It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

My entry for this week's meme organized by Teach Mentor Texts is Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts.

Check out the trailer.



I love scary, action-packed books so I definitely loved this one. It is told from the point of view of four different teenagers trying to survive natural disasters and murderous townspeople. Great for your students that enjoy zombie novels, Life As We Knew It, The Kill Order and other fast paced stories.

I'm going to pick up How To Get Your Child to Love Reading by Esme Raji Codell from the library tomorrow.

The Common Core Secret Weapon Tour

My partners in crime, Kristen Hearne and Monique German, and I have been fortunate enough to present our "Common Core Secret Weapon" presentation at the Upstate Technology Conference and TL Virtual Cafe. This presentation has opened up other opportunities to speak to librarians. This week we are sharing with a neighboring district, in February we are presenting to our region of the state library association and a school district a few counties away, and in March we are presenting for our state conference. In addition, we were asked by a neighboring state to present this session as well as a few individual ones at their annual summer training.
We are very honored and a bit nervous about it. We strive to do our best in our libraries and district and step up as leaders, but we sometimes suffer from humility. I suppose it is natural to wonder if what you want to share is going to help anyone. Positive blog comments, tweets, and chatting with librarians at conferences gives me encouragement to keep sharing and presenting. I know many teachers and librarians that do the most wonderful things in their classroom, but never tell anyone about it. Maybe this is why the negative stories about education get the most attention. I feel a responsibility to brag. My intent is to brag on the entire profession and bring everyone up, not myself. I'm here to serve my students and that is what pushes me. I know that librarians have a positive impact on students and student learning. I am inspired by reading blogs, sharing on Twitter, and attending presentations and webinars; therefore, I feel a responsibility to return the favor.
Do you ever question whether or not you are good enought to present? or blog? or share?
How do you overcome that self doubt?

I thought this quote summed up our concerns very well. We hope that by sharing our ideas we are helping others.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. -Rick Warren

I also found inspiration in the SLJ article, "How Does Your Boss See You?". I even asked that this be the pre-workshop homework assignment for the attendees to our upcoming presentations. Here is the link in case you missed it. My favorite line is "And while some media specialists say they’re waiting for an invitation to lead from their principals, a majority of administrators say librarians should take the initiative themselves." I hope that after our presentations the librarians in attendance will be motivated to take initiative in their schools and districts.

Who is your book crush?

For Valentine's Day I wanted to create a bulletin board of book crushes. I'm not sure where I first heard this or I would give credit. I created a little form for students to fill out. You're welcome to use it below. It isn't anything spectacular and took just a few minutes to throw together.

I have three romance books that I'm going to give away after putting all of the participants' names in a random name generator. I wanted to mark the holiday in some way, but not add anything time consuming to my plate. After putting the forms on the circulation desk I had six entries within 30 minutes. I think the girls will enjoy this. I'll be surprised if a boy participates, but you never know.

So far the crushes are Fang from Maximum Ride, Gale from The Hunger Games, Four from Divergent, Dimitri from Vampire Academy, Yong Soo from Hetalia, and Lend from Paranormalcy. Quite a variety.

My book crush is Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife. It doesn't hurt that he was a librarian! If I had to choose a YA character it would probably be Four from Divergent or Tucker from Unearthly.

Who is your book crush?

Treat Tuesday

Now that I've resolved to participating in "It's Monday. What Are You Reading?" I thought I could add "Treat Tuesday" to my week as well. This cute idea comes from Mrs. Houghton. You can see her blog here. I thought I could share my middle grade and professional reading on Monday and share my reading with my son on Tuesday since we often eat and read together.

This week we have read and reread Star Wars: A Galactic Pop Up Adventure by Matthew Reinhart. This pic is of my son with the book and our chocolate chip wookiee cookies. Here is an interesting interview with the author. I recommend the Star Wars cookbooks and the Star Wars Origami book if you have students that are fans of the series.

This book is really amazing. First of all I was surprised at how thick it was when it came in the mail. Each page not only has one large pop up, but it has little side pockets with one or more pop ups included. It was the most intricate pop up book I've ever seen. A true work of art. 

What Are You Reading?

I've followed the weekly meme started by Teach Mentor Texts for months and I've resolved to try to participate this year. I usually post about library lessons instead of books. I'm a horrible book reviewer. I either love or hate something and I'm not good at explaining why, but I thought I could participate in this without having to write reviews.

This weekend I finished Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. I love zombie books and while technically about a zombie, this book is very different. It is a zombie romance. Yes, that's right. Sounds crazy, but it was better than I expected. Here is the movie trailer that explains it a little better. It opens Feb. 1st, just in time for Valentine's Day. Looking forward to seeing this one with several of my other zombie-loving friends. I will not be buying this one for my school library, however.

Also picked up 100 Best Books for Children by Anita Silvey from the public library. I like to check books out from the library before I commit to buying them. I've been burned too many times with professional books. I think this one will be a winner because it is often mentioned on Twitter.

2013 Trends in Middle Grade Books

I was excited to meet my Goodreads reading goal of 300 books in 2012 and I'm looking forward to many great titles in 2013. I hope to get my students excited about reading in this new year as well.
I saw this fun list from the Scholastic editors that predicts some of the book trends in 2013.  
I thought it would be fun to add more titles to their list and create a bulletin board. I put together these two posters and you are welcome to use them to talk about trends with your students. I tried to find recent or soon to be released titles, but threw in a few older titles that fit the trend perfectly.



My Flickr Photostream. I found the font on Urban Fonts. If you are a member of NetGalley you can find many of these titles online.

When we return to school the first visit with my 6th graders will include an introduction to Six Flags Read to Succeed.  I'll be showing them a video clip of a roller coaster ride from the passenger's point of view. You can find several fun choices on Youtube. That should grab their attention. Then we'll talk about the guidelines for the challenge and hand out reading logs. If you have students in 6th grade or lower you can sign up for free.

Enjoy the remainder of your holiday break and I hope you have a wonderful start to 2013.

Christmas Commercials and Propaganda

This week I've been teaching my 6th graders about propaganda using Christmas commercials. This is a lesson I've done for the past two years. Each year I tweak it a little and every year it is a big hit with the students.
We start the lesson with a fun, engaging warm up. I used the Retail Alphabet Game as inspiration to create an alphabet using letters from different brands, restaurants and stores. I put all the letters on one slide and ask the students to write the alphabet down the side of a piece of paper and write down as many brands as they can identify. After a few minutes we go through each one and find out which student had the most correct. I especially enjoy seeing students that are not necessarily the most "academic" show off their memory skills. I explain that we used this game to illustrate how advertising influences us and gets into our brain. This is why it is so important to understand the techniques advertisers use to influence your life.
We quickly review the five types of propaganda that they learned in class. The five techniques are Name calling, Fear, Testimonial, Bandwagon and Plain Folks. Up next is an informal assessment. We watch commercials that I found on Youtube and they have to identify which technique(s) were used in each one. I try to find Christmas commercials when possible, but for some techniques that is difficult.
These are the playlists I have compiled for this year.
Name Calling
Plain Folks
Fear
Testimonial
Bandwagon
This is one of my personal favorites from the testimonial category and always a hit with the kids.


To wrap up the day we take a quick slogan quiz. I put slogans on the board and they have to identify them as quickly as possible. This year we're adding a project to the lesson. Students will be creating a virtual poster on one of the techniques using Poster My Wall. This has become my go-to site for replacing Glogster. This is also my opportunity to introduce them to proper image citation. I look forward to seeing the creative ways they illustrate their assigned technique.

Do you have any creative Christmas lessons to share? I'm always on the look out for how to make topics relevant and fun for our students. I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday.