Game Changer... GIVEAWAY!

 Are you ready to up your game?  Not just in your classroom, but as a school? Are you in need of a change?  Then the book, Game Changer! Book Access for ALL Kids is the book for you!

This book is jam packed with LOTS of ideas to challenge you to think outside the box in order to get books into the hands of children. There are very simple ideas for changes that can be made in the walls of your classroom. But, Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp also include ideas that are big.  These are ideas that show you are willing to make a statement that reading is a priority in your school community.

After attending Nerd Camp in Michigan, which is hosted by Donalyn and Colby, I (Em) implemented some of these ideas into our school.  As they state in this book, "this gap in book access perpetuates inequities between low-income students and their middle-income peers."  To act on this, 15 books are given away each week, students take home about 10 books each for the summer, and have a daily opportunity to borrow books from the "readbox" each day.  But even with these things occurring, this book opened my eyes to ways that I could make these rituals even stronger.

From the beginning of this book you will be challenged to take a look at your reading.  You will be challenged to take a look at your classroom library.  You will be challenged to take a look at your school library.  You will also be challenged to put books in the hands of children. While reading, I (Maria) found myself reflecting on my classroom.  There are things I need to change. There are things I need to add.  I need to be a "Game Changer".

In this book you will also find many, many suggestions to get started, solutions to book deserts, how to build the power of ownership, increasing volume and the power of cultural representation.  There are also little snippets for "Change in Action".  These ideas come from teachers, literacy coaches, etc. My favorite, favorite suggestion in this book, comes in Chapter 8.  Kristen Ziemke shares how and why to teach sneaky reading.  I LOVE this idea!  I have a few readers in my family who were sneaky readers and in the classroom, I didn't think about ever teaching this to children.  You'll have to check out her suggestions!

We want you to ring in your New Year with some New Ideas!!  You can win a copy of this book and begin your journey to "up your game!"


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You Pick: Giving Power to Our Students

First things first: I am not an expert on this topic!  But my teammate is trying it out this year and so I thought I would share what we are doing and WHY.

This summer a small group of us attended Nerd Camp in Michigan.  My teammate, Karen, attended a session on reading rituals and learned about a routine that we are calling "you pick."  Each day two books are displayed.  In the morning, students "vote" on which book they would like to hear read.  That book is then enjoyed by the class and the other one is placed in the classroom library or goes back into the basket of books to be voted on again.  Finally, a picture of the book is put on display so that we can keep a log of all the "you pick" books read aloud during the year.

That's it.

But why?  As a first grade classroom our students are hearing read alouds each and every day; however, the book typically serves some type of teaching purpose.  Maybe we are analyzing the character or we may be looking at the nonfiction text features.  "You pick" (for our class) is about just enjoying a read aloud each and every day just to...enjoy it.  No other reason.  We also want students to understand that they have the power of choice.  And we want to honor their choices.

Here's a little more detail.

Two books are displayed in the hallway.  We will typically put up two books that are shorter because this needs to be a pretty quick read aloud each day.  Here are some of the ones we have done so far this year:

In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming versus In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming
How Kind by Mary Murphy versus The Neighbor Kid by Daniel Miyares
Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry versus Carrot and Pea by Morag Hood 
The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds versus Ish by Peter H. Reynolds

When students arrive at school in the morning they vote for the book that they would like to hear.  I think there are probably a million ways that this could occur.  The display is in the hallway.  Students place clothespins on a ribbon (fine motor skills!).  This is super easy for a student to take down all the clothespins after the book has been chosen.  Our hope is that putting them on display in the hall will entice other students to check out those books too!

 Finally, we post a picture of each book chosen.  This will help the students to remember all the books that were chosen by them throughout the year.  We decided to make it look like a calendar.  This display of books was not in our original plan; however, with the HP instant ink and a new printer, I am able to print these pictures off much easier than I thought.

There are many teachers out there that are doing a "classroom book a day."  This is just our version of it.  We had to make it work for our first grade students.  But I am really looking forward to the impact that it is going to have on them!

Em

Sending Book Recommendations with Epic

This year my focus has been on creating reading rituals with my students.  Ultimate goal...engage, excite, entice young readers to READ!  Book recommendations is one of the ways that I have tried to connect with my students this year.  But this time it was through EPIC.

If you are not using Epic in your classroom, then you should check it out! It is a website/app that has thousands of engaging books for students to read.  And it is free for teachers to use in their classrooms.  Now...I am a HUGE fan of in-your-hand books, but this is a great tool to sneak in, as well, because it is engaging and helps to broaden student book choice.

You can create "collections" within your Epic account.  So if your students are reading books about characters that persevere, you could find books on the same topic in Epic and group them together in a "collection."  Then you can actually assign this collection to your class, a small group, or an individual.

This is exactly what I have been trying to do this year, except I like to think of it as RECOMMENDING a book to my students instead of assigning.  I am not going to take away points if they don't read the book or assign an activity to the book that I recommend to them.  My purpose is to excite, entice, and broaden their interest in books.  For example, my students completed research reports on an animal of their choice.  I sent book recommendations to each student with a collection of books and videos about their individual animals.  They were so excited!

So here is what you do to assign or RECOMMEND books to your students:

Step 1:
Decide what books you are looking for and search.

Step 2:
Decide on the books that you would like to add to a "collection" (to assign a book(s) to a student, they must be part of a collection).  Click "add to" on the right of the screen and choose "collection."

Step 3:
Choose the collection.  If you do not have any collections or would like to create a new collection, a small screen will pop up for you to do so.

Step 4:
Complete this process for each book that you would like to add into a collection.  Once you feel that your collection is complete, it is time to recommend it to your students!!  Head back up to the tabs at the top of the page and click "my library."  Then click on "collections."  You will see an "assign" button under the name of the collection.  Click on it!

Step 5:
A small screen will pop up.  You can choose to assign your collection to all your students, a group of students, or an individual student.  Then click "assign."

That's it!  You have recommended a collection of books to your students!  Now how do they access it?  Once they log in, they will see a small number pop up on their mailbox.  Ruby has 1 new collection in her mailbox.

This is just one way to engage our readers to try out some new books or even to reread some old, forgotten favorites!  Could you see yourself using this tool in your classroom?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading and recommending!

Em

For more engaging posts this month: Please check out the calendar below!

Spring Mentor Text to Teach Reading

Spring!!! It is here!!  And with it comes flowers, sunshine, and growth.  As teachers, we are always searching for that growth and spring is just the place to find it.  I am excited to share with you a "new" book to me, procedural text to use in the classroom, and some growth that I have encountered this year.

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema retells a tale originally uncovered by Sir Claud Hollis in 1909 during his stay in Kenya, Africa.  Verna has written this story to the rhythm an old nursery rhyme, "The House That Jack Built" (one of my absolute favorite stories, as a child).  In this story, the Kapiti Plain is dry and in desperate need of rain.  The main character, Ki-pat, solves this problem by shooting an arrow into the rain cloud.  He then shares this rain ritual with his own son and the tradition continues.

I have two goals with this lesson.  The first goal is to help students to articulate the importance that rain plays in our daily lives.  Students need to understand that rain is imperative for crop growth, drinking water, and for animals to thrive.  This fact has remained true throughout history; therefore, civilizations have relied on rain to survive and have created rituals to help with the production of rain.  Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, an article from NASA, and the procedural text to make a rainstick will all be used within this lesson to teach this first goal.
My second goal is to provide an authentic reading opportunity through procedural text.  My students this year have craved "how to" texts during my guided reading groups.  They love when I use these books and allow them to follow the directions.  This has really pushed some of my more reluctant readers and we have spent a great deal of time discussing the importance of reading these types of texts throughout life (i.e. recipes, directions to build an object, or other manuals).

In order to accomplish the goals listed above, I begin this lesson by activating their schema on rain.  I ask the following questions: "What is the importance of rain?  Why do we need it? "What happens if it does not rain?  What problems can arise when it does not rain?"  Once the answers to these questions are discussed through a "turn and talk," small group, whole group, or a combination of all three methods, I explain that many cultures and groups of people have come up with different rituals to help make it rain.

While reading Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, I  stop to quickly explain the following words: belated, drought, herd, slender, and pierced.  As mentioned above, this text is written to the rhythm "The House That Jack Built;" therefore, it repeats.  Students are invited to say the story with me as I read it.  Stopping throughout the book to get student predictions about how Ki-pat will solve the problem of drought is also a great discussion point!

 Once the story has been completed, I ask the students how Ki-pat solved his problem.  Then I explain that this is only one example of a rain ritual.  There are many others that have been documented throughout history.  NASA has an article that explains some of the other cultural traditions and rituals that take place to bring rain to the land.  You can find that article HERE.  You may want to read the whole article to your students or only parts of it, depending upon the age of your students.

My students have been so excited about reading procedural text this year.  And what a great reason to read!  So to connect this new learning to their reading, this procedural text explains how to make a rainstick.  The resource contains three versions of the directions.  Each version is a different difficulty level.  This allows you to differentiate the lesson based on the individual reading needs of your students.  The example below illustrates two of the leveled books. 

The directions are the same for each of the texts, but just written in a slightly different way.  When each student has followed the directions, they will end up with a rainstick like the one pictured below.

If your students are interested in continuing their study of rain rituals, there are several other texts that they can check out!

• The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie DePaola
• Rain Dance by Cathy Applegate
• Sing Down the Rain by Judi Moreillon

 If you would like to use this lesson in your classroom, please click on the image below!  Or you can pin for later!   Thanks for reading today! -Em

Don't forget to hop through and read about all the great mentor text lessons that can help you to spring into spring!  You can also enter the Rafflecopter and win ALL (yes...ALL)  of the mentor texts in this hop! My mystery word is RAIN.

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Reading Rituals

It is rounding the corner to the end of July.  How did that happen?

My goal this summer was one word: Inspiration.  I wanted to be inspired by the PD that I took, the books that I read, and the things that I did.  In turn, I was not online as much, blogged even less, and created nothing.  But life ebbs and flows.  And so it is okay.

Last night I met with my teammate and we discussed some of the learning that came out of my different PD events this summer.  Looking at it collectively and being reflected.  Inspiration occurred.  And most of it can fall into one category: Reading Rituals.

I went to a session this summer at Nerd Camp titled "Motivating Readers without Incentives" by two ladies from Teacher2TeacherHelp.com.  The book that started reading rituals for them was "Reconsidering Read Aloud" by Mary Lee Hahn.  The presenters explained that rituals bring people together and connect people to a larger community.  Reading rituals.

So by looking back at my notes I came up with a list of reading rituals that I would like to try to incorporate this year into my school/guided reading groups.  You may do many of these or this list may help you to rethink something you are currently doing.  Some of the ideas I have gone back and pinned.

1. Books We've Read Display

My teammate and I will do this with her whole group books.  But I also want to have a running record of our guided reading books.  Because as first graders they really need to see the massive amount of books they really are reading each and every week!  Here are some pins that I found for these ideas (you can click on them for further details from that author):

2. Staff and student book selfies.  I want the students to see that I am always reading too!  And I want them to have their pictures taken with their favorites.  There are so many ways to do this and I foresee myself putting up a plate stand in my guided reading area with my "current read."  Here are few pins:

 3. One goal this year is to make their thinking about books more visible.  During guided reading, I want to have an "exploratory notebook" for me to write down any thinking, wondering, or questions that they have about the book we are currently reading. (Betsy Hubbard has many posts about this concept!)  As first graders, I want to honor their thinking and know that it is important.  Another thought is to have a "glitter board" or frame where we write down favorite quotes from a book we are currently reading.  Here are a few pins that can lead you to more information:

 4. Book Talks.  At the Scholastic Summit, I learned so much about the power of book talks.  I would like to integrate this into an announcement with books from our Readbox.  My hope is that after much modeling, some students may be interested in doing the book talks for me!  Scholastic has some resources on Book Talks and I think I need to watch many YouTube videos to help me out.

5. I love this one: end of the year book signing.  The class picks their favorite book from the year and they all sign their names to the inside cover.  It is a way for you to remember their favorite book and future students!

A few other things that I would like to do is add some student published books into my guided reading lessons somehow and also into the Readbox.  I want to encourage students to look at all parts and angles of a book (spine, cover pages, smell, etc), and Skype.  My students need to meet more authors!



What are some of your reading rituals that you think would benefit my students.  I think all these small rituals are going to add up to something HUGE!!






**All of the pins in this post do link to the original owner.  Please click to learn more about each one of them.