Flora and Ulysses

I am so sorry about last week.  Hopefully this week I can catch back up on the blog.

We have finally finished Flora and Ulysses.  Last Thursday we read the poem that Ulysses wrote to Flora.  If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I would read aloud a book about a flying squirrel that wrote poetry, I would not have believed you.  I would have believed you even less if you told me that the book was the Newbery winner.

To reflect on the book I gave the class a choice board on Friday.  A choice board just gives the students different options of how they want to share their thinking about the book.  Some of the choices on the board include writing an I Am Who I Am poem or creating a Venn Diagram to compare this book to other Kate DiCamillo books or my favorite create a Doodle for Google for Flora and Ulysses.

I got to see the first drafts of some of these projects today and was blown away.  I cannot wait to scan some of the Doodle for Googles and put them up on the blog.  If you are not familiar with the Doodle for Google, it is the picture that seems to change daily for the Google home page.  For example if you go to Google today you will see a Doodle Google that celebrates Saint Patrick's Day.

The class created Doodles with all types of nods to the book.  One of my favorite ideas was turning the two O's in Google into William Spiver's glasses.  We also had the O's turned into doughnuts and sunny-side up eggs and even a squirrel trapped in a sack with a crumpled up poem.  The creativity was amazing.  The Doodle's also showed just how much the students understood the book.

I cannot wait to see more of these projects as the students finish up their projects this week.  I hope you are all having a great start to your week and enjoying your Saint Patrick's Day.

Flora, William, and Ulysses

Have you ever read a book and you do not want it to end?  I love and hate this feeling all at the same time.  Unfortunately and fortunately this is exactly how I am feeling right now about Flora and Ulysses.  We are just a few pages away from the end.  I want those pages to last forever.  Today I wrapped up read aloud a bit faster than usual.  I just do not want the book to end.  At the exact same time I cannot wait to see how the book ends.

I have not read this book before I started to read it aloud to the class.  I love it when I get to share a new book with the class.  Yes, there is a bit of a risk not reading the book beforehand that the book will be a dud, but I love taking that risk.  I think when I am reading a book for the first time with the students my thinking is more authentic.  The students really see how I attack a book as a thinker.  They are able to see how my thinking progresses throughout a whole book.  They are able to see my excitement build as the book grabs and holds my attention.  They are able to see that sometimes my thinking is incorrect but I change that thinking as the text forces my thinking to change.

I think I am going to get one more chance to start a new book this year.  I have a few titles that I am thinking about starting after Spring Break.  Right now I think the choice is so hard because I feel like the book has to live up to Flora and Ulysses.  I guess it is not really a bad problem to have but right now it seems like a huge problem.  

I hope that you are all having a great week.  

Hero

We continue to talk about the idea of a hero.  Right now we are looking at our third literary hero, the Red Cross Knight.  Last week we finished reading Margaret Hodges amazing book St. George and the Dragon.

The text and the illustrations in this Caldecott winning book were stunning.  Today we continued to talk about the Red Cross Knight but this time we read a different version of the story.  The text that we read today was Jane Yolen's poem Why Dragon's?  

I really love looking at two texts that tell the same story.  It allows us to compare and contrast the texts.  This is exactly what we did today as we read.  The first time we read the poem the class just read for enjoyment.  On the second reading I asked the class to highlight anything that was similar in the poem to the book that we had read.  Then for our third reading the class grabbed a different color highlighter and searched for anything different in the two texts.  I was amazed at all the class was able to tell me about the differences and similarities between the two stories.

Tomorrow we are going to take this idea of looking at multiple texts to the next level and look at how the story of the Red Cross Knight was told through art.  We will look at a painting by Raphael and a sculpture by Donatello.  

I hope you are all having a great start to your week.  

World Read Aloud Day

Happy World Read Aloud Day!!

I have done nothing but read aloud today.  My day was awesome.  I just put Emerson to bed and got to read her a few of our favorite stories.  Right now as I am typing I can hear Mrs. Tarr reading aloud to Beckett.

I love my job, but the best part of my job is getting to read aloud to students.  I not only enjoy reading aloud but I think it one of the most important parts of our day.  Read aloud allows me to share my favorite books and authors.  I hope by sharing these authors and books that the students will find authors and books that they love.  Read aloud allows me to share how I think as I read.  I wish students could see what is going on in my brain as I read.  Read aloud allows this to happen.  I can let students know how I notice things about characters, the setting, or little signs that the author has left in the text.  Then the students can try to do these same things as they read.  Read aloud allows me to take a class to a zoo inside a mall or to a small village in China or to Blundermeecen.  The books that we share allow us to travel to far away places and meet new friends and face enemies.

Read aloud is the base of my structure.

So what do you do on World Read Aloud Day...you read aloud.  I started by reading aloud the book Love that Dog by Sharon Creech.

This is a short novel, but I was hoping I could fit the book into one day.  How cool would that be if I read a whole book in one day!  The book is a group of poems/short texts written by a young student named Jack pieced together to create a story.  In just over 30 minutes I finished the book.  In one day we got to watch Jack change as a character and a writer.

Then I had to read aloud the book Journey by Aaron Becker.  

This book is amazing.  It tells its story without using words.  The best question of the day was, "Mr. Tarr can it count as read aloud if you are not reading?"  Yes...Yes...Yes.  

Then we checked back in with Flora and Ulysses.

What a day in this gem of a book.  We had a fake letter, a kidnapping, and a girl who realized who she trusted.  I cannot wait to see how this books turns out.

To end all this reading, we checked in on a Jane Yolen book.

  

I want you to know that students love to be read aloud to.  You might think they are too old or not interested or any of the thousand of other excuses, but it is not true.  Each day when I stop reading you can hear groans.  Kids love this time.  

Hope you are having a great week and an amazing World Read Aloud Day.

Books, Books, Books

Today the room was filled with books.

There is nothing better than when I see students starting to carry the book that I am reading aloud.  Over the last few days I have been seeing more and more copies of Flora and Ulysses.  Some of the copies are from the library and some are from the latest Scholastic order.

We also added a lot of books by Jane Yolen to the classroom.  I was lucky to find a rather large stack of Yolen books this weekend at the library.  Today during reading time I saw students around the room reading all types of Jane Yolen books.  One thing that I love about having Yolen as the author we are studying is that she has a good amount of poetry books.  I noticed her poetry books were some of the first ones checked out this weekend.

We also started to read St. George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges.  

Books, books, books....it was a great way to start the week.

I Am What I Am

I just had a book group finish one of my favorite books Because of Winn Dixie.

If you have not read this book, I highly recommend you give it a read.  When the students were done reading, I wanted them to show me their thinking about the book.  This time I had the students write an "I Am Who I Am" poem.  

During my graduate program with the Ohio Writing Project at Miami University I took a class on writing multi-genre papers.  One of the assignments was to write an "I Am Who I Am" poem.  At first I did not think that I would enjoy the assignment.  When I gave the poem a try I wrote the poem in the voice of Ivan from The One and Only Ivan.  I instantly fell in love with the style.  Later for my final project in the class I wrote an "I Am Who I Am" poem in the voice of Piggie from Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie series.

When I have the students write these poems I always give them a copy of my original Ivan "I Am Who I Am" poem.  Here is the copy of the poem that I give to the students:

I am what I am and I am a gorilla     I am what I am The One and Only Ivan     I am patient as stones    nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-six days      in my domain     put on display     only company my Not-Tag, a dog, an elephant, and a little girl     

I am what I am I am an artist    an artist who paints to hide the pain     an artist without an audience      except for a little girl     an artist who can see the beauty surrounded by so much ugliness    

I am what I am I am a prisoner   a prisoner who just realized their prison    a prisoner who committed no crime     a prisoner who forgot the other side

I am what I am I am a friend    I am a friend      I am a friend who made a promise     I am a friend who made a promise he cannot keep     I am a friend who lost his friend

I am what I am I am a rememberer     I remember what they did to my parents    I remember what happened to my sister Tag    I remember the roller coaster and the trip through the drive-thru     I remember the dumpster that they dumped my friend into

I am what I am I am a protector     I am the protector who must not let it happen again    I am protecting her to keep my promise    I am protecting her to protect myself

I am what I am I am a silverback      I am a silverback strong and mighty      I am a silverback who must protect his friends     I am a silverback who paints to gain her freedom    I am a silverback with a message     I am silverback with no words even though they would be easier     I am a silverback      

HOME

I am what I am I am scared     I am scared for it is all new      I am scared I miss my prison     nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-six days     I am scared in this new domain

I am what I am I am free      I am free as a gorilla can be in a zoo     I am free to be with the others     I am free to be an artist     I am MUD

I am what I am I am The One an Only Ivan      

After that I let the students go and write their own poems.  For this project I wanted the students to write their poem in the voice of Opal or Winn Dixie.  Here are some of my favorite bits from the pieces:

I am who I am I am Opal a little girl who is lonely

I am who I am I am a daughter of a preacher and a mom who left me long ago

I am who I am I am lonely I am a girl who needs a little company in my life

I am who I am and I only know

ten things about my mother but the

most important thing is I know that she

loved me very much

I am who I am and I need a little company in my life

I am who I am I am a do I am

a dog named Winn Dixie I am a dog that 

was lonely and lost and beat up

I am who I am I am a special dog

I am a special dog who becomes 

a little girls company and friend

I am what I am I am a girl.

I am a lonely girl.  I have a dog.  I have

a dad that stayed and a mom that 

ran away.

I am what I am a owner of a 

dog    A dog that looks like a piece of wet carpet

MOM

I am what I am a question asker

I ask about my mom    I ask about the hurt

I know I will be happy,

My company a preacher, a girl,

two ladies, a man, and sweetie pie Thomas,

with two bald headed boys.

I am what I am I am a friend     I am a friend

to a helpful little girl     I am a friend

that will follow you from place to place

I cannot tell you how much I love this writing. 

I hope that you are all having a great week. 

The Reds are on the Radio

Nothing beats driving home from school today and getting to listen to Marty call a game.  I love listening to baseball and having the voice of a Hall of Famer call the game only makes it that much better.  I cannot tell you how excited I am about baseball being back.

This is a new part of my classroom that I am so excited about using.  I stole this idea from Mrs. Buskirk who stole the idea from someone at Berry.  The idea of the board is to have a place to assess what the students know.  For example today after we had spent time thinking about putting the steps of how a bill becomes a law in sequence, the class had to answer a question.  The students took a post-it note and wrote the answer.  Then they brought the post-it note to the board and stuck it in their spot. The board allows me to quickly see who understood and who needs a bit more practice on the topic.  

We also used the board to share our favorite sentences from our at home reading.  This is a way to check up on the students, but I see it more as a way to check on my teaching.  If students are not understanding a concept, the board will tell me and I can reteach.  

I hope you are all having a great week.