All posts tagged: reading

The First Two Weeks of School

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School starts in two weeks and while my mind is still in summer mode, I am starting to think about the beginning of the year.  This is the plan I have for the first two weeks of school.  My students have 7 period days and attend class for 45 minutes, so these lessons are designed with that time frame in mind. Week One Day 1–One Word Challenge  This is a great activity for allowing students to think about the upcoming year.  I put this up on a PowerPoint slide deck and you can find it here: One Word Challenge. Day 2–Get to Know You Icebreaker Students create a name tag.  After they are done with their name tag, they place it at the edge of their desk and we go around the room sharing and listening to everyone.  I hang on to them and pass them out at the beginning of each class for two weeks.  It allows me to learn names quickly (instead of always referring to the seating chart) and for others to learn …

Instilling a Love for Reading

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“People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”  -Malcolm X At the beginning of each year, I spend close to a week talking about independent reading with my students.  To me, it’s worth investing the time because independent, choice reading is the heart of my class. How I frame choice reading during the first week: how to find a just-right book and how that is different for every reader, different genres and their definitions, setting a weekly reading rate (from Penny Kittle’s book Book Love), speed dating a variety of books to find potential novels to read, going over My Top-15 Reading List (adapted from Kelly Gallagher’s book In the Best Interest of Students), discussing how book conferencing works, and how to keep track of books read. Even though I check in with each student monthly, share my Top 15 List with my classes, and book talk new books bi-monthly, there’s always a small percentage of students who refuse to read, or read very little.  My avid readers love the freedom …

How to Encourage All Types of Readers

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We’ve now been in school for one month.  One month! I can’t believe it.  It seems like just yesterday I was putting my classroom back together.  Now that all the nitty-gritty has been taken care of (syllabus, classroom expectations, where to find things in the classroom), class has settled in and there’s the slow hum of students reading and writing. By the end of the first week of school, students understand that independent reading is a big component of my class.  Many smile, as they love books, but there’s always a small handful that dread finding books to read, let alone reading them. The following strategies have worked in my classroom with all kinds of readers, voracious and limited and everywhere in between.  And if you think about it for a minute, don’t we all have ups and downs in our reading paths?  I know for me, there’s been times that I have read book after book, created piles of completed books and piles of what-to-read-next books in my house.  There has also been times …

Summer Reads

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Every year I say this, but every year it’s so true.  I can’t believe how fast this summer has gone!  I blinked and time flew 9 weeks.  My calendar was intentionally set to do little, so I could slow down, take a deep breath.  And it still went by too fast! I had great goals of reading a bunch of books, (you can see my what-to-read-stack here), but between camping, going to the coast, day trips, finishing a quilt, spending time with extended family, and a week of PD training, (I am going through the process of becoming Nationally Board Certified–eek!), I didn’t get through nearly as much as I thought. But the three books I did read this summer were really good, and if you have some time before school starts, you should read one! Book—Circe Genre–fantasy; mythology Summary–This is the backstory of Circe from The Odyssey, by Homer.  If you teach this epic poem, or just really enjoyed the story, then you’ll love the author’s spin on the witch who turns Odysseus’ men into …

Middle Grades Social Justice Novels

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One of the required novels for my 8th grade students is The Secret Life of Bees.  I thought it would be good to look at this novel through a social (in)justice lens, specifically focusing on race, gender, and social class.  But I didn’t want to stop at just the novel. Students dissected poems, read picture books, and annotated newspaper articles all focusing on injustice.  While solving or complaining of these problems wasn’t the focus with this unit, I did want students to develop a larger context of what social justice is.   The main goal of reading the core text was to develop empathy and understanding of those who feel marginalized.  It’s difficult to walk alongside someone when you don’t get where he or she is coming from.  Students are now finishing up this unit with book club books.  A few weeks ago, they speed dated 10 books that dealt with at least one of the three injustices.