Quote of the Week -- August 12, 2012

 

“As soon as we associate reading a book with taking a test, we’ve missed the point.” Seth Godin in Stop Stealing Dreams Section 4 “What is school for?”

Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School Sale August 12-13

This Sunday and Monday August 12 and 13, Teachers Pay Teachers is having its Back to School Sale.  I am putting my entire store on sale for 20% off.  If you use the promo code BTS12 at check out, you will have a total of 28% off.

I would like to feature a tool I created over the last 12 years of teaching upper elementary students:

Twenty-five Book Reports was my reading program for a few years before my district made a literacy adoption.  I assigned a book report a month and made sure that my students were finishing books across genre. 

Now it is a task I have students work on while I pull small groups during reading workshop.  This past year, I assigned mainly the non-fiction book reports to support the science and social units we were studying.

Included in this product are 13 fiction and 12 non-fiction assignments with rubrics for quick grading.  It is normally priced $6.50 but with both my discount and TPT's promo code, it is priced Sunday and Monday at $4.68.

Thank you Christiana Bainbridge of Bunting, Books and Bainbridge for hosting this blog hop.

Alvin Ho Series by Lenore Look

Have you read the Alvin Ho Series by Lenore Look?  The character is a second grade boy who is anxious about nearly everything.  He experiences typical second grade events -- school, birthday parties, camping trips -- with his own defenses that often bring more consequences.



This book may be a little young in reading level for my fourth graders, but I find it is a good way to explain voice in writing.  And the one-liners are hilarious.

Here is a printable character sketch form.  Students list character traits and collect evidence of that character's actions and words that show that trait.

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Teasing

I try to use humor in my classroom to keep things fun.  I find I can sometimes defuse situations by joking around. 

One of my students challenged me with this a few months ago.  He wanted to know why I could tease people and he couldn't.

This question must have been bubbling around in the back of my brain for awhile, because this week I got my answer.

I was volunteering at church with another family and I was teasing the eight-year-old about jobs I was going to have him do.  His four-year-old sister said, "You can't tease me."

"I'm going to have you mop all the floors," I told her.  She giggled.  She was included in the game.

That's my answer.  If the teasing is fun for everyone, it can be a way to pay attention to someone and show affection.  The little sister wanted to be included in the game I was playing with her brother.

My student, on the other hand, tends to tease in a mean-spirited disrespectful way.  The jokes are not agreed upon by everyone. 

If giver and receiver don't agree to a nickname, it's simply namecalling.

Quote of the Week -- August 5, 2012

I often tell new teachers that Mrs. Bauer is a character I play.

Are You Ready for Groundhog Day?

 

Update:  Please check this post for updated Groundhog Predictions information. 

Yes, I know that Groundhog Day isn't for six more months.  I wondered for two reasons:
1.  My Groundhog Day posts continue to generate Google traffic all year long.
2.  I'm writing my curriculum map for the year and I definitely want to do my Groundhog Predictions again this year.

I want to invite other classrooms to join me.  The classroom materials are a free item in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Visit http://groundhogpredictions.blogspot.com/ to see our work from last year.

When Do You Let Students Abandon Books?

I don't often write about books I didn't like, but this book raised a question for me as a teacher that I thought was worth a post: When do you let students abandon books?

Let me start by saying that I usually enjoy Shannon Hale's work.  I own several of her books in my classroom library and encourage my students to read them.  Rapunzel's Revenge is a fractured fairy tale and graphic novel set in the Old West.  Rapunzel becomes an out-law and teams up with a man with the goose that lay gold eggs.  Mother Gothel is the oppressive villain.

I didn't connect with the characters, the setting or the format of the book.  I don't have a problem with graphic novels -- an issue I plan to address later on this blog.  I found myself reading it because it was on my list.  It's a book I plan to allow in my classroom, but I don't know that I would recommend it.

I started thinking more about when to stop reading a book.  I can afford to abandon books.  I read about a book a week or so.   It's like when I don't prefer Brussels sprouts; there are plenty of other vegetables I will eat. 

I have a difficult time letting students abandon books when they never finish a book, just as I keep trying to introduce vegetables to promote healthy eating. I keep asking them to try a bite.  "Read the first chapter and come talk to me."  Eventually I hope they find an author and genre that will hook them.

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