Idaho Kids Vote Book Award year two

One of my students, Hattie, created the logo

Last summer at this time, KidsVoteAward.com was still a week away from becoming a registered domain name. I wanted to get my kids talking and sharing about the books they read and reading more complex books. The idea of having a statewide book award had been bouncing around in my head since I saw displays for Oregon Battle of the Books and ORCA (Oregon Reader's Choice Awards) at Powell's books in Portland. That led to a flurry of activity for me that started in early July as I built the aforementioned website and began reaching out to others to make the Idaho Kids Vote Book Award a reality.

One of the inspiring displays

The premise of the award was simple. Teachers would nominate outstanding middle grade books that had been published in the last few years. They would then make these books available in their classrooms and encourage students to read about them. Kids would naturally talk about the books, but teachers could set up blogs and arrange connections with other participating classrooms to get the conversations flowing beyond classroom walls. Finally, in April, kids who read two or more of the books would vote to choose a winner.

With one year of the award completed, it's time to reflect and start thinking about the next one. Things went well in my classroom. Using my classroom budget and donations, I was able to get three copies of most of the books. There was buzz around them throughout the school year (especially the winning book). Although students talked about the books, not many chose to write about them when they created blog posts.

My students contributed one-sentence review blurbs to this bulletin board.

From the feedback I received, things did not go quite as well in the other 21 classes that signed up to participate. Few teachers were able to devote funds to buy all eight books. Others said their administration and district policies were roadblocks to connecting with other classrooms outside their district. Still, four classes contributed votes for the winner and suggestions for this year's award.

In the next few weeks I'll be ramping up for the second year of the Idaho Kids Vote Book Award. I'm presenting about it (and classroom connection strategies) at the P20 Conference at College of Southern Idaho. I'm also reading possible nominees for the award and hope to publish some book reviews here. Of course, there are some questions I still need to answer: How can we get nominated books into classrooms? What could remove some of the barriers to connecting classrooms? Is there a better way to make this accessible to students?

That's a lot to think about while I also catch up on household projects, work at my summer job, and take advantage of some extra family time I don't get during the school year. If you have ideas to help this succeed, please share. And I'll keep you updated as I continue to experiment and refine...

Recent reads

Christmas break is a great time to recharge my batteries, reflect on how the first four months of the school year have gone, and re-tool for the rest of the year. This year, it was also a great opportunity to read some of the middle grade books that have generated a lot of buzz this year.

Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson

The most checked-out books in my classroom library are graphic novels, so I'm always on the lookout for good ones with well-developed characters and engaging story lines. Roller Girl did not disappoint. This story of a girl's first experience with roller derby during the summer between elementary and middle school is one of the best realistic fiction graphic novels I've encountered. I especially like how the protagonist, Astrid, demonstrates perseverance through the trials of roller derby camp. It also deals with many of the changing friendship issues that I see kids encounter as they transition to middle school.
I can think of a lot of my kids who I'd recommend this to. I have a feeling that I won't get the chance, though, because it will fly off my shelf before I can.

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley

I was intrigued by Circus Mirandus since I first saw an image of the cover almost a year ago. I've heard great things about it since, but I didn't know what to expect when I started reading it. The story follows Micah Tuttle as he sets out to find help for his dying grandfather by finding the magical circus from his grandfather's stories.
I loved the way this story showed the love between a boy and his grandfather through the stories and experiences they shared. The scenes at the circus created a nice blend between realistic fiction and fantasy. I really enjoyed reading this, but felt like there was a little unfinished business at the end of the story that left me unsatisfied. Still, this is one I will heartily recommend to students. I this is a book that could get some of my single-genre readers to broaden their horizons.

The War that Saved my Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

This book was a surprise. I just recently heard about it at #titletalk and on a couple end-of-the-year favorites lists. My public library had it in their digital check-out library, so I gave it a try. The War that Saved my Life  may be the finest young-adult historical fiction I've read. Born with a club foot, Ada has been isolated from the world by an unloving mother. When the children of London are evacuated to the countryside as the threat of German bombing raids increases, Ada is able to start a new life when she and her brother are taken in by a reclusive villager. The author uses Ada's lack of experience with the outside world as an opportunity to thoroughly explain historical concepts that will probably be unfamiliar to young readers.

As good as this was, I won't be able to add it to my classroom library. There is some strong language near the end that will keep it off my shelves. Still, it's a terrific book and I wouldn't be surprised if it won this year's Newbery Medal.

I hope to read a lot more middle grade books in the coming year. My school library recently ordered some of the other buzzed-about books from 2015, my to-read list from my classroom library is long, and there are sure to be some to add to my list in 2016. I look forward to hearing what my students and PLN recommend!

Purchases made at my links to Amazon provide me with a small compensation that I use to purchase more books for my classroom library. Although I greatly appreciate purchases made through my links, I encourage you to support a local bookstore if you have one available.

#SlowChatEd For the love of reading...

Once again, I'll be hosting #SlowChatEd Hopefully you can join us for this week's chat. (January 20-24, 2015)

Image from Personal Excellence

Reading. It's the key to much of what we do as educators. Even the subjects that aren't about "learning to read" such as Math, Science, and Physical Education still require "reading to learn." And, of course, reading isn't just about books. Reading is the key to digital learning, too. Heck, you're reading right now so you will know what is happening when you read the #SlowChatEd tweets all week.

How do we become readers? How can we encourage our students to become readers? We'll spend the week sharing titles and links to books, articles, and blog posts. Hopefully, these examples will reveal some of our personal experiences as readers and the experiences we create for students to turn them on to reading.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

After last week's Fortunately...Unfortunately chat, I want to continue the great interaction and depth the #SlowChatEd community brought to those topics. So, I challenge you to ask each other questions, reveal your answers a little at a time, and have some fun while you're learning.

There is also a special assignment this week. During last week's chat, Lindsey Lipsky reminded us about the great READ posters of days past.

@davidtedu @FarleyJeffrey Fortunately, you collect old 80's READ posters that you can put up over them. #SlowChatEd pic.twitter.com/8OtkMQ4ExL

— Lindsey Lipsky M.Ed. (@LindseyLipsky) January 13, 2015

Sometime this week, make your own READ poster or find a favorite vintage one and share it with all your #SlowChatEd friends. If you post the best one, you'll be temporarily crowned emperor of the EduTweeters. It should be a terrific week, and I look forward to learning from all of you!

Your host for the week,

-Jim Windisch

Cross-posted to slowchated.wordpress.com

Book review botheration

My students are writing a book review blog. I've been excited about this project since reading The Book Whisperer at the beginning of summer. It goes live next week, but I have a problem.

We worked together as a class to identify what a good book review looks like. We looked at professional reviews from The Horn Book and The Children's Book Review, and student-written book reviews at Reader Views Kids. But we were most impressed by the reviews from This Kid Reviews Books. Inspired by his format, my kids decided to write book reviews in two sections: a summary followed by their opinion.

Altered books by Bryan Elementary students

As the teacher, I led discussions about what made for a good book review. We read about writing book reviews and revising with a partner from the Writer's Express handbook. I wrote an example review using the format we chose as a class. I've offered suggestions on their Google Docs. Still, about a third of my students haven't written a quality book review yet. 

Some of my kids' reviews lack detail. When I push for more, they say that more detail would result in giving spoilers. Other reviews lack specifics in the opinion section and just say "it was a good book," without giving examples of the things that made it shine.

Other students have written beautiful reviews that tell just enough about the book to entice a reader. The opinions include reasons why the characters or settings were just right and comparisons to other books. Those reviews are ready to publish and represent the type of work I expect from students in an advanced learning program.

I'm struggling with where to go from here. I know that we'll post the detailed reviews this week, but not the others. This year, I've been working at building a culture of going back to review and revise work until it is top quality. I'm not allowing students to get a low grade and move on. How do I continue to support those students to develop their writing? Where do I find the balance between pushing them to improve and motivating them to write?

Please let me know if you have some ideas. I want my 4th and 5th graders' writing to shine. I know we can get there with some more time and effort. And I'll keep you updated as I continue to experiment and refine...

Inspiration from the Common Core Text Exemplars

When I first began studying the Common Core Standards, I was struck by the emphasis on text complexity. Every time I opened my book of English and Language Arts standards I paused when I came to that phrase: the one that set the expectation for students to "read and comprehend ... at the high end of the grades 4-5 text complexity band independently and proficiently."  What was a text complexity band?  How could I know if my students were reading appropriately complex text? I knew that many of the selections in the reading series I agreed to use to fidelity were not complex.  The Accelerated Reader reading levels that I labeled on all of my classroom library books didn't appear to indicate text complexity either: Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers by Dav Pilkey is the same AR reading level as Neil Gaiman's (very adult and complex) American Gods.

Then I figured out that the CCSS ELA standards had appendices. And one of these, Appendix B, has a list of text exemplars.  That was where I would find an easy answer, right?  Not exactly - it takes perseverance to figure it out.  I've heard our district reading coaches and others say that the list is not to be used as a curriculum or required book list, but I knew I would need to have my students work with a variety of texts on the list so I could understand how they interacted with complex texts.  Hopefully I could learn from that until I was able to identify appropriately complex texts on my own.  I'm not there yet, but I'm making progress.

I started the year by putting together a Springpad notebook to keep my ideas for working with the 4-5 exemplars and link to the articles and poems that were available for free online. Then I wrote a grant proposal to our local education foundation, EXCEL, to fund copies of a few of the non-fiction books on the list.  All through the school year, I have been trying out ideas with these texts. I'm finding that the complexity is a big jump from the texts I used last year. Still, it is amazing the insights my kids have as they read this material. Here are three of the things we have done:

Celebrity endorsement from Mariah Carey

Bandwagon example (and she doesn't sit on babies)

The Kid's Guide to Money by Steve Otfinoski 

We're just finishing this one up in my reading switch group. Kids have worked to make a business plan and create advertising using information from the book as a guide.  My students also did some terrific persuasive writing and had a class debate over whether kids should be allowed to have credit cards.

"Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer 

This poem had a sample performance task from the Core Standards: "Students refer to the structural elements (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) of Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” when analyzing the poem and contrasting the impact and differences of those elements to a prose summary of the poem." My students had a difficult time with the vocabulary of this poem. I found a nice text summary of the poem in this poetry unit from Pottsgrove School District in Pennsylvania. Even though they had a difficult time expressing exactly what it was that gave the poem a greater impact than the prose summary, my students had rich discussions around these texts.

“Fog” by Carl Sandburg and “Dust of Snow” by Robert Frost 

 I thought these two poems made for a nice comparison and contrast activity with my students.  Both evoke natural scenes of weather, but in very different ways.  First, I asked my students to look at the animal in each poem.  “Dust of Snow” describes the actions of a crow while “Fog” uses a cat as a metaphor for fog.  Next, students examined the rhyme and rhythm of the two poems.  After discussing, students wrote a paragraph comparing and contrasting the two poems. They noticed the metaphor in "Fog" right away and most of my students had a lot of success with this activity.

I would love to hear other ideas for working with the text exemplars list. Has anyone reached a high level of comfort in finding appropriately complex text?  Have you identified some outstanding excerpts from some of the longer texts on the list? I look forward to hearing your ideas.  And I'll keep you updated as I continue to experiment and refine...