New books to accompany Wonder by RJ Palacio

Have you read Wonder?  Better yet, how could you not have read Wonder?  It is such a great book with such a great message.  Wonder has so much material in the story for great discussions with students.

Well, RJ Palacio has written two more books to accompany Wonder.  

365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Brown's Book of Precepts

In Wonder, Auggie's teacher, Mr. Brown, is always sharing quotes with his students (which he calls precepts) and asking his students to gather quotes as well. In 365 Days of Wonder, Mr. Brown explains some of his philosophies as a teacher in a section for each month of the year as well as reflecting on some of the events from Auggie's first year at Beecher Prep. Mr. Brown also gives a quote for each day of the year.  This book would make a great follow up to reading Wonder.  You could discuss Mr. Brown's point of view on events from Wonder.  You could discuss individual quotes and their meanings, as well as applications to the story and applications to your student's daily lives.

One of my favorite strategies for incorporating journal writing into my classroom is also to use quotes as writing inspiration.  Well, this book is amazing.  Now, you have a collection of 365 quotes that could easily be pulled into journal writing ideas or even put the book in a writing station/center for writing ideas.

Julian's Chapter

RJ Palacio has also written a short ebook called  The Julian Chapter.  It is the bully's point of view on Auggie's year at Beecher Prep.  This ebook would be such a great follow up to Wonder to discuss point of view, forgiveness, and even discussions of bullying in general.

Have you read them?  If not, you should!

Also, if you are interested please follow my personal blog where I am sharing about my experience and dinner ideas for the paleo diet and Whole 30 at Balancing the Backpack.

Weekly Writing Inspiration and December Essay Writing

I hope you are getting some great shopping in at the TpT Cyber Monday sale. I spent my fair share today, but I got so many great things!

I wanted to share some writing resources I am really excited about right now.  When I first start blogging almost two years ago, I did a weekly series called "Weekly Writing Inspiration." This is something I started in my classroom several years ago. Each week for our journal writing we used inspiration instead of prompts. We had a quote of the week, a poem of the week, and a picture of the week.  We discussed what we observed, the meanings, and how they could inspire our writing.  It really got the kids to think critically and creatively. As creativity and critical thinking are two of the four 21st century skills, they are something I want to continue to emphasize.

Weekly writing inspiration is something I have done in my class every year, but it usually falls off somewhere during the year because I start running out of time to find a quote, poem, and picture each week.  I have always meant to sit down and compile 40 poems, 40 quotes, and 40 pictures. It never happened as many great teaching ideas find themselves.

Well, the other day I found some resources on TpT that helped me fulfill my weekly writing inspiration goal.

Panicked Teacher's Quote of the Week

Panicked Teacher's Idiom of the Week

Picture of the Day (We just may not do it every day).

We started doing one of these each day before Thanksgiving. We discuss the meanings and use the handouts from the packs. Then, each day we use the quote, idiom, or picture to inspire our journal writing. I just will have to pick out a poem then each week. My goal is to get a monthly poetry pack made with poems to analyze. I made one for March last year. Hopefully, I can get one made for December in next couple days. :)

To help my kids get better at multi-paragraph essays, I want to make sure we do at least one essay per month for the rest of the year.  I decided to start making a monthly essay menu with four choices for each of the writing types: informational, opinion, narrative, and research. They will be able to choose, but in 3 essays they need to do an opinion, a narrative, and an informative.  I am excited to share my essay menu for December with my students on Wednesday. 

What are your favorite resources for writing and the Common Core?

Lesson Ideas on Martin Luther King

We are talking about Martin Luther King this week on Wednesday because I am alternating Social Studies and Science every other day.  Tuesday we talked about Properties of Matter in Science. 

We will start our discussion on Martin Luther King by watching a video on MLK.  There are several good choices on Discovery Education.  There is also a free video with Brainpop.  I love the free videos on Brainpop because they come with little printable activities.

Tonight I ran to the library to find some books on the 13 Colonies and came across a graphic novel biography of MLK.  Thus, we will read this as a read aloud.  I love finding opportunities to use different mediums and genres of text. The name of the graphic novel is Martin Luther King, Jr.: Great Civil Rights Leader.

Source: amazon.com via April on Pinterest

We will also read a passage on Martin Luther King from Readworks.  Here are some different ones to choose from. Readworks has fabulous passages.  The passages usually are fairly short, but the questions are great.  It is an amazing free resource for extra nonfiction test practice or guided reading resources.

I was at a teaching workshop a couple years ago where the instructor took sections of the "I Have a Dream" speech and had them on notecards.  She handed out the sections to different groups, and we had to rewrite that section in our own words.  I think this is a fabulous idea, so we are going to do this as an analyzing and writing activity. Here is a link to a text copy of the speech.

My students will write sections of the speech in their own words.  I also pulled some quotes from Dr. King we will use for writing inspiration. We will break down the quotes and explain what they mean. Then, they can use the quotes to inspire their journal writing to write about whatever they want as long as it is inspired by the quote. I also will have my students write a paragraph about their own dreams for the world.  I ended up putting together a file with all of this. 

You can get it at my TpT store.  It will be on sale this week. The first person to leave me a comment with your favorite activity for learning about Martin Luther King can have a copy for free.

Jennifer Findley today shared a cute idea to work on Point of View in writing by looking at the Rosa Parks story.  We have been talking and talking about point of view, so I love this idea!  If I squeeze this next week, then we will use a Readworks passage.  Otherwise, we may use it for Black History month, and I will actually probably pick up some books at the library. Readworks has lesson ideas for using Rosa Parks: My Story.

Source: amazon.com via Jenna on Pinterest

Writing Inspiration for Thanksgiving and Poetry

I have been a little absent the last few days.  We finished up school on Friday.  The last day before a break is always chaotic.  I thought I would magically get packed Friday night, pick up some stuff from the store for when I got back, clean my house, and you know...write some posts to schedule for my break.  I flew out Saturday morning to  Vegas. (I am here visiting with my mom and brother.  My mom lives in Utah, and I live in Texas.  We decided to meet up in Vegas for a few days.) I did pack and the house got vacuumed.  That's all.  So the laptop came with me, and I sit here in the Starbucks to give a brief post.

If you need some other last minute Thanksgiving ideas (not that you haven't seen a million of them by now).  If you are like me though, great ideas get tagged in your google reader for next year.  Here are some fun things we did last week related to Thanksgiving. 

We read the poem "Thanksgiving" by Edgar Albert Guest.  It is a great poem for this time of year and discussing mood and theme.  It is a relatively simple poem.  We read through the poem and underlined unfamilar words.  Then we discussed what the words might mean using context clues.  Then we labeled each stanza with the main idea of the stanza.  We followed up by using a graphic organizer I had created called "Poetry Accessories" to analyze the poem. We looked at things like visualization, sound, comparisons, mood, author's purpose, and message. It is from my Analyzing Poetry pack. My students then had to write a paragraph to show their analysis of the poem using the elements of the graphic organizer.  We completed these tasks together.  Going forward I am going to analyze our weekly poems in small groups as more of a guided reading lesson.  I think they will get more out of it in small groups.  Poetry is hard, but it really can be fun with elementary and middle school students to see them open up to thinking more metaphorically. I would like to follow up with writing more poetry.

I am trying to get back to my weekly writing inspiration series on my blog and with my students.  Each week I want to analyze a poem, quote, and picture.  Then, they use each of those items to inspire their writing.

For our quote last week, we used the following quote:

Source: heartbeatoz.tumblr.com via April on Pinterest

We used a form I had created to analyze the quote. They had to copy the quote down, write what they thought it meant, write how the quote made them feel, and write any connections they made to the quote. You can get a copy here.  After analyzing the poem and quote, they use the ideas from them to inspire their own writing.  They can write essays, poems, personal narratives, creative stories - all during their journal writing time.  I really like how our journal writing is going.  I am still struggling to figure out how often I want to publish pieces and really edit.  I have been using a lot of computer resources lately, so I am thinking we will save these more for publishing.  I am trying a lot of free technology resources right now, so they can learn how to use them.  Over time, they will have more choice and then I can conference more with them to work on the editing and revising.  Sometimes, technology is hard because you are having to teach the content as well as the technology.

We did a lot of letter writing last week.  On Friday, we read You Wouldn't Want to Sail on the Mayflower.  Then, we watched the Charlie Brown version of the Mayflower voyage on the "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" DVD. They followed it up by writing a letter from the point of view of a pilgrim describing their journey and the first winter.  The funny thing is that my students are doing fabulous with RAFT writing tasks where they write from another point of view, but really struggle with a basic summary.  So, I am thinking our next approach will be to write a summary from the point of view of a book character or person in history or something.  Not sure.  How is your writing workshop going?  Okay...back to Vegas.  (I know this post was not that brief. Mine rarely are. Hopefully, you don't mind too much.  If I am going to share an idea, I feel the need to explain it).

Map Skills, a Brain Break, and a Journey

So today I had my real first brain break of the summer.  It was nice.  I slept in and lounged all day with a book.  (Then, I went shopping for shorts because only one pair fit.  Got to love hypothyroid and a slow metabolism.  But that is another story.  I am going to focus on the more fun part of my day).

After enjoying my brain break, I figured I should return to the world of blogging for a bit.  So I know I will be sharing Social Studies and Science texts with you each week, but I may not stick to the Tuesday/Thursday schedule.  If I'm honest, Tuesday/Thursday will always be Wednesday/Friday.  So I might as well just plan on sharing but not limit myself to a specific day. I do want to try to stick with sharing my writing inspiration on Wednesdays for the consistency if you decide to use this feature in your classroom.

This week I am combining my Social Studies text recommendations and my writing inspiration in one post. For the next couple weeks, I want to focus my Social Studies texts on geography and map skills. I did some research Monday and checked out tons of books yesterday at the library.

Social Studies Texts

Text 1: Are We There Yet, Daddy? by Virginia Walters
The AR level for this book is 2.2. This story is written in rhyme and describes a boy's 100 mile journey to Grandma's house with his father. Every 10 miles he asks "Are we there yet, Daddy?"  His dad's constant response is to look at the map.  The book describes everything he sees in the 100 miles and has different pictures of maps to show the journey's progress along with what he sees at each moment. What I like about this book is that I think it helps illustrate the point that maps show real places.  I think it can be difficult for students to understand that we can use maps to show one place from multiple perspectives. I would pair this book with my second recommendation.

Text 2: Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney
This story is very simple, but is shows all the ways one place can be mapped: a girl's room, her street, her town, her state, her country, the globe, etc.  I can't tell you how many fifth graders have no clue what the difference between a city, state, and country are. So this is a story I plan to read even with 4th and 5th graders.  I would follow this up by having students draw a map of their room, their street, maybe their journey to school.  Then, you could follow that up by studying maps of the state and country. Before students can really jump into studying history, they need these foundations of perspective, geography, and map skills. One of my goals the next week is to work on some map skills activities to share.

Writing Inspiration: A Journey

My writing inspiration for this week is inspired by this idea of geography and map skills. 

Poem: You could easily use my first text suggestion as your poetry for the week as the book is written in rhyme.  You could always have students write their own poem about a journey they have taken and pair it with drawing a map of that journey. Or even consider describing a journey a character in a book took and drawing a map.

Another obvious poem suggestion would be The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.  I have actually shared this poem before, but it is one of my favorites so I will probably use it more than once a year in my own classroom. This poem lends itself to such great imagery and discussion.

Quote:  I liked this quote because I think we all live such busy lives it is easy to be so caught up in everything we are trying to achieve.  Sometimes we need to slow down and enjoy the moment - the process.  I also find it a great reminder as a teacher to remember that for students it is about teaching them a thinking process and not about creating a final product.

Picture:  Last year I went to Napa with my mom and got to take a hot air balloon ride.  This is one of the pictures I took.  This to me is full of such great writing potential it does not need much explanation. The sky is the limit!

Tomorrow morning, I am going on my own little mini-journey to see my dad for the day in Houston, equipped with young adult books on CD from the library. (I finally am going to read listen to Gregor the Overlander.)  I hope you have a wonderful Thursday.  I am going to try that whole scheduling a post thing for tomorrow, so let's see how that works. :)

Writing Inspiration on Freedom and some History Text Suggestions

When I was in elementary school, I wrote lots of poetry. I found it to be a good outlet for my emotions. Somewhere along the way I stopped writing unless it was required. I have always loved learning and hungered for knowledge and opportunities to explore the imagination.

Someday I hope to be an author of children’s novels. I absolutely love juvenile and young adult literature. Books were my escape through adolescence, high school, college, various jobs, etc. I love the idea of being a writer because I want to open myself to creativity and new places and let characters guide me through their adventures.

However, making writing a priority and finding time for it is difficult. We all live such busy lives now. I also want to eat better and consistently exercise. Dreams of becoming proficient with my DSLR camera and capturing amazing photos also reside in my lists of goals.

I decided to start blogging to connect – to connect with other educators, best practices, new ideas, inspiration, my own creativity, and the writer within. I’m not sure if I will ever really make the time to become a children’s author, but I love that with blogging things I write can have immediate impact and feedback. The ideas and thoughts we share can be implemented by teachers far and wide and impact children the world over. That is a powerful thing. Here our words and ideas can have a legacy through the inspiration and collaboration we have as a community.

I am so deeply grateful for this little virtual backpack and the outlet it is providing. I can create and share and inspire and be moved all at the same time. You are all amazing, and I just want you to know that I appreciate you.

On this Fourth of July, I have found freedom here in this community of bloggers – freedom to express and share and grow and be excited instead of overwhelmed.

I have decided to start some weekly series of ideas to share with you.  Tuesdays I will share History text recommendations, Wednesdays I will share writing inspiration on various topics, and Thursdays I will share Science text recommendations. (Note: The frames for my weekly series are from the 3am Teacher.)

A Writing Inspiration wall was something I did in my classroom.  Each week I shared a quote, picture, and poem that we discussed and students used for inspiration in their journal writing.  It opens up the floor for great discussion and gets students to use their critical thinking skills.

For my writing inspiration for this week, I chose the topic freedom since today is July 4th.

Poem: "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou.

This is a great poem to discuss metaphor and extended metaphor.  I love the idea of using a free bird and a caged bird for the ideas of freedom.  As a class, you could discuss the imagery and what people will do for freedom.  What does it feel like to be caged?  Why do people value freedom?  Why did America's founders declare their independence?

Quote(s):

I liked all of these quotes so I decided to share all of them.  You can download a copy here.  The idea is to discuss the meaning of the quotes with your students.  They could write about what they think quotes mean, they could write a story about freedom, or they could write about freedom means to them.  The idea is to allow your students to use the quotes, pictures, and poems to inspire their writing and get them to think outside the box.

Picture:  Porch picture with flags

I saw this picture at Hobby Lobby so I took a picture with my phone.  I loved it.  This could open up so many wonderful writing ideas.  Who do the rockers belong to?  Why are there so many rockers?  Whose porch might it be?

Now yesterday, I ran out of time to share my history text suggestions.  So today on Wednesday, July 4 here is my "Tons of History Tuesday."

My goal is to share nonfiction texts, biographies, picture books, novels, and graphic novels on a topic each week.  For this week because of July 4, I chose the American Revolution era as my topic. I get all my books at the library that I use for read alouds usually (except the novels).

Biography: They called her Molly Pitcher by Anne Rockwell

This is a great book to discuss the story of Mary Hays "Molly Pitcher" and how she spent the day carrying her pitcher of water to wounded soldiers and fired the canon when her husband couldn't.  It illustrates the difficulties of war and battle and the bravery of women and soldiers.  If you needed a short story to illustrate some of what the battles were like and discuss bravery, this is a great picture biography to do that.  I would probably recommend this book for grades 3 and up.  The AR level is 5.4.

Picture book: John, Paul, George, and Ben by Lane Smith

This would be a fabulous book to introduce a study of famous people in the Revolutionary era.  The story introduces John Hancock, Paul Revere, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson as if they were children in a classroom and outlines each of their personality traits and how they each drove people crazy for various reasons.  Later, it briefly explains why those traits came in handy.  This is a great text to discuss inferencing and character traits.  The AR level on this book is 3.7, but I think you could use it with any grade. 

Novel: Mr. Revere and I by Robert Lawson

This is a wonderful novel written from the point of view of Paul Revere's horse.  It explains the events that were happening in Boston and the details of that famous midnight ride. The vocabulary is challenging.  It can be a difficult novel to find so I would use it as a read aloud.  The vocabulary is challenging, so you will have to stop and discuss what it happening in the novel.  I would recommend it for grades 5-8.  This book is great for discussion of events and point of view.  The AR level is 7.5, but I have read this book aloud to a fifth grade class.  It just took a lot of discussion.

Graphic Novel: The Top Secret Adventure of John Darragh - Revolutionary War Spy by Peter and Connie Roop

This graphic novel is part of the History Kids Heroes series. The AR level is 3.0. This graphic novel discusses the ways people could be spies and how they passed messages.  I would probably have a class discussion to infer how John was feeling carrying the message.  You could discuss what would have happened had been caught.  Why might people have taken to the risk of being a spy?  What might have been their motivations?

Tomorrow I will share a Science text.  When I can, I will try to make some printables to share with you or tie these recommended texts to specific standards.  At the least though, I will share some books I think would make great texts to add to your Science and Social Studies curriculums and what types of reading skills I would focus on with each one.

Hope your July 4th has been relaxing and full of family, friends, and fun.

Inspiration for a Gratitude Attitude

I have so many things I want to post on.  I had such great feedback on my teacher quick reference  planner and everyone seemed to love having ideas for organization that I plan on sharing more organization tips this week.  I also want to share some ideas on writing notebooks.

However, just now I read a post that inspired me as she always does.  I have been reading 1000 Gifts as I work on finding joy through seeking gratitude.  I know I am a worrier and often guilty of letting myself get overwhelmed with to-do-lists. 

I have been trying to keep my gratitude list. In 1000 Gifts, Ann Voskamp encourages you to count toward 1000 gifts in a year by counting 3 a day. Sometimes I let myself get busy and I forget. So I made a little weekly reminder to count thanks before counting to-do's. It does wonders for your attitude. Happy Wednesday, and I hope this helps you have a summer filled with a gratitude attitude.

You can download a copy here.

Check out Ann Voskamp's post today on How to Live your Best Life.

Weekly Inspiration: Stress and Relaxation

I am excited about my giveaway and my new followers. For those of you that are new, I thought I would summarize one of weekly posting traditions.  Each week (usually on Monday), I post my "Weekly Inspiration."  This was something I did in classroom.  I had a Weekly Inspiration wall where each week I posted a picture, poem, and quote.  We would discuss these and the students used them as inspiration for their writing.  (You can see where I posted my "Weekly Inspiration" in the corner.)

I did this to foster creativity and critical thinking.  I believe it is important for students to be able to respond to different sources of inspiration and not just always use writing prompts or a summary of their day. We used the inspiration for our daily journal writing.  We still also completed larger writing projects throughout the year.  Here was my original post on my Weekly Writing Inspiration.

Here on my blog I have continued the tradition.  Each week I post a quote, a picture, and a poem (often around a central theme) I hope some of you will use in your classrooms.  I offer different things you could discuss with your class for each one.  Part of the reason I also feel passionate about my weekly writing inspiration is that I think it is important for students to be exposed to poetry.  I think often we have students write poetry, but do not spend enough time reading poetry.  Part of the difficulty is finding poems that are appropriate for children.  Poetry is a wonderful tool to teach imagery, visualization, fluency, and figurative language.  One of my goals is to start making more handouts, activities, and questions to accompany the poems I share each week.

For this week since many of you are out of school or finishing up, I chose the theme of stress and relaxation.  Make sure you take some time to take a deep breath and unwind before conquering all those summer projects.  I have been keeping a gratitude journal lately (most of the time) and it has really helped me let go of so much stress.  (For tips on joy and gratitude, I follow Ann Voskamp's blog: www.aholyexperience.com).

Weekly Inspiration: Stress and Relaxation

Quote: I found this little collection of quotes on stress and relaxation and liked them all, so I have decided to share all of them.  You can download a copy here.

Poem: "I Left My Head" by Lillian Moore
This is a super cute poem.  I would definitely have my students draw what they visualize with this poem.  It could definitely prompt some great discussion on what the poet meant "when she left her head."  When have we all felt this way?  (FYI: I provide links to the poems, but don't copy the text because I don't want to violate copyright laws.)

Picture: I love the idea of just going for a bike ride and enjoying the day and the sunshine.  Just let go, breathe, and enjoy. (Source: Pinterest)

For the rest of the summer, I may not exactly post the writing inspiration for students each week.  I might try to focus on sharing inspiration for teachers.  I will still probably include some quotes and pictures, but I want to share some great ideas and inspiration for planning for next year.

I think another great source of inspiration this summer is going to be the "Monday Made It" linkies at 4th Grade Frolics.  Check it out for some great ideas!  I know I am looking forward to scoping them all out.

Don't forget about my giveaway and my linky party for teaching with themes.  I really would love to hear how others are using themes in their classrooms.

Memorial Day Ideas and Writing Inspiration

I have been trying to finish this post for like 3 days.  So finally in time: Happy Memorial Day!

Times like Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, and 9/11 are great opportunities with your students to discuss everyday heroes. Last year for 9/11 we talked about heroes and created quilt squares to remember 9/11. This was an activity from Scholastic. After the students designed their quilt squares, I glued them all to construction paper and laminated them.  There are a couple pictures below to show you some of them.  The students really enjoyed seeing their quilt squares displayed in the hallway. I have made a Memorial Day quilt square freebie that you can download at my TpT store.

If you are still in school and need some other Memorial Day ideas, here are some great ideas I found on different websites:

You can find all sorts of links and printables at Apples for the Teacher.

There are tons of great ideas at Education World: lesson plan ideas and activities like making a Memorial Day book, windsock, and internet scavenger hunt.

Here is a list of Memorial Day books for kids at Apples 4 the Teacher.

Here is a list of Patriotic themes and activities at Scholastic.

Here is an article on Memorial Day from Time for Kids.

Lots of printables at Teacher Vision.

Now Writing Inspiration for Memorial Day

To go with the writing inspiration this week, I have made a Hero Writing Packet that is on sale at my TpT store as part of the Memorial Day "Sale"abration.  It includes the quotes, the poem, questions on the poem, a paper to think what it means to be a hero, a prewriting graphic organizer, and lined paper for students to write about their personal hero. There is lined paper for young students and older students.

Picture: Graves at Arlington Cemetary (Source is Wikipedia)

Discuss why it is important to remember the fallen.  What did they die to protect?  I think it is important for students to remember these holidays are about more than parades, flags, sunny days, and cookouts.

Poem: "The Heroes We Never Name" by M. Lucille Ford
I think this is a really great poem to prompt discussion about everyday heroes and what makes a hero.

Quotes:  Heroes
I found several really great quotes for Memorial Day and to think about what it is to be a hero. 

(The quotes are framed by frames from the 3am Teacher)


Blessings and Happy Memorial Day!