I Am From

Do you want to watch something amazing? Watch the US Open right now (or at least when I am writing this). There is a fifteen year old American girl playing. Fifteen. I cannot imagine being on ESPN and in front of thousands people playing tennis when I was fifteen. Young people can do amazing things. We saw this in class today when we asked the class to write I Am From poems.

I first heard about I Am From poems when I was getting my master's degree with the Ohio Writing Project. The lesson involves looking at the poem "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon. Then you create a poem that talks about where you are from.

We shared this poem with the class today but Ms. Cavallaro and myself also shared our I Am From poems.  Here is the one that Ms. Cavallaro shared with the class:

I Am From

I am from two homes but loving them the same

time spent at Moms and time spent at Dads

I am from two Thanksgiving dinners and two Christmas Days

two birthdays and double the presents

I am from a family of animal lovers

From moms cat obsession to dads dogs-are-a-mans-best-friend

I am from piercing meows

of Tee, Elbee & Casey begging for another treat

I am from leash pulling lengthy walks with Hershey & Smokey

looking for any chance to cool off in the pond

I am from growing up playing outside

making tree houses, catching fireflies

neighborhood tag and 25 cent lemonade stands

I am from muddy and worn out cleats

grass staining my socks and shirts

I am from soccer and lacrosse practice and games

loud cheers from the sidelines

the anticipation of what would happen next

I am from matching colors and outfits

shoes, socks, dresses, pink hair bow and all

I am from the constant questions

are you Krissy or are you Kelley?

she is my twin sister

but also my best friend

It is amazing. Here is my I Am From poem that we also shared with the class:

I am From

I am from the dirt of a thousand ball fields

The sun stained asphalt of tennis court after tennis court

I am from the chlorine of countless swimming pools

The grass stains of all the soccer parks

I am from city after city

state after state

country after country

finally settling down to find a home

I am from a teacher

and a pilot,

I'm from the plains of Oklahoma mixed

with the sun of Florida

I am from a pair made for

each other

I am from a mother who taught

who always had the food on the table

who woke before the sun to get me to morning practice

I am from a father who never

missed a point, a game, a set, a match

who always made the time

in the middle of a busy schedule

I am from the streets of the suburbs

flash-light tag, bikes with baseball cards in the spokes and backyard football

I am from the heart of it all

the Icky Shuffle, the wire to wire Reds, and hit number 4,192

I am from a house of quiet

but always surrounded with love

I am from the shade of the Black Oak

with a view where the Deer Run

As we were looking at the two poems we asked the class to do two different tasks. First they had to figure out which poem belonged to which teacher. The class did an excellent job of figuring it out. I was more impressed how they were able to go back into the poems and find multiple pieces of evidence to support their claim that the poem belonged to that teacher. Second we asked them to tell us what they noticed. A question that we seem to ask a lot...what do you notice? The class was quickly able to tell us what we had done to create our poems.

Then we let the class write and the results were amazing. Students told us all about where they are from. What makes them who they are right now. I hope you get a chance to read these poems. They are in the writer's notebooks and a lot of them will give you chills.

Our students our amazing authors and when you give them a chance to write they will amaze you.

I hope you are all having a great week.

What we are Reading?

Tonight is one of those nights where I am not sure what I want to write. I decided it might be a perfect night to let you know about some of the things we have been reading.

The book I am most excited about is Half a Chance by Cynthia Lord. This book is really starting to pick up pace. Lucy's father has left town for work, and Lucy is still working on finding her place in her new home. Each day a friendship seems to be growing between Lucy and Nate the summer next door neighbor.

The two keep searching for photos they can take as part of a photo scavenger hunt. This is the same photo scavenger hunt that we are asking the class to try on their own. I love everything about this book so far. Lord is a master at describing setting.  Each day I find a passage that makes you want to travel to New Hampshire and find the lake setting she is describing. I also love how Lord has brought text messaging into this book. I have not really read a book that has shown this modern form of communication. Lucy is using texts to communicate with her father while she is a way for work and to communicate with her new friend.

This week we have also read two books by the amazing Patricia Polacco.  The first book we read was My Rotten Red Headed Older Brother and then we read Babushka's Doll. Ms. Cavallaro used these books to model how she makes text-to-self connections and text-to-text connections as she reads.

Polacco is a favorite of almost every fourth grade teacher. We will continue to share her books throughout this year. 

We also have read two articles from one of my favorite websites Newsela.  This website is amazing for finding great nonfiction articles. Plus each article on the page can be found at different Lexile levels. This can allow me to print out an article about the same idea on four or five different Lexile levels. The first article that we read this week was about Buddy Baseball and today we read about Google's driverless cars. 

Yesterday was also an amazing book release day. Two books that I am especially excited about that debuted on shelves are Quest by Aaron Becker and The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm. Both these books may be in the running for a Caldecott and Newbery Medal. If you are looking for a great read, try to find these books I do not think they will disappoint.  

Happy Reading!!

Heart Map

Today we continued to work on the idea of where do authors get their ideas. Coming up with an idea can be the toughest thing to do when you sit down and write. I know some nights I start and restart and then restart when I am writing this blog. The main reason...I do not know what I want to write. The more we can help the authors in our room find ideas the more they will write.

The trick we tried today to help find ideas was a heart map. A heart map is just a giant heart that we cut out and paste into our writer's notebook. Then we filled the heart with all the things we care about deeply.  In the front of the room Ms. Cavallaro and myself modeled what we would put on our heart map. In the center of my heart I put my children and my wife.  I started to add other members of my family to the map. As the class saw the things that we were adding to our maps, they started to add ideas to their maps.  We would stop from time to time and students would share what they were putting on their map. Their ideas would lead to more ideas on our map and the lesson went on and on as we all filled out hearts with people, places, memories, and so much more.

Why spend all this class time on this lesson. We want students to realize that they can look back at their heart map or the other lessons that we have been working on over these first few days of school to find an idea. I always love stopping by for a conference and a student tells me they do not know what to write. We just turn back to one of the many pages we have that are filled with ideas and we pick one. I leave and off they can go.

Another reason for all of this time, I want students to realize that we want them to write about things that they care about or love or that they just have to share. When students are picking topics that excite them or that they are passionate about, you can see it in the work. The writing is stronger. The willingness to share is always higher. Everything just works better when they are excited about their idea.

When the students were done working on their heart maps, we had them pick one idea to expand. My homeroom got time to write and share their writing from today.  The writing was amazing. If you notice someone at home struggling to find a writing topic, try our trick. Flip back and find the heart map. Have them pick one idea and send them off to write.

Finding a topic is so tough but hopefully all year long we can show our young authors all the possibilities that they have.

Hope you are having a great week.

Checking Back In

I am so sorry about not posting anything for Friday but to be honest sometimes I need to take a night off. Tonight is a perfect night to write, though, because tennis is on. I have played tennis since the net was as big as me. I do not get to play as much as I did but hopefully that will change one day soon. I believe teachers need things to have on when they grade. This is why I love baseball. I can grade a stack of papers in perfect peace when there is a Reds game on. The slow pace of the game fits with grading. Same with tennis the sounds of the shoes squeaking and the ball making contact just makes my pen work.  

Speaking of grading this weekend I got to take my first close look inside of the writer's notebooks. I was impressed. Students wrote stories, letters, poems, newspaper articles, comics, claims, posters, magazine articles, and so much more. I am always amazed by fourth grade writing. Sometimes you cannot believe the perfect words that our young authors pick to describe the way their dog walks or how the sun looks in the sky. As I was looking through the notebooks, I was making comments. Pointing out things I liked or ideas that stood out to me or anything else I wanted to focus on.

I hope you check out these writer's notebooks. They can give you a good idea of what we are doing in writing. It is also just plain fun to read the words of these young authors. Finally it gives you a window into the feedback that we are giving. You can use this feedback to help you have better conversations about writing.

We have also started talking about schema. Schema is another one of those words that I know we did not talk about when I was in fourth grade. Schema is another thinking strategy that we are going to focus on this year. Schema is background knowledge.  What we already know before we read anything. On Friday Ms. Cavallaro did an amazing lesson on schema. She wrote the word Kings Island on a poster and wrote down everything that the students knew or thought about Kings Island. She only gave the class a minute but they were able to share a lot. Then on the other side of the paper she wrote the word Rota Greca.  The class was unable to call out much about this word.  Why the difference? Schema of course. Ms. Cavallaro had schema for Rota Greca because she had traveled and visited family in this small village in Italy. We want our students to realize that the information they already know can help them when they read.

To help with this idea at home you may want to try some of these schema thinking stems:

• That reminds me of...
• I'm remembering...
• I have a connection to...
• I have schema for...
• I can relate to...

Hope that you are off to a great start to your week.

Metacognition

We have been talking about metacognition for the last few days in reading.  Metacognition is one of the new terms I do not remember learning in fourth grade.  If I had to define metacognition, I would say it is thinking about your thinking.

We really want the students to understand that when they read they have to interact with the text.  I always describe reading as a playing a video game not watching television.  When you watch television, you can sit and stare and zone out.  Too often I see students do this when they read.  We need students to realize that just like a video game you have to react.  The barrel rolls to you and you must jump (my video game references show my age).  Students must realize that they must do the same thing when reading text.  When reading they must think about what is happening.  Then need to notice, they need to think, they need to wonder and so much more.

Today we wanted students to realize that these thinking strategies we are using do not just need to be used when they read.  They can be used on the football field or on the soccer field or in the science classroom.  They can also be used when we look at a piece of art.

This painting by Edward Hopper called Nighthawks was what we decided to think about today.  The students told me what they could see, then what they noticed, and finally what they wondered about the painting.  The thinking the students shared was amazing.

When students are reading at home, you can use these metacognition thinking stems to help students explain their thinking.  

• I'm thinking...
• I'm noticing...
• I'm wondering...
• I'm seeing...
• I'm feeling...

Hope that you are all having a great week.

List of Lists

Today we did one of my favorite writing exercises called List of Lists.  In the front of the room we put a poster that was covered in post-it notes.  Each post-it note had an idea for a list.  Students would come up to the front of the room and grab a post-it note that they liked.

We had list ideas that included: favorite movies, favorite family traditions, favorite candy, favorite board games, things you would like to change about Donovan, things that you would change about the world, things that annoy you, places that you would like to visit (real or pretend), and on and on and on.  The students would take the list from the poster and take it back to their seat.  In their writer's notebooks they would create the list.  When they felt they were running out of steam, they would take the list back to the board and grab another.  Some students created six or seven lists.  Others created one or two lists that were filled with a ton of ideas.

There are many reasons that I love this exercise.  One reason is it helps with writing fluency.  I think the class is starting to realize that in our room we are going to write.  The more fluent they are with writing the more they will be able to put their ideas on paper.  While fluency is important, the most important part of this lesson is it shows students how to generate an idea.

To help the students understand this Ms. Cavallaro and myself took our lists that we had created and showed the class how it would lead to more writing.  I put my list of favorite family traditions up on the board.  On my list I had put roasting pumpkin seeds.  I love this tradition each year in late October.  I showed the class how I could take this one idea and write so much.  I could write the story of how this tradition began or I could write a recipe on how to roast pumpkin seeds or I could write a letter to my children about how much the tradition means to me or I could write an invitation to my children to invite them to this years seed roasting.  The ideas could go on and on.  We invited the students to do the same find an idea and extend it into a writing piece.

In these first few weeks of writing I want our students to understand all the possibilities they have when they write.  I also want them to learn how writers find ideas.  I think one of the hardest things as an author is coming up with an idea.  Over the next few weeks we will fill the room with strategies that might help with idea generation.  Hopefully one of the ideas or all of these ideas will work for the students.

If you notice that during our at home writing that it seems to be tough to get started, you could try this trick.  Put a bunch of lists on the fridge or anywhere in the house and let them go grab one.  Once they have created a few lists have them search through what they have written and find an idea that they could extend.  Hopefully it might be the springboard into an amazing writing project.

Hope that you are having an amazing week.

Amazed

Today was one of those days where the class just amazes you.  I asked the class to do two things that were not exactly easy.  The class stepped up to the challenge and the results were amazing.

The first thing we asked the class was to complete an 11 minute essay.  An 11 minute essay is just like it sounds...the students write for 11 minutes.  We break up the time a bit, but the class writes for eleven minutes.  In the first two minute section we put this quote on the board, "If we really want to experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging."  The class wrote for two minutes about whether they agreed with the quote or what they thought the quote meant.  The next nine minutes was divided into three minute writing spurts where the students wrote about what it meant to belong or how it felt, then what it meant to not belong or how that would feel, and then finally they wrote for three minutes about where they belong and how they know that is where they belong.

It was amazing to see the amount of text that the students were able to produce.  Some students filled multiple pages with their thinking and the thinking they shared was just brilliant.  This 11 minute essay was a way to kick off our reading unit where we will think about what it means to belong.  I will talk more about this unit in the upcoming days on the blog but you can also get a glimpse of it in by looking for the Belonging packet in the red reading folder.  This kickoff could not have gone better and I cannot wait to see what the students show me next.

Then later in the day I asked the students to tell me what they noticed about two pieces of writing that we had created.  The pieces were claims about whether or not back to school was a good time of year or not a good time of year.  All year long I am going to ask students to tell me what they notice when they read a text.  This was the first time we had done it this year, and I was truly impressed with what the students noticed.  They found how we had organized our pieces.  They noticed how I liked to use lists in my piece.  They found all the different elements that we wanted them to find and with no help from us.

When writers are able to notice things from the texts they are reading, they can use the things that they notice when they write.  Authors do this all the time.  Hopefully as the year goes on the students will continue to notice things from texts and start to use what they notice to produce amazing texts.  The students will try this tomorrow when they write their first writing piece which will be a back to school claim.

Thanks for checking in on the blog and I hope you are having a great week.

Real Reading

Since last week we have been talking about real reading.  What is real reading?  Real reading to me is when students realize that they must interact with text.  I remember when I was younger I had not made this realization.  I would read the words on the page but nothing was going inside my head.  This year I want to show students what goes on in my head as we read.

Last Friday Ms. Cavallaro and I showed the student a lesson called reading cereal.  Reading cereal is just a visual exercise that tries to show students how we think when we read.  During the lesson we read one of my favorite books Charlie Anderson.

As we read this amazing book, we would add text cereal to our cereal bowls.  That text would make us think so we would add thinking milk to our cereal bowl, because cereal needs milk just like reading needs thinking.  Hopefully this lesson allowed the students to see what goes on inside our head as we read text.

Today we wanted to continue to talk about the idea that reading is thinking.  This year on Mondays students will read an Article of the Week.  When we read this article, we will practice a new technique that allows the students to think as they read.  Today before the students read their Article of the Week we modeled Two Column Notes as we read an article about ALS.  

Two Column Notes follows the same idea as that reading cereal lesson.  At the top of the left column in our notes we wrote "It Says" and on the right we wrote "I Say."  The "It Says" refers to the text and the "I Says" is what the students think about the text.  The students search for parts of the text that makes them think and they write it in the "It Says" column.  Then on the right side they share their thinking about that text.  This is a great idea of something you could do at home from time to time to reinforce the idea of real reading.  It really allows you to see what is going on inside someones head as they read.

As we were hoping might happen, some of our students made the connection to the article about ALS and the recent Ice Bucket Challenge.  We were quickly challenged by the class to participate.  We gladly accepted and will complete the challenge this Friday.  Before we take the challenge on Friday, we are going to try and raise as much money as possible to donate to the ALS Association.  We will have a bucket in the room where students can make donations all week.  On Friday Ms. Cavallaro and myself will count it all up, soak ourselves with ice water, and then send the money to the ALS Association.  

I hope you all had a great start to your week and I hope that you can all keep checking in with the blog. 

Honoring Approximations

A few years ago I was lucky enough to get to see Matt Glover talk.  Mr. Glover is a well-known educator.  He had come to Miami to talk about some of his new ideas.  During his talk he introduced the book Ish by Peter Reynolds.

The book is amazing.  It follows Ramon as he learns to accept his drawings because he can see the "ishness" in his work.  Ramon stops drawing because his older brother laughs at his work.  He struggles to try to make everything perfect and finally gives up when he cannot.  Then his younger sister surprises him with a museum of his work.  He instantly learns from his sister that although his work is not perfect it does have amazing things hidden inside.

I have already read this book to the students on the first day, talked about it again today, and I am sure I will read it again next week.  Throughout the year we will revisit Ish.  I just love the message that we do not need to fear that our work is not perfect.  I think many young writers often worry about making a spelling mistake or misplacing a comma.  This fear causes students to shut down.  I want students to not be afraid to make mistakes.  When students are willing to take risks with their work, the results are often amazing.

One way that I love to try and support this goal of having a classroom where students are not afraid to take risks is to give students feedback using two stars and a wish.  When students share their writing I often give them two stars and a wish.  The two stars are things that they have in their writing that I love.  Things that I hope they repeat and continue to try to use in their work.  The wish is a way to nudge the students.  A suggestion that may help them improve as writers.  If you are looking at writing work at home, two stars and a wish is a great way to support your young writer.  It allows you to celebrate those approximations that students are making in their writing (the ishness of their poem or story or article) and also allows you to offer suggestions on how to improve the work even more.   

I hope you all have an amazing weekend and I cannot wait to get back to work on Monday.

The First Day

Wow!!  You never really know how fast a day can go until you have experienced the first day of school as a teacher.  I hope everyone had as much fun as I did today.

We started the day off with a one-word notecard.  I love this exercise.  It is quite simple.  On one side of a notecard the students write a word.  On the other side of the card they write why they picked the word.  Today I had the students write how they felt this morning as they walked into the room.  Students picked words liked excited, happy, nervous, tired, awesome, and so many others.  Then on the other side of the care the students did a great job of explaining why they felt this way.  When the students were done, they came to the rocking chair to share.  I was amazed at how many students were willing to share.  I think it takes a lot of courage to share writing.

Then we got to start our first read aloud.  The book we are starting the year with is called Half a Chance by Cynthia Lord.

I love Cynthia Lord.  She is an amazingly descriptive writing.  After going through a book walk (look at the front cover, back cover, front jacket, back jacket and read the first few pages) the class really seemed to be excited about the book.  I cannot wait to get deeper into this book with the class.  I love reading aloud.  It is one of my favorite parts of the day.  One reason the experience is so enjoyable is I get to share books with students that they may not have thought about reading on their own.  If they like the read aloud book, then I can find other books that make hook them into reading.

We also got to start writing in our Writer's Notebook.  Ms. Cavallaro and I started to make a list of "Things We Like to Talk About" in front of the class.  We put things on our lists like family members, sports we love (we found out Ms. Cavallaro played lacrosse), places we love, things we love and so much more.  As we kept adding to our lists and adding to our lists, the class started to create their own lists.  The lists grew and grew (some filled a whole page and had to work on the back) as the class kept calling out ideas and we added ideas to our own list.  At the end of all this work we had the class cross out the word "Talk" at the top of their page and change it to "Write."

Students love to tell me they have nothing to write about when it is time to write.  I don't buy it.  Just come in and listen to students run up to share stories.  It happens each morning.  Our students love to share about themselves.  When writing time comes, suddenly their ideas disappear.  We are going to work on helping students find the ideas that they already have to create great pieces of writing.  If your students are working on their writing at home and they get a case of writer's block, have them look back to this page in their writer's notebook.  Hopefully something on the list will spark a great story.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week.  I am out for the night. 

Twas the Night Before...

I don't have a lot to share tonight.  Tomorrow the fun will begin and I will have so much to share I will have to leave some things out.

I cannot thank you enough for coming to our conferences.  It was so nice meeting all of you and I hope the conference helped to answer any questions you might have needed to ask.

Since I don't have much to share here is some great advice on becoming a better writer.  If you cannot see it that well, I will give you the summary...just write.

First Conferences

We are getting closer and closer to the first day of school.  Today was the first half of our conferences.  Plus I had my conference with my daughter at Louisa Wright, so all and all it was a pretty crazy day.

I know some of you got to come in my room and some of you will get to see it tomorrow.  One thing I hope that you noticed in my room was books.  I cannot wait to continue to grow our library as this year continues.  One thing I asked the students to do today when they were in my room was to find a book that they think they would like to read.  This sounds like a simple task, but I think it is quite hard.  Finding a book that is right for you can be just as hard as finding a pair of shoes that is right for you.

If you want to have a great conversation, talk about how you pick/find books.  Do you have a favorite author?  Do you get book recommendations from friends?  Do you look for an interesting cover?  Do you look for books that won awards?  Do you use the Amazon feature that lets you know which books you will like based on other books you have ordered?  Do you read books that were turned into movies?  Do you read books about topics that interest you?

The better our students get at finding books that they like the more likely they will enjoy reading.  I think students who do not like reading just have not found the right book.  I have to work harder to find that one book that will unlock the joy of reading.  For me I remember Mrs. Garland reading Where the Red Fern Grows aloud in fourth grade.  That book hooked me.  Then when I started to teach I found books like Because of Winn Dixie, How to Steal a Dog, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and A Snicker of Magic.  These books along with countless others have allowed my love of reading to grow.

Share some of your favorite books that you read when you were in third or fourth or fifth grade.  Maybe you remember reading The Indian in the Cupboard or Hatchet or The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  You could read these books aloud or just leave a copy out for the them to find.  

I know that some of you may not share my love of reading.  Try some of the books I mentioned above...I think you will find one that just amazes you.  I suggest starting with The One and Only Ivan.

If you need some help finding books, don't forget our amazing librarians.  Or you can call me or send me an email asking for some suggestions.  Or you can also follow some great blogs that talk about books.  I love the blogs A Year of Reading or the School Library Journal website.  There are countless "kidlitosphere" blogs that can help you find amazing books.  

Or you can also follow John Schu at @MrSchuReads or Colby Sharp at @colbysharp on twitter.  These two have the most amazing tweets about books and authors.  

Finding the right books is one of the most important parts of reading.  Hopefully this year we can help all of our students find one book that they will remember.  One book that will allow them when their fifth grade teacher asks them what is their favorite book to answer without a doubt.  

I hope you are all having a great week and I cannot wait to get this year started.  

Happy Reading.

Mr. Tarr

I think this would be a great chance to introduce myself.

My name is David Tarr.  I have been teaching in Lebanon for the last 14 years.  Every year I have taught with Mrs. Sanford and every year I have taught fourth grade.  I really love my job.  I get excited each year to go back to the classroom.  On Wednesday night I will not be able to sleep.  Ideas and worries about the upcoming year will keep me tossing and turning.

Before I started teaching, I grew up just up the road in Centerville.  My mother was a teacher in Centerville and my father worked at Wright Pat until he retired.  He then went back to school at THE University of Dayton and became an accountant.

After high school, I followed my older brother (who now works for the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office) to THE University of Dayton.  I got my undergraduate degree and started looking for a job.  I had been working at Countryside YMCA in the sports camp and adventure camp, so I decided to interview in Lebanon.  I got the job and the rest as they say is history.

My wife is a teacher at Donovan.  She is also a Dayton Flyer.  We never met in college.  One of us is older (I won't say which one) so our paths did not cross until we met at Donovan.  We have two children Emerson our daughter and our son Beckett.  Emerson is going to start kindergarten this year at Louisa Wright.  I cannot believe that tomorrow I will have to go to her first conference and sit on the other side of that table.

I just recently finished getting my master's degree at Miami University.  The program I went through at Miami was The Ohio Writing Project.  The program was amazing and did nothing but make me a better teacher.  This summer I got to teach a class at Miami on how to teach argument writing with the Ohio Writing Project.  It was a blast to get to share and learn from the teachers that were working with us.

I love to read.  I would not have said this as a fourth grader but now I devour texts.  I am an avid fan of all Cincinnati sports.  One of my favorite days of the whole school year is when we celebrate Opening Day.  I cook.  My mother told us she was not going to raise men who could not cook.  Now I find great pleasure in making a meal.  I love to play sports basketball, tennis, soccer, softball, or anything with a ball.  You name it I like to play it.  I have to listen to music.  If you come to the room before the day starts, chances are you will hear something blasting out of my speakers.

I hoped this helped you get to know me just a bit more before this year gets started.  I cannot wait to get to know all of you as this year gets underway.

The Reasons

I started to blog last year.  It was fun but it was a challenge to write each night.  I have two reasons that I think it is important to blog.

The first reason is to let you join the conversation.  I remember coming home from school each day.  My mother would ask how my day went and my response was always fine.  Then my mother would ask what we did and my response was always nothing.

We never did nothing.  We did a lot.  I want you to know as much of what we do as possible.  I want you to be able to talk about things that are going on in our class.  When you are able to have these conversations as parents and reinforce what we are doing in the classroom, it is only going to help our students.

Plus teachers have a language that is all their own.  You might hear the words schema or claims or hyphenated adjectives or a ton of teacher-jargon terms that we use.  I do not remember talking about these things when I was in school.  Hopefully these blog posts will introduce you to the language of our room.  Knowing this language is only going to help you have better conversations at home.

The second reason...I should be a writer.  I am going to ask our students to write.  I am going to ask our students to write a lot.  If I am going to teach writing, then I should write.  If I were going to sign Emerson (my daughter) up for piano, I would expect the piano teacher to play piano.  It only makes sense that a teacher know the topic they are going to teach.  I think to truly know a topic you must spend time in that topic.  So I am a writer.  I might not be Cynthia Rylant or Katie DiCamillo or Jack Gantos, but I am writing.  I struggle and find success with my writing and these experiences help me as a teacher.

I cannot wait for this year to begin and hope that this blog gives you a glimpse into our room.

An Empty Room

Today I got to get back into my room.  I love the moment when I throw open that door and see the class completely empty.  The room is so filled with possibilities at this point.

The first project I always tackle when I get my room ready is the books.  My room is going to be filled with books.  And not just any old books the room is going to be filled with amazing texts that will hopefully catch the attention of our students.  One of my main goals as a teacher is to get students to fall in love with reading.  For the students who already love to read, I just hope to continue to foster and grow that love of language.

When I was a student, I was not a reader.  Now I read and read and read.  I hope to take this passion of mine and try to pass it on.  I think one way to do this is fill the room with a variety of amazing books by amazing authors and give students a chance to discover these books.  Just today I found copies of The One and Only Ivan and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.  I cannot wait to share these titles and more with the class.  I did not get to all my books today but I did make a nice size dent in the project.

It is going to be an amazing journey this year and I cannot wait to get it started.