A few months ago I began keeping a commonplace book, and I wish I’d started sooner. It’s a great way to truly engage what you’re reading by jotting down notes, questions, quotes and summaries. What Is a Commonplace Book? A commonplace book is a notebook where you record notes and quotes from your reading. Here are some things I’ve jotted down in my commonplace book: Quotes Notes for Further Reading Chapter Summaries Outlines of an Argument How Is A Commonplace Book Organized? If there are any hard and fast rules, I’m unaware. Here’s how I’ve organized mine… Use Both Sides of the Notebook If you like to read several books…
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How to Teach the Italicized Sections of “The Girl Who Drank the Moon”
A long time ago, I saw something on Pinterest titled “Beyond PIE: Teaching Author’s Purpose.” It made me laugh because, as much as I love PIE, it gives student (and teachers) the impression that the author’s purpose always fits into one of three neat categories: persuade, inform, entertain. Of course a nonfiction book can be entertaining, and a novel can do much to persuade, so PIE only takes us so far. It can also obscure what I want to talk about today: author’s craft. When discussing author’s craft, we’re asking students to see beyond the page and infer the author’s motive, or purpose. What is the author trying to say?…
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Check Your Students’ ‘Emotional Temperature’ with this Fun, Free Mood Ring Activity (RULER)
The concept behind mood rings is as strange as it is fun–do we need a device to tell us our mood, isn’t some mild self-refection a more direct route? Well, yes, but mood rings are FUN. And, recognizing feelings isn’t always straightforward. As part of my RULER bundle (RULER is a social-emotional acronym, you can read about it here) I created several feeling diaries for students. The most fun diary features mood rings. I thought I’d make a simpler version and post it on TpT as a freebie. It would make a great intro to the RULER acronym and the mood meter. If you’d like to give the RULER acronym…
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How To Discuss Multiple Perspectives In Your “The Girl Who Drank The Moon” Novel Study
In The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill uses multiple perspectives to develop suspense, foreshadowing, irony, and theme. So before we get to these big ticket literary devices, it’s worthwhile to spend some time on the seemingly humbler topic of point of view and perspective. The Girl Who Drank the Moon is written in third person omniscient, but the author’s use of multiple perspectives deserves way more attention than the typical “What’s the point of view?” discussion will render. The real treasure lies in analyzing how the author uses multiple perspectives to build suspense, theme, irony, etc. We’ll get into this more in future posts, but here are some…
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How to Celebrate Halloween Without Losing Instructional Momentum
Nearly every Halloween in the classroom has seen me running to the library during my conference period to beg the librarian for a book that would satisfy my student’s request that we do something “scary.” Coming up short on a day like Halloween is like looking into your kids eyes on Christmas morning as you explain that you just didn’t make room in your schedule for presents this year. So once again, I’ve armed myself with a holiday mini unit. This Halloween unit is flexible enough to blend easily with whatever I did in reading workshop on October 30, but festive enough to scratch that Halloween itch. Here’s a peek…
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7 Important Literary Devices in “The Girl Who Drank the Moon”
Some books present you with the best kind of difficulty: they are full to bursting with literary goodies, so rich that you can’t hope to teach the book for absolutely all it’s worth. Far from scouring the page to figure out something that will excite students and meet your instructional goals, these books require you to practice restraint–to pick out a few gems and leave the rest alone, so as not to belabor the reading. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill is one of those books. I recently digitized my Girl Who Drank the Moon novel study, and was reminded of how well the author used multiple…
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How to Celebrate Fall Without Losing Instructional Momentum (Reading Workshop)
The weather changes, the leaves turn and you are faced with this dilemma: should I be the festive teacher, or the dutiful teacher? The one who closes the windows and trudges through the curriculum, or the one who cancels class to carve pumpkins? In college I imagined I would be the festive teacher. Once I was actually in the classroom I was dedicated to being the dutiful teacher. But inevitably the season would make itself felt and I just couldn’t resist a short break from my lesson plans for a holiday themed activity. More recently, I’ve tried to get the best of both worlds by creating holiday “mini units.” These…
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Blog Series on the Book, “Reader, Come Home”
In Reader, Come Home Maryanne Wolf reminds us how the reading brain works, how it can be altered by digital media, and how we can help our students (and ourselves) develop a reading life in a digital world. Here’s a round up of posts on topics found in the book: “The good readers of a society are both its canaries–which detect the presence of danger to its members–and its guardians of our common humanity.” –Maryanne Wolf
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Festina Lente: Hurry Slowly, Reading as Contemplation
This is the seventh in a series of posts about Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home. You can read the introductory post and find links to other posts in the series here. “To read…we need a certain kind of silence that seems increasingly elusive in our over-networked society…and it is not contemplation we desire but an odd sort of distraction, distraction masquerading as being in the know. In such a landscape, knowledge can’t help but fall prey to illusion, albeit an illusion that is deeply seductive, with it’s promise that speed can lead us to illumination, that it is more important to react that to think deeply…Reading is an act of contemplation…an act…
