reading

Literacy Links – Volume 103

book list, literacy links, phonics, poetry, professional resources, reading
My bulletin board of tools and ideas to accompany my Pot of Gold and Teach: From A to Zine about poetry.

At the beginning of April, I published the Pot of Gold portfolio of resources (digital one-page, bulletin board, zine, and podcast). The focus this month: POETRY! I’m not exaggerating when I say that poetry saved my sanity during the first year of the Pandemic. Usually a voracious reader, I could NOT read books. I couldn’t concentrate. I had to reread a page eight times. I eventually lost interest because it was such a frustrating experience. This was not good for me. Reading is such a big part of my identity, and I felt lost without books in my life. Determined one day, I decided to try poetry based on Jason Reynolds’s wisdom. I have lots of poems and anthologies that I’ve collected over time, so every day I would read one. Then I started reading several poems. By June, I was successfully reading novels in verse. Poetry didn’t have “pages in the form of pitbulls”. It allowed my brain to focus on the intentional words on the page and also emote beyond the worry and empathy that consumed me. If I hadn’t grabbed hold to the poetry life saver back in April 2020, I might still be struggling to keep my head above water.

testify
by Eve L. Ewing

i stand before you to say
that today i walked home
& caught the light through
the fence & it was so golden
i wanted to cry & i lifted
my right hand to say thank
you god for the sun thank
you god for a chain link fence
& all the shoes that fit into
the chain link fence so that
we might get lifted god thank
you & i just wanted to dance
& it feels good to have food
in your belly & it feels good
to be home even when home
is the space between metal
shapes & still we are golden
& a man who wore the walk
of hard grounds & lost days
came toward me in the street
& said ‘girl what a beautiful
day’ & i said yes, testify
& i walked on & from some
place a horn rose, an organ,
a voice, a chorus, here to tell
you that we are not dead
we are not dead we are not
dead we are not dead we are
not dead we are not dead
we are not dead we are not
dead
yet

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 102

coaching, literacy links, poetry, reading, writing
The final slide from my 45-minute session, “Making the Most of the BAS”

On Valentine’s Day, I led a 45-minute session of professional learning on “Making the Most of the BAS” for the K-5 teachers in my school. The BAS takes time and getting it done can feel so final and complete, but it’s really just the beginning! The amount and variety of information we learn from the assessment can be analyzed even more to fine tune instructional decisions! Analyze their miscues to see what visual information they’re using and not using to make phonics goals. Consider the Six Dimensions of Fluency from Fountas and Pinnell to choose precise teaching prompts from the Prompting Guides. Review the comprehension conversation to narrow down if they need to work on thinking within the text, beyond the text, or about the text and focus on those sections in the Continuum. When we spend time examining a student’s BAS, we’re doing strong work for ourselves AND our students!

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 101

phonics, poetry, professional resources, reading, vocabulary
World Read Aloud Day resources for my school!

February 2, 2022 is the 13th annual World Read Aloud Day! In the Before, my colleague and fellow reading enthusiast planned a day of read aloud activities. This year’s offerings are going to be a lot more passive. Our school is just coming off of a very draining week, and asking teachers to do *another* thing didn’t feel right. But I will be sharing some digital resources that teachers could add to their day at their discretion. Happy reading!

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 98

book list, language study, literacy links, reading, writing
Anchor chart/student goal sheet for readers’ workshop

This week I’m helping launch a first grade readers’ workshop, so I mined my kindergarten resources for familiar reading goals from the Super Reader unit, also known as my favorite kindergarten Reading Unit of Study. Tomorrow, the first grade readers will get a plastic sheet protector to record the number of books they want to read and which super reader power they’ll use while reading. Can’t wait to see what goals they make for themselves. I just linked to this goal sheet on the LPS ELA calendar for this unit, but HERE it is if you’re an LPS employee.

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 96

early literacy, literacy links, poetry, professional resources, racial justice, reading, writing

This summer, I’m participating in some summer work focused on Cultivating Genius by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad. Our second Zoom discussion is next week, so I’m putting together my thoughts based on the assigned reading. I love this reflection question so much: How does this lesson help students see themselves or others? I used Canva to make a visual reminder for myself (And others! Choose your OWN colors!) to guide my lesson planning. Adding this prompt to my teaching brain will bring Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s idea of mirrors and windows to my classrooms.

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 95

coaching, literacy links, professional resources, reading, writing
My Summer 2021 book stack

Reading is a huge part of my life. It’s who I am. My car has a bumper sticker that says “read”, and I have MANY reading-themed graphic tees. So I was devastated when my brain wouldn’t let me read during the pandemic. I would try and then lose track after a few sentences. Eventually, I was able to listen to audiobooks. Then, I could do graphic novels and novels in verse. It wasn’t until April 2021 that I successfully finished a chapter book. By June I’d made my list of books I wanted to read over the summer. I’m more than halfway through my book stack, and every book has been AMAZING! More significantly, it has felt like coming home to be reading again. The power of books is real.

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 94

book list, coaching, creating, professional resources, racial justice, reading
Our rainbow runway for our end-of-the-year awards ceremony. The confetti (the remains of our scrap paper bin) was simultaneously my best and worst idea of the year.
But SO worth it.

Someone once doubted my ability to find the joy in teaching, and it was a very painful comment. How could they think that? Was my joy not enough? Or were the things I thought were joyful not obvious to an observer? With my joy-fidence rattled, I decided to infuse as much obviously, outwardly joyfulness into my teaching. We sang. We danced. We created colorful art. I’m pretty sure these are all things I would’ve done anyway, but that accusation practically made it my official goal for TeachPoint. Not such a bad thing after all.

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 93

book clubs, book list, literacy links, professional resources, reading, summer, writing
My current favorite read aloud for the last day of school!

Man, I really wanted to publish Volume 100 by the end of this school year. Turns out being a full-time, *first-time* kindergarten teacher and full-time coach was too much even for an overachiever like me.

I don’t feel too bad though. I taught kids how to *read* this year (and even got them all to meet or exceed our district’s end of year benchmark ), a task I would’ve thought impossible fifteen years ago when I started teaching fifth grade. Turns out I’ve learned a lot in those fifteen years from people much smarter and more experienced than me AND I can do hard things. If I never forever endeavor, indeed.

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links – Volume 88

coaching, literacy links, math workshop, reading, writing
KV’s post box for our Connection unit in Impact Workshop (formerly known as social studies)

One of my favorite memories from my own kindergarten experience was a Valentine’s Day station rotation that imitated the process mail goes through to travel from one home to another. So when I started planning a unit on connecting with others as part of my Better Lesson coaching, I knew it would involve some kind of mail system. When my family got some new cabinets to DIY an island in our kitchen, I knew an empty box would make a perfect post office. It was kismet.

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment:

Literacy Links -Volume 86

book list, coaching, early literacy, literacy links, math workshop, reading
One of my daily slides for our week of remote learning.

For the week after Thanksgiving, our district was remote. Remote is not the end of the world, but it is very different from in-person pandemic teaching (and light years away from teaching in The Before). The structure and routines that I teach students in class don’t necessarily translate to remote teaching. One of the biggest missing elements is turn and talk, an essential element of my classroom since I believe learning floats on a sea of talk. Remote teaching ends up being uncomfortably teacher-centered. But other routines could easily work in a remote environment, like using my name sticks to call on students to avoid Zoom chaos. I feel so foolish for needing a whole week to realize this, but that’s my brain’s processing speed in The Now. Here’s to a better online learning session next time.

Here is this week’s roundup of literacy links if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, tips, and refreshment: