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Monthly Archives: February 2011
Context Clues
At the end of January, I posted my troubles finding my Schmidt’s Pick for February. After much reading, I did indeed find a Pick for February. I was reminded the other day that I never shared with you, my dear reader, what that Pick is. Call it oversight. Blame it on being busy (juggling full-time teaching and full-time doctoral work is a bit demanding). Or blame it on me. I’m inundated daily with spam messages left on the blog (some messages are downright offensive), and I assume, wrongly, that the majority of my readers aren’t readers at all but spammers.
Are You Committing Readicide?
“Readicide: noun, the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools” (Gallagher, 2009, p.2).
Dystopian Observations
One of the great joys of being a middle school teacher is the time within the block when my direct instruction is over, and my students are applying the lesson taught to real world setting. Once the students are working – on their own, in small groups, in larger groups, or going back and forth between independent and group work – my classroom becomes a rather hectic place. There are 28 young adolescents with a myriad of needs. As I move around the room checking in with students, providing more clarification, or conferencing with students, I also get the chance to just observe the students. If I do this right, I can watch and listen without the students realizing I’m there (if they know I’m standing and watching them, they’ll tense up and try to produce something that they think I want). It’s during this time watching them that I start to question both their product and my pedagogy. It’s during these times of observation that I grow the most as a teacher. As a result of observations over the course of the year, I have noticed an interesting reading trend in my classroom. I don’t know what it means or why it’s happening. It’s just one observation of millions during the first five months of the school year.
Posted in Guys Read
Tagged as: City of Ember, dystopia, Gone, Hunger, James Dashner, Jeannie Du Prau, Lies, Lois Lowry, Michael Grant, Neil Schusterman, Patrick Ness, Scott Westermann, suzanne collins, The Giver, The Hunger Games, The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, Uglies, Unwind, YA Lit, YA Literature, young adult lit, young adult literature
Check Out, Check In
My classroom library is a mess. Well, maybe not in the literal sense of the word, but in more of a logistical sense of the word. I have hundreds of titles. I have them cataloged by genre, and in the beginning of school year, I set up the library by genre, which simply makes it easier for me to find books when I’m recommending something to a student. About a month into school, books that are strictly for my eighth grade readers end up mixed in the with the general library, non-fiction is mixed into fantasy, and the new book section is empty. My library management is meant to be a simple record of who has what book and is also meant to teach some independence and responsibility. Students are supposed to sign out the book when they take it, and sign it back in when they return it. I’ve noticed my readers this year, looking in the sign out log when they can’t find a book they want to read. They will search the log until they find the reader with their next book, then they ask if they can have the book when the student is finished with it. And thus the problem begins.
Posted in Independent Reading/SSR/Reader's Workshop
Tagged as: Alex Flinn, Beastly, Beauty, Classroom Library, Constructivist Theory, Donalyn Miller, Independent Reading, Michael Scott, Nancie Atwell, Reader's Workshop, Robin McKin, The Alchemyst, The Book Whisperer, YA Lit, YA Literature, young adult lit, young adult literature
Serial Reader
Earlier this week, one of the few days we were in school without snow and ice days, one of my students stopped to talk to me after class. This is not an odd occurrence because the students have lunch after this particular block so they’re not rushing to be on-time for a class – but I digress. The conversation began with my student recommending a book to me. Then the conversation took a turn. The young lady was upset and needed to share that she was upset. And as an aside, I love that books can be the bridge to start to build the teacher – student relationship since connections with teachers are so important to middle school students. At first I thought she was upset about a grade or an assignment or a peer. Nope. None of the above. She was upset because she had just finished the first two books of a series, and she now had to wait until July to find out what was going to happen next.