Tag Archives: reading

A Mini Book Review: SOL23 Day 21

Today I read the book, I’m Trying to Love Garbage by Bethany Barton to my class of first graders. We’ve read other books in the series, including I’m Trying to Love Spiders and I’m Trying to Love Math. My students LOVE these books. Somehow the author manages to hit the perfect balance of funny, gross, and information.

I’m trying to infuse a steady dose of “let’s take care of our earth” throughout the school year, striking a balance of the urgent need to pay attention to the environment with a sense of joy and possibility– that little things DO matter.

This book does a nice job of teaching about nature’s clean up crew–the scavengers, detritivores, and decomposers who break down organic matter and contrasts that with human trash that can take centuries to break down (if at all). They learned about landfills–and were appalled that we, as human, are making huge stacks of trash that will take a long time to break down.

Luckily, at our school we have students engage in trash reduction every day. They compost remains of fruits and vegetables, recycle their paper trays and other recyclable packaging, and limit trash to those things that do not fit into the other categories. We also live in a place that has banned single use plastics, making reuse ordinary.

After reading, they wrote to their parents asking how their families reduce trash–and already, many students were aware of many efforts going on at home. I know that composting and recycling is not enough to change the climate trajectory, but I know that the more we and future generations know and do, the better our chances are to improve the situation.

I love a great book. Especially one that gets kids (and adults) thinking and acting in ways that have a positive impact on the world. What wonderful book have you read to kids lately?

A Collection: SOL23 Day 12

Keeper of Wild Words: SOL23 Day 6

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Today we read The Keeper of Wild Words by Brooke Smith. My students were immediately drawn into this story about a grandma (Mimi) and her granddaughter (Brook). Mimi is worried that important “wild” words will disappear if we don’t use them, know them, write them, and care about them. Mimi and Brook have a list of wild words and set off into the outdoors near Mimi’s house to find the words (natural things) on the list. From wrens to dandelions, minnows to drakes, Mimi and Brook identify and appreciate all of the words on the list. In the author’s note at the end, Brooke Smith tells about her inspiration–an article about removing over 100 natural words from a children’s dictionary to make room for words like vandalism and MP3 player.

After we read and talked, we started our own lists of wild words. We had talked about how some people were already being keepers of wild words, noticing one of our students with the name River is keeping a wild word from disappearing. Of course, we had to add River to our list. You might not be surprised to learn that these southern California first graders were quick to add ocean and sunset to their lists of wild words. I had to add egret to my list–my students know I am obsessed with this quirky shore birds with the bright yellow feet.

These young naturalists were inclined to add general words–trees, sky, and clouds, so I encouraged them to be more specific. One student started writing phrases to capture her ideas more fully (she definitely wanted constellations on her list after some sky gazing over the weekend with her family).

Words matter and paying attention to wild words is another way of focusing attention on our natural world. Appreciate for and knowledge of nature and our environment is essential. I’m hopeful that the next generation will reclaim wild knowledge as they work to regenerate the resources that are on the verge of disappearing, just like the wild words Brooke Smith brought to our attention.

Mini Book Review: SOL22 Day 8

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I’ve been reading quite a bit lately…so this must be the perfect time for a mini book review!

I recently finished Daniel Pink’s new book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. As someone who is a huge proponent of reflection–for students, for teachers, and humans of any kind, Pink’s conclusions didn’t surprise me.

Without giving away anything, here’s a few highlights:

There are benefits of regret–improving decisions, boosting performance, and deepening meaning. If feeling is for thinking, and thinking is for doing, then feeling can help us think…and then take action.

There are 4 general categories of regret: Foundation regrets (decisions that have to do with stability), Boldness regrets (chances you didn’t take in life), Moral regrets (choices that compromise our beliefs or when we behave poorly), and Connection regrets (relationships with people). These categories can blur and overlap, but Pink argues that regrets fall into these 4 general categories.

I loved the opening to chapter 11 where there is a comparison between regret and photography. (The old-fashioned version of photography where film and negatives are in play.) Pink talks about how on a film negative, the light spots appear dark and the dark spots light. He then goes on to say, “The four core regrets operate as a photographic negative of a good life. If we know what people regret the most, we can reverse that image to reveal what they value the most. (p.149)

There are strategies for using regret to move forward positively. One metaphor I enjoyed was the description of self-distancing which, “…changes your role from scuba diver to oceanographer, from swimming in the murky depths of regret to piloting above the water to examine its shape and shoreline.” (p.178)

And Pink connects regret to storytelling. He says, “Open the hood of regret, and you’ll see that the engine powering it is storytelling. Our very ability to experience regret depends on our imagination’s capacity to travel backward in time, rewrite events, and fashion a happier ending than in the original draft. Our capacity to respond to regret, to mobilize it for good, depends on our narrative skills–disclosing the tale, analyzing its components, and crafting and recrafting the next chapter.” (p.208)

While the book is not earth shattering in its revelations, it is interesting and reads in a pretty typical Daniel Pink way. I personally like the connections to the power of reflection–and the way it refutes the idea of a “no regrets” approach to life.

What are you reading? I’d love to hear your recommendations!

Thinking about Data: SOLC #18

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Have you ever had the experience where you read a post on social media and it sends you down a rabbit hole of further exploration, thinking, and wanting to tell everyone you come across about what you found?

Laurie over at the San Marcos Writing Project Facebook page does an amazing job of posting current blog posts and articles related to education, writing, and connections among and beyond. It’s like an article-at-a-glance from so many different sources. I’m not really sure how she does it, but I totally appreciate her curation of relevant information. Every once in a while, one of the articles shared catches my attention and I find myself going into a deep, satisfying swan dive.

The title, The Trouble with Data, immediately got my attention today. In the piece, the blogger talks about data related to the COVID pandemic–the lack of it, the problems with it–based on a science article in the Atlantic–and then extrapolates it to education.

The three points, in both the Atlantic article and in the blog post, resonated with me and my own experiences with folks who value data (meaning numbers) over all other ways of knowing. The argument these data people always want to make is that data is objective, other ways of knowing are subjective. (Meaning, objective=good, subjective=bad)

Now, please be assured, I am not anti-data or anti-science. I simply always want to know where the numbers came from, how they are gathered, who made the decisions, and about decisions made about how they are displayed and explained. I’ve spent plenty of time in conversations with colleagues explaining that in these seemingly objective testing scenarios, the subjectivity can be found in the decisions made prior to giving the test–in the development of content, format, who is tested, etc.

The three points that I keep thinking about are:

1. All data are created; data never simply exist

2. Data are a photograph, not a window.

3. Data are just another type of information.

When I think about the ways testing data is used to describe our students, the ways it constrains teaching and learning with a huge emphasis on test prep and tremendous time spent away from teaching and learning that is instead spent on the testing process, and the ways what teachers and families know about students is diminished as irrelevant compared to those “snapshots,” I keep going back to my questions about where the data comes from. I encourage you to read and think about data and the ways it is presented–often without context, background, and transparency.

And one more tidbit–this one about some “learning loss” numbers being thrown out into our educational mix. Check out this article from Forbes about where the number–57 days of learning lost during the pandemic–came from.

A quote shared in the Atlantic article to chew on:

Data-driven thinking isn’t necessarily more accurate than other forms of reasoning, and if you do not understand how data are made, their seams and scars, they might even be more likely to mislead you.

My mind is swirling with so many thoughts. I might need a conversation group to talk through some of this!

About Writing: SOLC #13

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One of the things I like best about the Slice of Life Challenge is the way that the expectation of daily writing gets me thinking about what I will write each day. Something will catch my eye and I will find myself writing in my head, thinking about how to frame what I have to say.

Some days the writing comes fairly easily and I know generally where I am going with the writing. That is especially true when I’ve taken a photo that I know will guide my writing direction. Other days the writing is a struggle and I flounder around, flipping and flopping, grabbing onto this topic and that, finding it hard to land on what I want to say.

I’ve bounced from topic to topic today. I could write about interviewing an amazing group of teachers this morning for our upcoming Invitational Summer Institute. I love the way that this “work” is so energizing. There is nothing like teachers talking about what drives their instructional choices and clearly seeing their passion for students and their well-being to fill me with hope and possibility.

I thought about writing about two separate essays I read this week that serendipitously landed in my feed on consecutive days. One is an essay by Ann Patchett called How to Practice about downsizing belongings so that someone else will not have to do it after your death. This is an amazing piece weaving stories of belongings, why she has them and why she no longer needs them and the guilt that comes with getting rid of something that is still useful. The other called Marie Kondo and the Privilege of Clutter is about groups of people, particularly refugees and those immigrating because of war and danger, who do not have the luxury of having items passed down for generations, of accumulation from childhood and how that shapes their view of belongings. My mind has swirled since reading these earlier this week–thinking about the different roles that belongings play in different phases of my life and why it is so hard to let go of some things, even when they have outlived their usefulness for me.

And now I am thinking about which of these articles is a mirror for me, reflecting my experiences and which may be a window into another way of thinking. Or maybe I’m just stretching for an excuse to include this photo from today’s walk of the clouds reflected on the shiny surface of the sand.

SOLC Day 17: What Are You Reading?

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What are you reading these days? I was going strong with my personal reading as 2019 came to an end…and then came 2020 and my reading hit the breaks! According to my Goodreads account, I’ve completed only 6 books this year!!! (That does not count all the books I read to students, the amazing blog posts I read daily, the countless articles about coronavirus, professional articles garnered through Twitter and Facebook…)

I just finished The Paris Wife, a novel based on Ernest Hemingway’s first (of 4!) wife. It was okay, but not amazing. A better book I read recently was How to be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery. The frame was interesting and I loved thinking about the ways an octopus, dogs, chickens, and even ostriches contributed to the “good creature” Sy developed into through her interactions with these animals. When We Believed in Mermaids was light and quick, not entirely believable, but enjoyable. I read Where the Crawdads Sing when it first came out–loved it–and find it hard to top. The new Malcolm Gladwell book Talking to Strangers was completed at the end of September. I’ve read, but I don’t seem to be reading now.

I feel like I’m struggling to find that book–you know, the one that pulls you in and offers you escape. Not the one that feels like going up endless flights of stairs that end in nowhere.

So…what are your favorite books to read lately? The ones you read as the adult you, the books to escape, not to recommend to your students. What are you finding compelling? (Not necessarily “high brow” or make-you-a-better-person reading.) I’m hoping to crowd source a list to keep me going over the next several months–and I’m determined to get myself back on track with my personal reading.

I need you guys…start suggesting!

Wordless Books and the Power of Words

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Yesterday we embarked on a study of graphic novels in our classroom by reading Owly and Wormy Friends All Aflutter by Andy Runton.

This picture book is a nice entry into the world of graphic novels for our young students–even though it may not technically fit into the definition of graphic novel.

Our students aren’t new to reading wordless books, last year we delighted in the wordless books of Flashilight and Inside Outside by Lizi Boyd (you can read about these adventures in a post by my teaching partner here).

So there were no surprises yesterday when we began to read about Owly and Wormy. Our older students were eager to “read” as we turned pages under the document camera, and it wasn’t long before our young students began to join in, volunteering their own readings.

Wordless books, and particularly those with a graphic format, allow confident readers to emerge–even if they are still struggling with decoding print. Our students showed off their wealth of symbolic knowledge–recognizing that a four leaf clover in a speech bubble is a message of good luck and that a light bulb represents a new idea.

Imagine my delight when one of our first grade boys raised his hand…with two things to share. He quickly pointed out that this book was filled with verbs. You might wonder what he was thinking…this is a wordless book. But I knew that we had been working with vivacious verbs last week, using George Ella Lyon’s All the Water in the World and Thomas Locker’s Water Dance as mentor texts for this year’s first attempt at poetry. As I asked this student about the verbs in the book, he pointed out that Owly and Wormy were reading, sleeping, planting… It was obvious that he understands verbs! (And I wish I had recorded the actual verbs he pointed out…they were better than my memory!) I don’t remember the second thing he shared–it was relevant–but not as exciting as his noticing of verbs in a wordless book!

We’ll continue our study of graphic novels, focusing on the features as we connect back to Owly and Wormy and also to Julia’s House for Lost Creatures by Ben Hatke (a hybrid graphic novel/picture book that we read the first week of school to talk about what we needed to do to get along as a community).

And we’ll take our study further as we explore Hatke’s latest graphic novel, The Little Robot as a class read aloud.

The more I read wordless books and graphic novels, the more I am intrigued by the power of images and the resulting power of words that my students bring to our conversations about these rich, complex, and layered books.

What are your favorite wordless books and graphic novels to use with students? For yourself?

Ordinary

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Today, out of necessity, I had to scrap a plan and invent another without notice. For teachers, this is something that happens with some regularity and most of us pride ourselves on our flexibility. And I love it when that spontaneous plan blossoms into a wonderful learning moment.

We always have picture books at the ready to read to our class. Some are set aside for specific purposes and lessons, others we know we want to read but are waiting for the perfect time to present itself. Last year we read Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal–a book that our students loved. We revisited it a number of times throughout the school year for different purposes…from mentor sentences to a situation for opinion writing.

At the end of the year, I came across a new book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Exclamation Point. So today, in that moment when I needed a plan at a moment’s notice, I picked up Exclamation Point, reminded my returning students (two thirds of them) that this was the author of Spoon, and started to read. I love those moments when each student’s attention is fully engaged…and they were hooked by the bright yellow cover and the whimsical smiling exclamation point. They noticed right away that there wasn’t a title…at least not written in words. The exclamation point itself stood as the title.

We read and discussed and noticed and connected all the way through the book. We delighted in the words and the pictures and the message. And we were inspired to write our own stories about punctuation.

And then later in the day we managed to get packed up and ready to go home with enough time for a book before the dismissal bell. Overwhelmingly, students wanted me to read Spoon. It was sitting near Exclamation Point…and suddenly today became the day for a mini author study. The second and third graders were treated to an old friend, and the first graders were anxious to get acquainted!

After reading, students volunteered their observations, connections, reactions, reflections. They had so many thoughtful comments and ideas for their own writing. And one student pointed out that Amy Krouse Rosenthal wrote about ordinary things…in wonderful ways. We started thinking about all the ordinary things we might write about and how our writing could transform them beyond the ordinary. They were excited to write as the dismissal bell rang today…I hope they sustain that excitement long enough to actually get to the writing.

I’ve also been noticing the power of the ordinary. Yesterday’s post was about the transformation of an ordinary photo into something I was willing to name as art. And today on five minute friday the prompt is ordinary. Today in the classroom the ordinary business of reading a book because an extraordinary opportunity to notice the magic of writers and writing…and turned students into active learners making meaning for themselves. Today I was reminded that ordinary is a state of mind, and each of us has the power to re-look and re-see the ordinary in new ways. I love when that wonderful learning moment in the classroom means that I learn too!

Thinking Through My Lens