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.

Down Memory Lane

When I was in second and third grade, my teacher used a more or less integrated curriculum. This means that all subjects were intertwined (some better than others). We studied the rain forest, wolves, Colonial America, and Native Americans. As part of this work, she always had a read aloud that went with what we were studying. While we studied American Indians, we read Sing Down the Moon, by Scott O'Dell. Fast forward some period of time and I find another copy of it in a used book store and add it to my classroom library.

Today I decided to revisit it. It was weird how much I remembered.

What's amazing about Scott O'Dell's work is how it still tells an amazing story forty years later. Bright Morning is a young girl living in a Navaho clan. When the Long Knives come through and burn their small village to the ground her clan is forced into captivity.

The story is based on The Long Walk, a trip the Navaho people had to make from northeast Arizona to Fort Sumner, 170 miles east of Santa Fe, New Mexico. This trip is akin to the Trail of Tears, although not exactly. While the Navaho were kept in Fort Sumner, they were kept as captives, guarded by the Long Knives. After a few years they were allowed to leave and ended up settling in the Four Corners area of the southwest (where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet).

The book is leveled at V, so it is definitely for higher readers. However, it could be used as a read aloud with lower readers if it is part of a greater study of American Indians. It would also be great to use for guided reading, so I might invest in a few more copies. It is also just an enjoyable read, so it'll definitely keep its place in my classroom library as well. I'm excited to keep using it this fall. I can see why my teacher picked it as a read all those years ago.

Lying to Students Can Be a Good Thing

So I've come to this uncomfortable place in my summer where I'm starting to gear up for the school year, and therefore don't have as much time as I would like to be reading. Additionally, suddenly everybody and their mother wants to loan me books to read, but none of them are kids' books. So I haven't been reading like I should.

On Friday, I read Muggie Maggie. At a training. While I was sitting next to my principal. She applauded my effort in reading the students' books and agreed with me that Q&A sessions in a room of 100 people generally drag on a bit too long.

Clocking in at a zippy 66 pages, it was terribly easy to get through. And a cute little book. Maggie refuses to learn cursive, so her teacher makes her the class messenger and sends her all over the school delivering notes, all written in cursive. Maggie's curiosity gets the best of her, but she can't read cursive, she has to learn it herself.

A cute little story with a simple premise. It gets an O for a reading level, but probably only because some of the vocabulary is higher level. Otherwise, it could easily be an N. This book is currently in my classroom library, and I think I'll keep it there. I don't know that it's a strong enough example of an O to really use for guided reading, and I like to use books with a little more meat to them, so this might just stay a library book.

I am currently working my way through the second Heroes of Olympus book, which is why I'm not really reading anything else. I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow or Tuesday, and perhaps read another book between then and now. But I might be biting off more than I can chew, who knows?

Tug at My Heartstrings, Why Don't You

After a day at training, I wasn't sure I would be able to get through a book, but low and behold, I did. And I'm glad I did. This was a seriously cute book.

The Year of Miss Agnes is about a small village in Alaska that runs through school teachers faster than they change their socks. Since the school was started, they haven't had the same teacher twice. This year, however, Miss Agnes shows up. On the first day of school, she throws out the grade book and hides away all their textbooks. She takes them on a journey through learning that can only be described as magical, and opens their eyes to a whole new kind of world. Former reluctant students suddenly have a love of learning.

The story is told through the eyes of Frederika, Fred for short. Her older sister, Bokko, is deaf, but gets invited to the school to learn as well. It is there that she learns sign language and can finally communicate with others for the first time. This, of course, had the linguist in my wondering about how fluent she can be with language if she's never learned it and she's twelve, but this is a book for kids, so who cares.

What makes this book so wonderful is the sense of wonder and hope it gives. These kids have no knowledge of the outside world, but then this one woman comes along and opens their eyes. As the narrator says: "Now I wanted to go everywhere. And before, I never knew there was an everywhere." It's why we teach.

I've had this book for a couple of years, purchased as part of a book-buying spree to beef up my classroom library. Occasionally, kids will pick it up, but they never seem to finish it. Now I know how to pull them through the initial dullness they might experience to where the classroom excitement in the book really gets going. The class in this book is one any kid would like to be a part of, so most kids would like to read this book. It's leveled at a Q, but I would have some concerns for ELL's understanding some of the more specialized language. I don't think it interferes with meaning too much, so they should be able to hang.

I kind of want to do this book as a read aloud in January. Everybody's pretty tired and cranky around that time, a sort of in-between time where we know MCAS is coming soon, but not soon enough. This book could be just the thing to inspire students (and the teacher) to dive back into their work with a new sense of vigor.

It's amazing what little treasures I find in my own library. :)

A Giddy Return to the Second-Most Awkward Years of My Life

From the ages of 10 until about 13 I was obsessed with horses. And no, that word is not too strong. I had tons of books about horses that I read over and over again, I'd read all of The Saddle Club and Thoroughbred something or other, I had posters all over my room, and my favorite day of the week was whatever day my riding lessons were on. My obsession was so deep, I was the subject of much ridicule among my older brother and his friends, but he also used to like Korn, so I'd say we're even.

Today's book really brought me back. Wild Girl, by Patricia Reilly Giff, centers around Lidie, a young girl from Brazil who is finally going to move to Long Island, where her father and brother have been living for several years now. Her father trains race horses while her brother is an exercise rider, soon to be jockey. She goes into the move with high expectations, but quickly finds them all dashed. Her father and brother think she's still a little kid, nobody at school understands her, and the home she lives in now is nothing like the loud, wild home she grew up in.

Meanwhile, a young filly named Wild Girl, is going through the growing pains that all young race horses experience, after being separated from her mother and treated with less-than-kindness by her trainers. But then, she is purchased by Lidie's father and comes to live on the same farm as Lidie. There, they strike up a friendship and a deep connection that helps them both heal some aches in their hearts.

Outside of the fact that I would have loved (and analyzed for factual misrepresentations) this book to death as a kid, I thought it was a good book for students who have moved here from another country. Lidie goes through some serious pains that all students who are new to the country have to experience at one point, and I thought Reilly Giff did a really nice job showing how that initial embarrassment feels.

I have to say, I'm pretty pleased I stumbled upon this book in the used books section of the local bookstore. It definitely is a dense enough book to use for guided reading or book club, filled with opportunities for discussion of symbolism and turning points. The use of two different perspectives (Lidie's and Wild Girl's) adds a small layer of complication to understanding, but is easy enough to work out for one's self. I would also like to just leave this book in my classroom library and let some horse crazy reluctant reader (such as myself at ten years old) find this book. I can't find a reading level anywhere for this book, but if I had to guess for myself, I would say it's a Q or R. All in all, another great book by a trustworthy author.

Bunnicula: Still Better Than Twilight

I guess saying that this book is better than Twilight doesn't say a whole lot. You'll note that I didn't underline the title of Twilight. That's because I don't underline things that could have been written by a Xanax-adled sixteen-year-old, and therefore aren't really books.

Anyway, Bunnicula. I've had this book for a really long time, long enough that I don't remember where I got it, but I've been avoiding it for a multitude of reasons. First of all, the cover art on the edition that I have is pretty stupid, but that might just be because it's stupid to my adult eyes. Second of all, I thought the premise was pretty stupid.

It is not, however, a stupid book. It is narrated by a dog who lives lives with Toby, Pete, Mr. and Mrs. Monroe, and a cat. One day, the family comes home from the movies with a new pet rabbit. Quickly, the rabbit begins to display some strange habits, like sleeping all day. The cat, immediately suspicious, attempts to prove to everybody that he's actually a vampire, just one who sucks the life out of vegetables, rather than people.

The book's premise is not all that difficult, but the language is pretty tricky, which puts it at an F&P level Q (fourth grade). Here are some examples: (academic words in bold):

Now, most people might call me a mongrel, but I have some pretty fancy bloodlines running through these veins and Russian wolfhound happens to be one of them. (Pp. 8-9) 

I was aghast. (P. 49)

The corners of his mouth were pulled back in an evil grimace. His teeth were bared and gleaming in the morning light. He cackled menacingly and threw back his head as if he were laughing at us. (P. 56)

In terms of giving this book to my English Language Learners, especially anybody around the intermediate level, I would want to make sure that they have a strong enough vocabulary to get at some of the more specialized words (mongrel and bloodlines), and so that they can understand the biggest joke in the book: at one point, the cat read that he can kill Bunnicula by pounding a stake into his heart, so he uses a steak. Further proof of the the joys of the English language!

I definitely did find it to be an enjoyable read. At a level Q, I would be hoping for something with a little more literary merit, but this would definitely be good for roping in a group of kids who aren't so big on reading. It might even make a good guided reading book, although there isn't a whole lot for them to dig into. I'll keep it in my classroom library for now, and if interest in it picks up, I'll buy other books from the series.

And tomorrow, if I can track it down, I will finish Wild Girl.

What MIMI has taught me

For two weeks this summer (followed by three Saturdays this fall) I attend the Massachusetts Intel Mathematics Institute, which was magical. I found that the course was everything school is supposed to be: challenging, engaging, interesting, and informative. I thought about how much more math I know, now that I've taken this course. I finally don't know just enough math to stay ahead of my students -I am way above them now. (Unfortunately, it's still not a skill I can show off to my friends, as they don't care.)

The course is designed to give teachers better mathematical knowledge so that they will have an easier time passing this information along to their students. The major rationale behind this course is that we use TERC, a curriculum that values number sense and a deep understanding of the conceptual root of the mathematics these students are doing. The curriculum is certainly more closely aligned with the kind of mathematical thinking mathematicians have to do, and so the math is more difficult in some ways than the traditional "Here the procedure, please mimic" method of teaching. Therefore, teachers need a better grasp on math as concepts, rather than math as steps 1 through 5.

Then I started thinking about how useful a course like this would be for reading and writing. In my classes with Lucy Calkins, she would talk about how we start designing our minilessons by thinking about what it is that good readers or writers do. Well, what if I don't know what good readers or writers do? What if I'm not a reader or writer myself? Then how am I supposed to teach these skills to my students?

Think about the value this could have for the teaching of English/Language Arts. Imagine a class where we are expected to do what our students do: pick out books, read them, and report back. Talk about books. Write about books. Think about books. Write papers. Revise papers. Write with better grammar and spelling. Help our peers with all of these things.

Maybe I'm imagining this in a world where all teachers use the Reader's and Writer's workshop; my district certainly is not among them. We use a "managed curriculum," one that involves and "anthology" and countless "leveled books" that have us using "quotation marks" ad nauseum. But even within my district, we use the Writer's workshop, and we are quickly finding that our managed curriculum does not necessarily hold up to the demands of the new CCSS, so changes must be made. And if changes must be made, teachers need to know more about the subject they are teaching. I think we assume that just because teachers know how to read and write well enough to pass their certification tests they must know how to teach reading and writing to ever-increasing difficulty levels.

I would argue strongly in favor of a professional development similar to MIMI for reading and writing. Just like teachers need a better understanding of the mathematical concepts they need to teach their students, teachers need a better understanding of the difficult skills involved in being a good reader and writer. Reading is not just absorbing information, and writing is not just regurgitating it. However, that seems to be how most teachers treat these subjects -probably in large part because that's all they know how to do with each subject. If teachers were taught the skills necessary to be good readers and good writers, then perhaps they would be better able to teach their own students the skills necessary to be good readers and writers. I don't think it's enough to expect teachers to go out a read the (millions) of books out there on the subject, since they're not doing that. But by providing a space in which that is an expected behavior, maybe we can get more teachers on board with the same 21st century, college and career readiness skills their students are supposed to be gaining.

So this is how my students feel when they haven't done their homework...

Alright, I failed.  I gave in to the exhaustion my class caused me, followed by a full week of recovering from wisdom tooth removal (I am weak and the pain killers are strong). But I must get back to it. I have class again this week starting on Tuesday, but I think I'll be smarter this time about my reading. I'll also have a chance to go into my building and grab picture books that will ease the burden of some of my reading.

I did get a chance to read these last three weeks, just not as much as I should have. I started Wild Girl, by Patricia Reilly Giff, and started (and finished!) The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts (not a children's book, and I definitely skipped major parts, so don't be impressed by the 300+ page count). All of this adds up to the fact that I did not read every day, like I was supposed to. Or like any human being should do to keep their mind sharp. But of course, I am human, and thus I err. I might not have even used that word correctly, I don't know, I'm still on pain killers (okay, fine, I'm on basically just suped-up ibuprofen).

Okay, so now I have to do some reflecting on how this slip-up will fit into my teaching. I've already been doing some thinking about how I don't want to have my students keep reading logs, and I don't want to make them lose recess for not reading, but I also have to acknowledge that, as a fourth grader, three weeks of little reading is a bad thing in terms of continued progress.

I think this highlights for me the importance of setting aside time every day for independent reading in the classroom. I always had a book with me when I was in class, but I never read because nobody else was reading, and so being the only one reading would make me look anti-social. But if everybody were expected to read at the same time, I think that would have gone very differently, I would have had a hard time putting my book down. On top of that, I would have been engaged enough to want to continue with the book later. When you go one day without reading, the second day without it seems to come easier.

And so, I will remember for future classroom practice that I need to stress the importance of having a sacred "Just Sit and Read" time, just to let us remind ourselves how much we enjoy the activity.