The Sunrise Story

I took a chance and tried something new today. We've been rehearsing and learning new vocabulary words for a few weeks and today we were showing off our knowledge...aka it was time for our summative assessment. I decided to give them three choices to show me that they owned these words. They could use the word in a sentence or write the definition or they could sketch or doodle the meaning of the word. I was worried about the last choice. My worry wasn't for my students, my worry was for me. I wondered if I would I be able to see the mastery of the word in their drawing? The answer came to me in a resounding YES! It made reading over these answers interesting and fun too. I love sixth-grade readers! Here are some of their sketches and doodles! Enjoy...               I celebrate choice in assessment. I celebrate the creativity of my sixth-grade readers and writers. 

Over on Facebook and Instagram, there's a photo challenge going on. I love taking pictures and noticing things around me. It felt like it took forever for me to be challenged, but my friend, Jennifer , finally tagged me... And so I began the challenge, here are my first six pictures... One day at a time, I challenged my family. My sister and cousin jumped onto the challenge immediately. I love this picture! It's my sister's first stuffed animal and my niece's favorite stuffed animal sitting together... My mom and one of my aunts really wanted to join in but didn't know how to make pictures black and white. Once they figured it out, they were off! Here are some of their photos...   My other aunt resisted because she had no idea what to do. Her actual words were, "You know I am incapable of this. What do I do?" With just a little help from me and my cousin, she started the challenge. I love seeing how others see the world ...

Yesterday was the National Day on Writing! It's my favorite holiday...well, maybe other than National Notebook Day in May. We were busy writing and celebrating writing in room 734.  We started with a read aloud. It reminded us about the importance of telling our story. The new picture book, " Malala's Magic Pencil ". I shared magic pencils with the students and we were off! Choices included graffiti wall writing about #WhyIWrite or about books about writing. Students could write with unusual tools including blocks, play-dough, magnets, or a letter board. Some students wrote stories together, some wrote poetry, some created quotes and others found their own way. We tweeted our writing like crazy! The excitement was palpable. One student said, "It's so much fun, it feels like the last day of school!"  The rest of the story will be told in pictures. There are lots of pictures. I tried to capture as much of this day as possible...

Today we will celebrate writing in room 734. We are writers. We will create new writing. We will share our writing in new and creative ways. We will celebrate ourselves as writers. Writing is powerful. Words change the world. Our time together will begin with the story of a writer who changed her world and soon the world beyond her own, Malala. The picture book, Malala and the Magic Pencil, is a perfect read aloud for this day.  I celebrate writing. I celebrate our writers.  I celebrate magic pens and pencils.  Please come back to see the results from our day of celebration. How will you celebrate today? 

Four years ago (on October 22), I clicked publish here for the first time. Encouraged by the brilliant Penny Kittle, during an NCTE Twitter chat, I decided to add my voice to the blogosphere and tell my story. That means most weeks, I've been showing up here and writing for FOUR years. Four years. It's a high school diploma...a college career. Four years and six hundred posts later, here I am. What has blogging taught me?  I've learned and lived the words, "I have a story to tell." When I sit down, the doubt I felt that very first time has dimmed and I believe that my story is valuable and worthy of being shared. That lesson was learned from the powerful support I receive from my readers. Readers who show up here, read my words, and reply. Readers who hold me up when I need it and who challenge me when I'm not sure. Readers who have become friends. The most unexpected thing that's happened since I began blogging are the relationships I...

It's been too long since I've written in this space. I've been writing. I've been writing a lot, but blogging has slipped away for a few weeks. I'm back and I missed this space. Writing feeds me. Lately, I've been writing pages and pages in my notebook and I've been working on my book, so the time slipped away. What's missing from those two other kinds of writing is an audience. I miss sharing my words with others and receiving feedback. Here I am today, showing up and writing.  This year I set a goal for myself to work on developing the reader's notebook into a more meaningful and engaging tool in our classroom. As with any goals, it's a journey. We are working hard with our reading and showing up to our reader's notebooks a few times a week. I want it to be a daily commitment, but I know we can get there.  This week, we were discussing different kinds of conflicts that we witness as readers. I invited the students to create a noteboo...