Twitter Fun

Twitter has become such a great way to enhance my professional life. This school year through my Twitter friends I:

• Made connections with authors like Ame Dyckman, Stephen McCranie, Sarah Albee, Erica Perl, Mina Javaherbin, and Abby Klein, so we could have Skype visits with them

• Planned Skype visits with other educators so our students could celebrate reading together and learn a bit about other parts of the country.
• Connected with another person to begin a new blog together about diverse young adult literature (more information on that coming soon)
• Found out about and attended the EdCampMadWI
• Continually hear about amazing books through participation in the Nerdybookclub
• Found a great resource for my fifth grade teachers who will be teaching a graphic novel unit soon
• Participate in fantastic chats like #titletalk and #diverselit
• Meet inspirational people who keep me excited about learning
• Hear about great new book trailers to share with my students

There are so many more things that I could say, but ultimately, Twitter helps me continue to learn. You can find me on Twitter @librarygrl2. Thanks Tweeps!

World Read Aloud Day - March 6

I can't believe it is almost time for World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) again. I loved it last year. LitWorld, a non-profit literacy organization sponsors this event. They encourage people to "celebrate the power of words, especially those words that are shared from one person to another." Last year we were able to Skype with so many wonderful people. We read with students in a few different states and several fantastic authors shared their books with us too. If you want to see some of the fun we had, please click here and here.

Hopefully, we will be able to do a lot of reading with people from all over. It should be pretty exciting. Now I guess I need to get busy planning. If you want to participate, you may go to LitWorld to sign up and take advantage of their resources. Also, Kate Messner, author of the Marty McGuire books and many others, has a great blog post that helps teachers and librarians connect with authors. Between these resources and some reading buddies within the building and/or from the community, WRAD can be an awesome literacy event. I hope you can join in the fun.

World Read Aloud Day Continues

The fun and learning just keeps rolling on here at our school.  Today two of our fifth grade classes got to visit with author Michael Scotto.  He shared about his chapter books and read one of his picture books to us.

We will have to watch the book trailer for his chapter book sometime soon.  It sure makes me want to read the book.

Next, one of our Pre-K classes had a great visit from some students at Cooper Elementary in Burlington, WI (led by @pageintraining).  They read us these really funny books:

Then, one of our first grade classes was lucky enough to visit with Michael Scotto too.  They had a fun time listening to his book and asking a ton of questions.

 We even saw a picture of his very own tornado dog.

World Read Aloud Day just keeps going, and going, and going, and going. Tomorrow another Pre-K class will have a Skype visit with some 5th grade students that will read with us. On Monday, second grade will visit with the author of the I Spy books, Jean Marzollo, and by then, all of the grades will have had a visit of some kind. I love it when there is an event that gets us trying new things and working with people from other places. These kinds of visits get us pretty excited about reading.

Skype Visit to Romania

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune to be able to read with Cristina Milos's class in Bucharest, Romania.   I had a fantastic time with her students.  They were really sweet and listened so nicely.  I loved visiting with them and I hope to meet with other classes around the world in the future.  Reading aloud with students is a privilege and I can't think of many things I enjoy more.  Cristina made a video of our time together on their wiki.

Coming soon is another day for reading aloud.  LitWorld is promoting World Read Aloud Day.  Many other people and organizations are joining in to spread the word such as School Library Journal, Shannon Miller and John Schumacher at Change the World Story by Story and Donalyn Miller.  I hope thousands of people get involved and read aloud on Wednesday, March 7th.  I know I am looking forward to having authors Skype with our students, meeting other classes online, and even having our superintendent come to read with us.  It should be a fabulous day!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I am taking the easy way out today.  I am putting in screen shots of my Goodreads page.  I am super tired, but didn't want to skip this so here is my compromise.

I had a few favorites.  I had been looking forward to Bitterblue and was not disappointed.  It is another great fantasy and I liked it waaaay better than Fire and almost as much as Graceling.  Stick was seriously intense, but quite well done.  Kepler's Dream was a surprisingly engaging family mystery.  The pictures in Naamah and the Ark at Night were fabulous.  Hippo & 11 Experiments got some chuckles out of me.  I really enjoyed Redwoods.  I learned a lot of super interesting facts.  Nothing Like a Puffin was a really bright and fun book that explained puffins by showing what they are NOT like.

I also read to a group of children in Romania on Friday morning and had a blast with them.  I shared some Jack Prelutsky, Sugar Snow (a Laura Ingalls Wilder picture book), the Oneida book from above and Punk Farm.  Here is a video on their wiki.  If you are interested in reading with them, I would highly recommend it.  It was a great experience.  

For the coming week, I am finishing Seriously...I'm Kidding for real.  I only have 2 chapters left.  My attempt at Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was stymied when I could no longer open it on my NookColor.  I will finish it this week on my computer - not nearly as comfortable.  I am also planning to dive back into the Newbery and Caldecott challenges.  Smoky the Cowhorse is up next and I have a pile of Caldecotts.  It should be fun. :)  

New Year - New Goals

I have been reading New Year blog posts all day. So now it is finally time to set some of my own goals.

Reading
1. Read 650 books as part of the Goodreads Reading Challenge 

2. Participate in John Schu's Newbery Challenge (read all Newbery award books by Dec. 2013)

3. Read all of the Caldecott books (including honors) as part of the Caldecott Challenge at LibLaura5 with Laura and Anna at AtoZ Library

4. Finish the last 29 Nerdy Award Nominees that I have not yet read

5. Read at least twice as much non-fiction this year than last (about 50 books)

School Related
1. Arrange for Skype Author visits for every grade level

2. Read more non-fiction with every grade level using some of the info from Passport Nonfiction from Sarah and Amy

3. Have my first Technology Petting Zoo like @pageintraining

4. Collaborate and connect with teachers, librarians, and students beyond our district

Personal
1. Complete a graduate class Library Services for Children and YA

2. Remain calm and at peace as much as possible in spite of son's graduation from High School

Yikes. As I sat here, the list just grew and grew.  This is not a list of resolutions, but a hopeful list of things to accomplish over the next twelve months.  Here we go.  Off on another adventure.  Happy New Year!

Kate Messner & Our Skype Visit with Update

Our third grade was very lucky and had the opportunity to visit with Kate Messner recently.  We had all read her picture books Over and Under the Snow and Sea Monsters First Day, and a lot of us had read Marty McGuire.  We really enjoyed getting to talk to her and ask lots of questions about her writing process.  She shared about some of her favorite books she read as a child (Ramona books and Judy Blume books), where she got her ideas for the books we had read, and about carrying around a notebook to jot cool ideas down.  We found out that the new Marty McGuire will be published in the spring and we cannot wait to get our hands on it.

After the visit, we wanted to figure out a way to say thank you.  The students that are happy to be in front of a camera have spoken for all of us in the video below.  We hope you enjoy seeing their response to Kate.  If you or your class are interested in Skyping with Kate or with other authors, she has a fantastic blog post explaining how it all works and which authors do this: Authors Who Skype with Classes or Book Clubs (for free).  This was our schools' second Skype author visit.  The first was Tom Angleberger of Origami Yoda fame with our 4th & 5th grade - and he was a hoot.  We would like to make virtual author visits a regular occurrence because we learn so much and they are extremely fun. Thanks again to Kate Messner who made our day.

P.S. I forgot to add the video messages of one of my classes.  They let me know it when I showed them the video above.  Sooooo, here are their messages too.