copy of The Chocolate Touch just to see how it would turn out, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The cover feels a little bit more slick, and it looks shinier, but it doesn't really affect the overall feel of the book. I'm big on reading as a multi-sensory experience (hence why I don't really have any interest in a Kindle or other e-reader), so it's important to me that it still feels the same. Low and behold, I didn't really notice a difference. Hopefully the laminate will help my books withstand the constant hurdling back and forth from backpack, to sticky hands, to bookcase, to backpack.