If you are a book lover and feel strongly about sharing books with kids, NerdCamp is for you!
Here is the official link to find out what it's all about. This will be my third Nerdcamp experience; I had to miss Nerdcamp last year, but I vowed NOT to let that happen this year. You know it's a special place and group when you walk up and clutch the arm of your {nerdy book-loving, artist, not-even-a-teacher) friend and literally squeal, "Ohhh, we've found our PEOPLE!" Even better is getting your picture taken with Babymouse and Arnie AND meeting your edu-heroes in the literary world AND walking out with books, posters, bookmarks, and memories to share with your students about your very own summer "camp" experience! Nerdcamp had its humble beginnings back in 2013, and it has consistently grown by leaps and bounds! This year there are more than 50 authors and illustrators who will share in the fun! This S'More will give you an idea of just how broad the scope of the sessions for Day One. Day Two is set up in the non-traditional style of an ED-Camp where the group itself builds the session board based on the interests and questions of those present. As you can surely see, there is excitement in the air as approximately1500 literacy-lovin' and book-passionate folks come together in Michigan! Please follow along on social media - much of the learning will be shared and available for those not able to attend. But wait - there's MORE! After the adults have their two days of learning and sharing, many authors, illustrators, organizers, and volunteers stay for Nerdcamp Jr.! This will be my first year to participate so I am truly pumped to see how this works. I'll work with one group to lead them through their visits with their assigned guests. Summer learning time also allows me to experiment with new technology to engage my students, and one I am exploring with great interest is Flipgrid. I see this as a viable assessment tool (non-traditional, yay!) for my students as they explain their thinking or reasoning or share what they're experiencing. I'd love to have students use it to share book talks, make connections between books or authors, and to help us connect with others outside of our little rural community. I've completed most of what I need to begin my Flipgrid certification journey, but I need your help to practice more with it. Flipgrid is a tool that uses video to capture or share learning about a particular topic.I created a Nerdcamp Grid and posted a topic asking for nerdcamp lovers to please share what they are excited about or some important piece of learning during the actual sessions. Here is the link - I am hoping to have a few video responses which will allow YOU to share why you are passionate about Nerdcamp and will allow me to learn more about moderating responses - so it's a total win-win! It will take only about a minute, so please help out! Have a great time at Nerdcamp - or following along via social media if you are @notatnerdcampMI. if you write a blog post about your experiences, feel free to leave a link in the comments below!
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I am participating in a month-long writing challenge called The Slice of Life Story Challenge sponsored by Two Writing Teachers. The purpose is to share little short "slices" of your everyday life in realistic terms. "Slicers" also read and comment on other bloggers' slices. There is an individual SOL challenge and a classroom SOL challenge. I frequently use this space to share what I learn from the wise folks in my PLN, whether local educators or those I've encountered via social media. The quote I've used above is the result of a recent venture down into the Twitter-verse "rabbit hole." Some such ventures bear incredible fruit, as did this one. A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a tweet by librarian-extraordinaire Margie Myers-Culver (@Loveofxena) that led me to Margie's blog, Librarian's Quest, and the twists and turns of the proverbial rabbit hole then led me to this wonderful TedX video by acclaimed author Carmen Agra Deedy. Oh, my—I love Ms. Deedy's storytelling—and her message of the importance of stories! {Listen for the whack-a-mole comment! It's spot on, as any teacher will tell you, and made me laugh at the visual image it brought to mind.} Carmen Agra Deedy's book The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet, delightfully illustrated by Eugene Yelchin, has been receiving attention from teachers, librarians, children, and critics everywhere because at its core is the message of giving voice to your truths. Read this inspirational book about a rooster who finds his voice in a town where singing is outlawed. Scholastic Reads shared this interview with Carmen Agra Deedy about giving children a voice. Look here for the podcast. Here is a link to this important book. As a teacher who has a passion for sharing books with children, and as a teacher who encourages students to share their voices in their writing, this lovely book is perfect match! I'm enthralled watching my small-group kids who are equally enthralled reading about sloths. They are reading and researching silently and don't even know I am watching them!
Sloths, you say? Why SLOTHS? Our fluency passages currently are all about unusual animals, so when sloths popped up this week, we became very curious. They have been using EPIC as an online reading site, and after reading on EPIC about the lives of sloths, we have found that they are quite interesting: they are very slow (like 6-8 feet in an hour!), they hang from trees, if a predator comes they cannot outrun anything, they have a sleep/happy face, they have a very low metabolism, they live in trees and eat leaves, and - get ready - the best fact of all: they only go to the bathroom once a week!!!! We're quite intrigued--so intrigued, not a creature (kiddo) is stirring.....we are all silently reading and rather sloth-like now that we have to move on to something else.....but since it's lunch, we can do this! These dear students of mine do this to me all the time - slow to start, but then you can't get them to move on....homework time at the end of the day, limerick writing, etc. Sloth-like beginning, then stubbornly hanging on when it's time to move on - gotta love it!! I am participating in a month-long writing challenge called The Slice of Life Story Challenge sponsored by Two Writing Teachers. The purpose is to share little short "slices" of your everyday life in realistic terms. "Slicers" also read and comment on other bloggers' slices - and in the process we get to experience some fun topics and are exposed to many different writing styles. {There is an individual SOL challenge and a classroom SOL challenge, so perhaps next year I'll be brave enough to tackle this with my students!} IMWAYR?I love IMWAYR - mostly because I love books and reading! My classroom is so very full of books, from wordless picture books (a future post because I find such joy in these), to picture books, chapter books, ABC books, graphic novels, entire series, magazines and poetry - you name it, we've got it! And the daily read-aloud part of our day is inarguably the favorite part for me and my students. Our last book was The Hundred Dresses, which we finished in mid-February. Sadly, with state-mandated testing last week, we just have not made time for this over the past two weeks. We've all missed that special time set aside each day to, well, frankly - to get lost in a book. A classroom read-aloud is a unique time, a shared experience but also a personal and private one as students make their own connections to the story. No, we've certainly missed snuggling into a 12x16 space all tuckered out after lunch and recess, looking to refocus as we immerse ourselves in the words of a beloved author. But that all changed today! Today we happily returned to our regularly scheduled daily read-aloud time! {Insert whoops and hollers!!} We've just started the fun book pictured here; it's written from the point of view of a dog (insert much tail wagging and barking), and after only one chapter we are HOOKED! Fenway and Hattie, by Victoria J. Coe, published by Penguin Random House. It's a scream, filled with dog language and antics - please look for it if you have a middle-grades reader! If you are a teacher, what are your favorite books to share with students? What read-aloud traditions or routines do you have? This summer has been filled with lots of time spent reading! I've been reading many MG (middle grades) books with a book group called #bookrelays that I joined when I was invited to share books with some of the teachers I follow on Twitter. We're swapping books and reading like crazy! Some of the books have already been released, and some are ARCs (advance reader's copy). Many authors, fellow book-lovers, and publishing companies have generously shared ARCs to allow us to get an early look at some upcoming MG books The photo above is a look at what arrived one day in mid-June! I just finished one of the ARC #bookrelays books - The Thing About Leftovers, by C.C. Payne - and was totally delighted with the main character Fizzy from the very beginning when she proclaims, "...I am against the cruel treatment of clothes by way of bedazzling." Fizzy's dream is to one day have her own cooking show on TV. As a chef-wannabee myself, and a (former) child who also pretended to have a TV show (well, a bathroom cleaning commercial, actually), she had me cracking up many times and in tears at other times. Fizzy's parents are divorced in this book and she is learning how to navigate her world as it changes to include stepparents. It really had me thinking about things I take for granted in my life and in the lives of my students, all students - not just children who come share households with stepparents, things like...
Each of these seemingly little things are very big things for Fizzy, and she misses the family that used to be. I love how author C.C. Payne even gives Fizzy the words to explain her feelings using cooking metaphors - feeling like she'd lost a really important bag of groceries filled with important ingredients--for her life! Fizzy likens the changes to making substitutions in a recipe - if you notice the changes (which she does, of course), they aren't good substitutions for the simple fact that they are noticeable. She feels like she has been given the ingredients for someone else's life. Fizzy turns to her love of cooking as a way to cope with the both changes in her family and trying to fit in at a new school, and her aunt Liz encourages her to enter a cooking contest. There is a little bit of Kate DiCamillo's Raymie Nightingale in Fizzy as she puts her heart and soul into winning the cooking contest while also searching for ways to make her new normalcy feel less new and more normal. Students will enjoy the many nuggets of wisdom Fizzy delivers, and I especially liked these two Fizzy-wisdoms that show she is truly wise beyond her years:
I thoroughly enjoyed joining Fizzy on this journey as she maneuvered this brave new world at both her own house and her father's house, trying to find the perfect recipe for her new life. This book left me feeling (another Fizzy-wisdom) "as happy as a birthday cake," and I know my students will find Fizzy wise and strong (even when she thinks she isn't - which they will GET), and I know they will find new Fizzy-wisdoms to bring to light! |
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