A Writerly Life: Wisdom from W. H. Auden
Apr 18
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Apr 13
Tools of the Trade: Reading Response Journal—Doing Away with the Study Guide in an Attempt to Avoid Readicide
By Kelly Virgin
Recently, while reading Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide for the Strategies for Teaching Literature course, one of the participants posed the following question: “How can we tell if we are over-planning and overteaching a text; how can we better self-monitor?” Another participant very wisely answered, “If we know every question we want to ask and every discussion we want to have before we even pick up the book with our students, then chances are we are over-planning and in danger of overteaching.” Kelly Gallagher argues that the overteaching of books leads to readicide because “…the overanalysis of books:
- prevents our students from experiencing the place where all serious readers want to be—the reading flow.
- creates instruction that values the trivial at the expense of the meaningful.
- spills over and damages our students’ chances of developing recreational reading habits.” (60)
When I think back to my first years of teaching, I know I was guilty of committing readicide time and time again. As a new teacher I felt panicky if I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go with every page of every novel. Read more
Apr 6
Teacher-to-Teacher: Poetry as Noticing
By Janice Ewing
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.Mary Oliver (from “Sometimes”)
These are among my favorite lines from Mary Oliver, and I think that these “instructions” apply to poetry, too. Once again we find ourselves in April, Poetry Month. Many of us have considered the value of giving poetry its special twelfth of the year, versus reading, writing and enjoying it all the time. This year, I’m feeling a little more mellow about that issue. I’ve come to believe that we can immerse ourselves and our students in poetry through all seasons, and still take the month of April to celebrate it with fun and fanfare. Read more
Books on the Blog: Maybe a Fox
Another installment of Books on the Blog with middle school librarian and media specialist Gabija Fischer!
Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt
Kathi Appelt tells of sisters and best friends, Jules and Sylvie, in her Maybe a Fox. Sylvie spends her days reminiscing about their mother who died long before Jules would even be able to remember her. Not only does Jules long to know their mother like Sylvie does, but she also longs to understand Sylvie’s own cryptic burning wish: to run faster. To Jules, Sylvie seems to run fast everywhere, even to places she is not supposed to like the Slip. Their father recites to them often, “Do not, under any circumstances, go near the Slip.” Read more
Mar 30
Reflections from an Author: Why Teachers Must Write (Guest Post)
By Frank Murphy
Recently, Lynne Dorfman wrote a Teacher to Teacher post about using my newest book, Take a Hike Teddy Roosevelt, as a mentor text to help guide the instruction of teachers of young writers. (Of course, I was, and still am, flattered!!) Soon after, on a Saturday in January, we co-presented on the same topic for some dedicated members of the Capital Reading Council in Harrisburg, PA.
In a nutshell, I started the event off by sharing the story of how Teddy became so dedicated to environmental conservation; then Lynne went about analyzing how she could use this book as a mentor text for elementary school student writers. (If you’ve never seen Lynne present – she’s like a literary surgeon on Skittles!!). She focused on many things, from strong verbs to exact nouns. Even artful sentence fragments! (I hope she thought that one was artful!) All of Lynne’s analysis forced me to recollect so much of the writing and rewriting and imagining of writing that I did over the last few years of constructing and crafting this book in collaboration with my editor, Anna Membrino. It also made me reflect on a recent lesson that I taught to my current sixth grade students that I’ll discuss later. Read more
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