Happy Birthday Dad!

Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers.

Remembering you today.
Your eyes and your smile.
The way you could make everything seem ok.
Teasing. Loving. Doing. Being there.
Cars, sports, racing.
Bon fires and stars.
The over-the-glasses look that was All your own.
Proud.  Saying:
"It doesn't get any better than this!"
And meaning it.
Thinking of you every Day.
Remembering you today.

Gotta Love Those Books

Books.

I love them!

I still remember that feeling of excitement as a child when my teacher put the new book order forms in my mailbox.  I would scour them and select all the best books.  Then I would formulate my strategy for convincing my parents that I NEEDED them.  I usually won...who tells their child they can't buy new books to read?

I still feel this way.  The prospect of books orders are still fun.  I love it when I prepare one to send home with my students and they get excited to see the order forms in their mailboxes!  I love it when my own children bring them home from their classrooms!  I can always tell when they have brought them home because they will both be sitting at the kitchen table with their pens in hand and their book orders spread open in front of them, circling all the best books, just as I had done years before.

Fast forward a few (twenty-whoa!) years and imagine my excitement when I got a phone call from a good friend.  She has started selling children's books and she called to see if I would like to host a book party.  Of course, my immediate response?  YES!  We quickly worked out all the details, sent out the invitations and then I started eagerly looking forward to all the wonderful books that would soon be gracing my home.

The party was fun, the books were ordered and yesterday was the big day.  Two big, heavy boxes carried by the man in brown arrived at my doorstep. Ahhh...I could almost smell them through the boxes!  But, it was dinner time and there were three children gathered around my knees wondering about the contents of those big, heavy boxes.  So...I stacked them gently in the corner of the living room and I waited.  All through dinner.  All through play time.  All through bedtime routines.  Still longer...through the cereal and bottle and rocking routine for the baby.  And the whole time those two big boxes stared at me and called to me from the corner.  Just like my books used to call to me from my mailbox when the book orders would come in!

Finally, it was time.  I sat in the middle of the floor, with my scissors in hand, and gently sliced through the tape.  I ever so quietly pulled out the paper stuffing, not wanting to wake any of the snoozers in the house (including the hubby snoring on the couch).  I pull the books from the boxes and stacked them all around me, like a nest.  All at once, I was in my glory.

I sat for an hour in the middle of those book piles.  But more importantly, I looked at them all!  It was terrific!  All those smooth, colorful colors, all the bright pages with pictures to explore and words to devour.  The smell of the new books and the crack of the book opening for the first time.  I drank in every last book.  Then, and only then, did I place the books into separate bags and prepare to give them to their rightful owners. 

What a great night it was!  Ahh...gotta love those books!

So many topics, so little time...

I am taking a class about nonfiction reading and writing right now with an amazing instructor.  We meet once per month and we are busy learning about different text types - everything from picture captions to reading responses to persuasive writing...so far.

I am also reading Talking, Drawing, & Writing by Martha Horn and Mary Ellen Giacobbe and The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And They're All Hard Parts) by Katie Wood Ray - both excellent books.

Because of this class and my current reading, I have been thinking a lot about topic selection for writers.  I have never before thought about how to teach my students how to select a topic to write about.  I have created idea lists with different topics they could write about with my students and I have done think alouds as I am writing during which I talk through which of two ideas I will write about that day.  But, I have never, in eleven years of teaching kindergarten, thought to show my students how to pick a topic.

After that thought hit me, another one, a bummer of a thought, hit me.  I'm not sure HOW to teach my kindergarten students how to choose a topic for writing.  I'm just beginning myself to stick my toe into the writing waters (through this SOLC) so I am learning too! 

So far, the only piece of advice I have to offer them is to look at the world around you.  There are often ideas for topics that pop into my head at random times now that I am considering myself more of a writer but that is awfully hard to explain to a five or six year old.

And so, I'm turning to you all...my new community of people...for some help.  How do you teach your students to select a topic?  How do you select your own topics?

Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom you have to offer!

The Intricate Dance of Sweet Potatoes

If you have ever fed a six month old baby, you know about it.  That intricate dance of sweet potatoes.  The intricate dance of spooning the food in and being ready to catch half of it as it dribbles out and onto that cute little chin. 

Last night, as I was participating in the dance with baby, I admittedly was thinking more about what my slice would be for today than what was happening with the spoon.  Until, of course, my six year old woke me from my thoughts with the insight of a big sister.

"Mom, she's doing good tonight!" she said. 

And she was right!  The baby was doing well!  She was enjoying the dance of sweet potatoes-opening wide and savoring each bite.  I almost missed the beauty of the dance because I was lost in my own thoughts.  Such a wise big sister to point out the obvious to the mommy who was missing it right as it was unfolding right under her own nose!

Almost immediately my mind started to swirl. That one comment from big sister is all it took to set my thoughts in motion.

As I'm scooping sweet potatoes into baby's mouth it hits me.  This intricate dance of sweet potatoes is just like the process of teaching.  We spoon in little scoops of knowledge and only some is retained.  The rest seeps back out uneaten, unused.  So we do what we do and we catch the dribble, shovel it back in and hope that this time it stays.  But, like all good baby-feeding moms, we stay at the ready, knowing that the dance might not be done...knowing that we might need to catch and scoop yet again before the dance is complete.

And so I sat there with my mind buzzing from this idea.  Thinking all at once that it was pretty late in the day to be thinking in metaphors and how cool it was that four days ago I would have had the thought and let it go but now, instead, I will share it with the world through my slice and just maybe someone will read it and relate to it! 

As we get ready to stare down the barrel of Monday, let's remember to have our scoops ready.  There might be a little bit of dribbling, but at least we will be ready for it!

The Persuasion of Penguins

Slice of Life Challenge: Day 3

My first grader is lucky.  She is lucky to be in a classroom with a teacher who is willing to look at all the standards and expectations for a first grader and then put in the effort of making them meaningful.

My daughter has been enjoying a month-long study of penguins.  Her teacher teaches this famous penguin unit every year and it is one of the highlights of the year for her first graders.  It's the time that they all look forward to in all the days leading up to it each year and my daughter is no different.  She couldn't wait for it to begin because she had already heard so much about it from other kids and her teacher.  She'd been saving up all her penguin "stuff" for this moment!  All throughout the first 100 days of school she had been thinking about showing her teacher her penguin socks, her stuffed animal penguins, the talking and dancing penguin she got for Christmas, her penguin books...and the list goes on.

And so it finally arrived and it didn't disappoint.  My daughter has come home every day with new facts she has learned about penguins.  Her class has even decided to raise enough money (by selling tickets and raffling off a blanket) to adopt a Rock Hopper penguin.  Yes, her teacher is awesome!

Her: Do you know why the Rock Hopper penguin is on the "dangered" list?
Me: No, why?
Her: Well...(yes, that's how she talks, my little adult-child)...the sun is coming into the Earth and it gets trapped and can't get out.  That makes the ice melt.  And do you know what happens then?  ...   And do you know why?  Well...      

And on it goes.  She has learned so much about penguins!  But the beauty of it is that she is also learning about writing, both nonfiction and persuasion (they wrote letters to their parents about why we should buy raffle tickets and help them adopt the penguin), reading nonfiction, science, math (they are measuring penguins and comparing how tall they are with how tall the students are) and art (they made posters for the hallway to interest people in buying tickets for the raffle and soon they will be making paper replicas of the penguins they have studied to hang in the hall with labels that give facts about their size, where they live and what they eat). 

She is such a lucky girl to be involved in this unit of study with a teacher who is smart enough and works hard enough to integrate all those standards and expectations into a fun, meaningful unit for her students.  So, you might be asking, how is this teacher going to top this and finish out the rest of the school year with this same level of enthusiasm?  Well...(I guess my daughter gets that from me)...she will begin a unit on farming and farm animals next.  The excitement is already building and they aren't even finished with the penguin unit yet!

Yep, my daughter is one lucky girl!

A Slice of Mo

Slice of Life Challenge: Day two!

My students and I have been studying Mo Willems during the month of February.  We have really enjoyed reading about our new friends: Elephant and Piggy, Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny and Trixie, Amanda and her Alligator, Leonardo, Edwina, the whole gang!

Each day as I finish reading a new story or an old favorite I ask my students, "What did you notice today?"  And each day I am blown away by the insightful answers that I hear.

Now that we have read all the Mo Willems books that our school library owns (time to make a trip to the local city library now!), we are looking at his books as writers.  Again, when I ask the kids what they notice, they amaze me!  With all the great ideas and wonderful things they are noticing...it was time for a chart.

Last week we took all the great things we had learned from Mo and turned it into a chart for our wall.  My students have not only begun to point out the things we learned from Mo in other books, but they have also started trying to include them in their own writing!

I have been a fan of author studies for a while now, but the power of the author study this year has reached new levels!  I can't wait to see what happens next!

Friends, Mentors and a Side of Gratitude

I decided to take the Slice of Life Challenge this year.  I have committed to writing each day for 31 days.  Now...what to write?

I have been thinking a lot lately about my journey as a teacher.  How did I get to this place where I am today?  What led me here to this place of confidence in myself and my abilities as a teacher? 

As I look back on my travels through this crazy land of teaching and learning, there are a few key things that have pushed me to where I am today.  I was fortunate enough to be hired into a school district that offers me opportunities to grow and learn.  I was also fortunate enough to have a change in leadership in that district at just the right time for me...that exact moment when I was ready to step-up and do a little more, learn a little more.  That was the first door that opened into this place where I am today.

As I traved through that door I had some important decisions to make.  I could continue to align myself with those people who didn't push my thinking, push my learning OR I could align myself with those who did.  This, of course, is the path I chose.  It wasn't an easy fork in my road but it was a turn that made all the difference in getting me to this place I am now.

And then, through the next door, along comes B, that person who really made all the difference in my world.  You know that one friend, right?  That one friend you can talk to about anything?  The one you can discuss and debate things with, share joys and sorrows and frustrations with?  That's the one I mean.  She is the one who came along at just the right time.  She is the one who not only is my friend for the everyday life stuff, but she is also the friend who pushes my thinking in the classroom and professional arena.  She is the one that I can grow with.  I'm so thankful that I found her friendship and support and even more thankful that she "lives" across the hall from me at school.

Next, comes G.  Through a string of random events, she walked through my door (or maybe I walked through hers) and I landed a mentor.  Not the kind of mentor you are quickly assigned when you begin teaching, but the kind of mentor that guides and shapes you with the kindness of a grandma and the wisdom and experience of someone who has walked in your shoes and come out on the other side.  The kind of mentor that changes everything!  Had I not met her and had the amazing experience of learning from her, I wouldn't be in this place today.  I am thankful to have her as a mentor and even more thankful to call her my friend.

And so...here I am today.  In a place where I love what I do even when it frustrates me. A place where I experience ups and downs and can reflect and learn from both.  A place where I am brave enough to step out and take the Slice of Life Challenge and commit to writing EVERYDAY!!!  Who would have thought I would end up here?  Certainly not me, but I am so glad I'm here.