So this was an extremely busy weekend. My little sister from my sorority got married! I wish I had actually gotten some pictures this weekend, but somehow I didn't seem to have my phone with me. Thankfully I was in the bridal party, so I'll have some great pictures soon. Now that I feel a bit more like myself (there was a lot of sleep and recovery that needed to happen) it's time to link up for Monday Made It!
On Sunday, I had to recover from the long days before and I conveniently received The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller in the mail. I was exhausted and planned to read a chapter or two and then take a nap, but I couldn't put it down! I read the entire thing on the spot, what a great read. It definitely inspired me to look at how I was teaching reading. I immediately got on Amazon and ordered Reading in the Wild. Thanks to Amazon Prime, anything that I had planned to accomplish tomorrow will no longer happen since I will be spending the whole evening reading. This year, I plan to do the 40 book challenge with my students. I had read about it on a few other people's blogs, but now after reading about it I know that it is my plan this summer. This challenge inspired my Monday Made It for the week!
I had talked to a colleague in another building about doing the 40 book challenge with her class and our classes keeping in touch. If you don't know about the challenge, students are required to read 40 books during the school year that come from different genres. Students will track their books as they read throughout the year and will complete the different genres. I want to do as much celebrating as possible with this, so I plan to have a display in my hallway with each of my students names, a place for them to share what they are currently reading, and a place for their badges. Each time they complete the number of books for a genre, I will give them their badge to hang outside. You could also use them on their notebooks. Click on over to my TPT store to grab the freebie here!
Our school does not have a color printer, so although I plan to print them in color, I did not want to have badges that were too heavy on the color since I will be the one printing them all.
My colleague and I also talked about how we want our students from our separate schools to share book recommendations with each other. We will be using Padlet with our classes. Have you heard of it? If not, stop on by the blog tomorrow to check out my Tech Tuesday on using it! It's so easy and you are going to LOVE it!
Tomorrow also starts a three day math professional development for me on the Expressions series. Does anyone use it? Thoughts?
I love the idea of a 40 book challenge! I am an avid reader so I want my students to also love reading, but they have trouble choosing books which interest them. This definitely sounds motivating and inspires them to read all sorts of different books.
ReplyDeleteJen
Endeavors in Education
I agree Jen! Have you read The Book Whisperer yet? It goes into so much more detail. She talks about the two different "surveys" she uses at the beginning of the year to get to know them and how she pulls books for suggestions. I'll definitely be figuring out how to incorporate it into my room this year. Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteI love The Book Whisperer - definitely one of my favorite teaching books! I am trying to decide how to incorporate it in my classroom...I like the idea of communicating with another class to stay motivated on the challenge.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree! I think that it will definitely help my students stay motivated. Weren't you just amazed with the statistics she mentioned with her 62 students, WOW! Thanks again for stopping by!
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