Category Archives: reading

What to Read Next???

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I find it harder and harder to keep up with finding, reading/reviewing and buying new books for our Library collection. The number of books for YA have grown each year and I just don’t find the time to keep up. (I am still about 6 months behind is reading Booklist – a magazine book buyer/reader advisory publication)

So when I saw another Librarian posted the question? “How do you keep up-to-date on the best and trending children’s and teen books?” to a Library Listserv I was interested to see the results – and oh there were many.


Some go traditional and use print media (also available digitally) targeted at Librarians and Booksellers: The Horn Book, School Library Journal, Booklist, Bookmarks, Gale/Cengage, Salem Press, Greenhaven, Lerner or Cavendish Square


Use digital media targeted at Librarians and Booksellers:
 Netgalley, Edelweiss, Titlewave, Kirkus reviews, Junior Library Guild


Some use publisher’s lists, print or digital media targeted at the everyday reader:
NY TImes Books, NPR, Paste Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly newsletters, 
NYTimes book supplement, and Indie Next list.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgtorOQ4j79YmD-Rggl04XlLetU9M_c37


Some use the blogs and listservs written by Librarians or Library groups:
VOYA
YALSAHub http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/
yalsa-bk https://lists.ala.org/sympa/info/yalsa-bk


And then there are those who are just passionate about books and reading and want to tell the whole world through :

Edi Campbell’s blog https://crazyquiltedi.blog/
Lee & Low, #weneeddiversebooks https://www.leeandlow.com/
Bookish
Rich in Color
BookRiot
2020 YA/MG Books with POC Leads https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/124900.2020_YA_MG_Books_With_POC_Leads
We Need Diverse Books
The Brown Bookshelf
American Indians in Children’s Literature
Reading While White (on this blog, there is a list in the right-hand column of “Kindred Spirits”–other blogs with a similar purpose)
Pinterest lists


And some have time to keep lists that they share with others:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12-HyFGc5xQB7yigy0J8L1RVnh9jvWm02L27FpLhpaW4/edit#gid=744337181


Personally, I just can’t keep up with it – sad to say that I bought one of these books a couple years ago (after hearing Michael Cart speak at a conference) and I still haven’t finished it, and it’s only 105 pages!



When I was in Library school I was reading 4-5 Young Adults books a week minimum, now I am lucky to finish 1 book a week – where has all my time gone! I am like our students, I took a stack of books home over Christmas break and they are still there – unread in a pile in my living room – and then feeling guilty that I am keeping them from someone else reading them. So now my goal is to spend 30 minutes each day reading one of my advisory magazines, books or blogs and hoping that I can get back into a daily routine of staying just a little up to date on what is going on in bookland. 

When the Magic Happens.

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I love experiencing magic, as I imagine most everyone does.  Today I experienced the magic that sometimes happens when reading.   A character entered my life. I know him now.  Isn’t that amazing?  If this isn’t magic I don’t know what is.

The book I am reading is The Lost Children Archive by Valerie Luiselli  This book was on a lot of Best Books of 2019, and I thought I would enjoy it.  The book is complex and the story is tough and those lists were right – it is very good.

What I want to describe is what happened to me today about 1/2 the way through.  I realized I know the boy (the boy’s name hasn’t been revealed yet).  I feel for him; I am worried about this decision he just made, but not surprised; I think he is smart and nice.   I like him a lot and know I will think about him in the future. He is real.  The author chose words and wrote sentences that led me here.  She structured the story, the chapters, the characters so I  could come to know the boy.  She researched history, geography, music, literature and graced that knowledge to me.  I am so grateful to her.

This book is amazingly well written and has lots to explore.  The author’s use of the family as unnamed characters,  a  description of sounds that help define moods, lists that are essential reading, repeated stories of Geronimo, a journey without an intended ending, a family in an unsettling time, a hard look at immigration; these all intrigue me.  But what has delighted me is the reality of the boy for me.   This is why I read.  This is what I hope for all readers.

Processing Content

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How’s that for a catchy title? It’s about as exciting as discovering that most of your students did not read the assigned reading or watch the assigned video. The remedy might be to assign outlining or note taking. Maybe give a quiz! How about doing a reflection? Even after all of these are you still getting blank stares instead of a great discussion?

Recently, I had my students in four classes read or listen to a chapter in the book, “The Half Has Never Been Told.” They were required to take “prolific” notes. I broke the reading down into three parts that were due during three consecutive days.

Now for the good part. Instead of having a discussion, I had a contest following each day of reading. I would read a question aloud. Teammates (I have five to six teams in each class) were given a few minutes to discuss their notes and come up with a good answer to the question. The first answer was determined by “Popsicle Sticks”, an app that randomly selects students. When you select the one student at a time option, the app even says their name aloud. That got everyone’s attention because no one knew who would go first. After the first answer, team reporters were allowed to either dispute the answer or add to the answer. For every answer given by a teammate, the team was given a point. I included about five or six questions for each contest. At the end I announced the team standings.

I noticed that most everyone was really engaged. The engagement improved each day over the three days. On the first day someone always asked about how this contest would be graded. It told them we were doing the contest to experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. No grades would be given. Everyone seemed to be perfectly happy with this. On day two and three the contests were met with anticipation.

One great outcome was that students were really thinking about how they could add value to the previous answer. Many ideas were suggested, most expanding on the previous answers. We were having a good discussion in the form of a contest.

Many students mentioned the contests in their “Friday Feedback” assignments. Many commented on how the discussions helped them understand the material much better. They thought it was a great way to use their notes. They enjoyed the contests and asked to do more of them. They were not too thrilled about the “Popsicle Sticks” random name selection but agreed that it helped keep everyone engaged. Overall, the comments were overwhelmingly positive. This one is a winner! I will be doing it again.

Can we talk about reading?

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Can we talk about reading?

I’ve been thinking about what it means to teach reading a lot this year. With one quarter of our current freshman students scoring under 50 percent on the reading section of the HSPT, reading should be something we’re all thinking about.

I just finished The Book in Question: How and Why Reading is in Crisis (Heinemann, 2018) by Carol Jago. The premise of the book is that research shows that students are arriving at college underprepared for coursework. Jago argues that students struggle because they are afraid of complex text — they just don’t have the stamina or perseverance for the material. There is a direct correlation, she asserts, between students’ inadequate reading skills and their struggle to express themselves.

Jago’s book is a call for middle and high school teachers to do something about it. Her main audience is English teachers. She asserts that what and how much students read matters. Students need challenging texts to stay engaged. They are “intellectually starved,” she writes, and well-intentioned teachers often counterproductively address student disengagement by choosing shorter, “easy” books or having them learn content through videos. Complex written texts are needed to build the stamina and confidence students are often lacking.

Jago champions the work of the English teacher in educating the populace through literature. Let me stop and give myself a pat on the back. 🙂 She also writes that most teachers, English teachers included, aren’t actually reading experts and that it is a problem to say that if students can read Hamlet, they can read anything (i.e. a college Chemistry textbook). She argues all teachers should teach reading in their content areas, spotlighting research  that shows teaching generic reading strategies for all of the disciplines does not actually improve students’ ability to read.

And so I’m wondering, Carondelet colleagues: How well do you think your students read? Do you see yourself as a teacher of reading? What does teaching “complex text” mean to you? Do you see reading as a critical skill in our increasingly visual/multimedia-saturated culture? How do you reconcile the benefit of reading volume with student workload/stress? How much reading do you assign? What kinds of questions are you asking about reading?

Reading and Connections or What YOU do!

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I recently read an interesting book, The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson.  It is the story of the theft of bird skins from a Natural History Museum. The birds were stolen because of the value of the feathers in salmon fish fly tying. The skins themselves have a fascinating history, connecting Alfred Russel Wallace with Darwin  and the deep interest in scientific inquiry in the 1800s. The author weaves together many stories, characters, environments, and historical eras. 

As I was reading it I was thinking about how much I was learning and also how this learning was affecting my understanding of what I had read before.  I made this mind map on Inspiration Maps for my amusement, connecting books I had read previously and listing how my perception of what I had learned from those books shifted slightly from the knowledge I gained from this book. Those deepened understandings are visually represented on this map by those ivory rectangles. I like to imagine my brain with these fired synapses.

What is super delightful is how this mind map can extend on and on. Books I read so long ago some of you weren’t alive get resurrected in my mind by new bits of information from this book. I ponder how learning happens, and I think it might be  like this. Information retrieval and deepening thought. You, dear readers, you are as skilled in this as is this author.  You shift and deepen understanding for our students.

Teaching angst subsides with a new approach

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            Part One: The Problem.
            Toward the end of last year, I was
missing some of the thoughtfulness that my credentialing program had infused
into my teaching. I craved a more intentional approach and some backwards
planning. Not only that, I didn’t get a sense that my students were engaged in
reading and writing as much as I’d hoped. I think English teachers in general try
to solve the problem of students who “fake read.” (It hurts when students don’t
LOVE books the way we do!) English teachers also regularly reevaluate how to
teach writing effectively.
            Time is a factor. Most teachers
would agree that students simply need to read more and write more, but that we don’t have unlimited time to
read in class or to collect and grade a constant flow of material if we want to
give meaningful feedback.  We also find
that once there is a letter grade on an essay, written feedback is not as relevant
to the student; therefore, it is not as effective. Ideally, students should
receive feedback on multiple drafts before they receive a final grade. (Some educators
argue that the process ought to count for part of the grade because isn’t
process more important than product?)
            I used to be an editor, and I came
to grading essays with an editor’s mindset. I thought it was my duty to circle
every single mistake. Of course, now I know how demoralizing it can be for a
student to work hard on articulating her ideas, only to have them thrown back
at her, all torn apart. But with each year of teaching experience, I’ve noticed
that I feel far more energized and effective when I meet with students on an
individual level. I’ve also noticed that the most effective time to meet with
them is not when they are “finished” (can you ever be finished with an essay
you’ve had less than two weeks to write?).
            Rather, if I conference when their
ideas are in development, I can help them find their passion on the topic. And,
when they feel strongly about their thesis, they will take more care with their
craft. A little further along into the drafting phase, if I have time to meet
with students again, I can convey customized grammar lessons, pass on
compliments, encourage engagement, and have a conversation about writing. I think it’s a more positive experience all around.
            Last year I felt stuck in a loop of
collecting essays, spending inordinate amounts of time marking them up, and
dreading the next stack of hollow arguments, especially when errors were
repeated. I tried grading on Turnitin.com to see if I could go faster and offer
more pointed feedback. I tried various rubrics and checklists. I tried asking
students to process my feedback and reflect on it. I tried giving them revision
opportunities. Still, I found myself crunched and wishing that the whole thing
seemed less chore-like (for both me and my students). Even more critically, I
found students wanted me to do the thinking for them: All they had to do was
implement my edits and receive a better grade.
            Then, I saw an advertisement for a
new book. It’s called 180 Days: Two
Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher
and Penny Kittle (Heinemann). The
book is part creed (the authors make a case for ten “we believe” statements
about teaching and learning), part detailed description of how they structure
their year around those core beliefs. The authors’ philosophy resonated with me,
and its practical, organized approach to planning curriculum with the purpose
of creating engaged readers and writers, spoke to my angst and need for
direction.
            I read it—and annotated it!—over the
summer, and what resulted was a major overhaul to several of my approaches. I plan
to blog about my changed approach as the school year progresses, both my successes
and challenges. Stay tuned.

             

Critical Thinking and Reading: ‘Big History’ Skills for all Disciplines

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I’ve completed half of the Big History Project online professional development and want to share some of my initial thoughts. While this post might not be of value to the English and Social Studies teachers who will be completing the P.D., I thought it might be of interest to others who want to get a better sense of the skills the course emphasizes. These skills certainly transcend any single discipline.

(1) Critical Thinking: Big History emphasizes critical thinking as a skill. The course explicitly teaches critical thinking through the routine of “claim testing.” In Big History, claim testing means examining an idea in four different areas that challenge students to consider four different questions:

      • intuition: Does the claim jive with your intuition?
      • authority: Does the claim come from a trusted source?
      • evidence: Does the claim come with data points to back it up?
      • logic: Does the claim follow a clear line of reasoning?

The course starts by having students apply claim testing to readings. Then, they practice with debates. The idea is that as the practice of claim testing becomes more familiar to students, they naturally apply it to class discussions and writing.

(2) Reading: Big History embraces three different approaches to teaching reading:

      • leveled readings: In partnership with Newsela, the course readings are provided at a variety of reading levels so that students at all levels have access to the big ideas. I love this embedded differentiation!
      • three close reads: On the first reading, students read for the “gist” and make a prediction. On the second read, the students read for key facts and main ideas. On the third read, students “think bigger” and are asked to connect the text to a broader concept.
      • video as text: The course treats video as text to be “read.” I love this mindset as it encourages active learning in activity often viewed by our culture as passive.
I love the differentiated texts and “close reading” approach Big History champions. While I do not believe all texts should be ‘close read’ or necessarily close read in this way, I think the three-part close reading method lends itself nicely to a variety of short non-fiction texts with the goal of increasing reading comprehension and making meaning.

As we re-write our curricula, I think it is important for us to be mindful of the academic language and we use as teachers. Using common language, as appropriate, will only increase the likelihood students will transfer skills and ideas from course to course. #claimtesting #threeclosereads #videoastext
The second half of the professional development will focus on writing… more to come.

In Praise of Nonfiction Books

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Our colleague Tiz won a prize at our Christmas party. She could pick any book in our library as her own. This week Tiz chose a book I love – Meta Maus by Art Spiegelman. I cannot explain better than the New York Times Book Review why this is such a good book , “Richly rewarding…The book also serves as a master class on the making and reading of comics”. I was so happy when Tiz choose this and pondered a bit why I was so happy. Part of the reason is I love nonfiction books. I have learned more from nonfiction books than anything else in my life. For me, and I believe for many, they are the best choice as a learning tool. And they offer me learning on my own time, schedule, interests, needs and wants.

Synthesizing information takes a lot of time, and a well-written book allows me to grasp a lot of information quickly and succinctly. I learned much about memory from MoonWalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, without having to do all that research myself! Really, it is amazing when you think about what a well-written book pulls together for you. I learned about memory, the brain, visualization, storytelling, memorizing, and about something I didn’t even know existed,  the U.S. Memory Championship.

A good book can ignite a passion to search for more. The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum did that for me with Shakespeare. Before I read this book, I just could not agree with the crowning of Shakespeare as the literary king of English. “C’mon!” I would think, “it has been 400 years!” The Shakespeare Wars is about people with a passion for Shakespeare and a willingness to go into excruciating detail with and battle for his works.  By reading their debates, and experiencing their passion, I became more and more convinced of the top spot for Shakespeare.  The variations of O in the folios of Hamlet and the difference they make just astonishes me.  I had never paid any attention to the folio differences and was mesmerized by this knowledge.   This book opened up Shakespeare for me.


Books let you explore at your own pace, and in the context of your own needs.  I recently visited Boston and my daughter took me to a wonderful breakfast sandwich place, Mike and Patty’s.  This is located a block away from a Knox Street, and I asked my daughter if Knox Street was named after Henry Knox, a hero of the American Revolution, who organized a difficult transfer of cannon from upstate New York Fort Ticonderoga to Boston.  This extra artillery was key to the end of the Siege of Boston, and I would not be at all surprised if Knox was celebrated by Boston. I knew all this from having read 1776 by David McCullough and was able to pull down the appropriate chapter from my Audible account to confirm this information.  I don’t know if Boston’s Knox street is named after him, but Fort Knox is.

Michelle is working on creating a Joy of Reading in every section of the library.  Books are so important and have everything the educational buzz is all about- putting the path of learning in the reader’s hand. 

Art and Literature in Real Life

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Art and Literature in Real Life

Kate and I collaborated on English I outside reading during the Fall Semester–Book Folder Reports.
As part of the assignment students created a marketing tool for each book they read–this was a colored folder that was decorated with cover art and included information on the book characters, plot and read-alikes.
For the cover art, students could print out or reproduce the cover on the book they read or they could create their own unique cover.
One student, Eunice Casa, was really attracted to this aspect of the assignment and came up with a unique cover for the book: Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zapia.
Original Bookcover
Even better than that, after the assignment was completed, Eunice continued to work on her art and eventually came up with a new version which she posted to Instagram (tagging the author).
Eunice with her Book Folder Project and the revised artwork post on Instagram.
Last week, Eunice came bouncing into the library with Kate to tell us that the author had seen her post and commented how much she “loved it”. This week Eunice came bouncing in again to tell us that the author had even re-posted Eunice’s artwork on her own account.
This intersection of art, literature and real life really made this student come alive this is why we do what we do. To have our students come alive–to further their studies on their own after being sparked by something in our classrooms.