Mentor Text: How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans

                                         

This past summer, I was fortunate enough to participate in the local chapter of The National Writing Project. This awakened a love of writing and teaching writing that I did not know I possessed. One part of teaching writing that I have come to love is finding mentor text to inspire writers, who, like myself, have not developed confidence in their writing skills yet. 

How Martha Saved her Parents from Green Beans is a perfect story to inspire stories and creativity in writing. It has such a funny and accessible story line, my students could not wait to begin their own story inspired by this book. Some examples of stories they are working on are:

How Shahad Saved Her Parents From Chicken Wings

How Ellie Saved Her Mom from Green Beans

How Maysa Saved Her Parents from Peas

This book was a welcomed addition to my classroom library! 

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you Reading is a meme began by Sheila at Book Journeys as a way to share what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and what is in store for the upcoming week. Jen Vincent, of Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee and Ricki of Unleashing Readers use the inspiration to host a kidlit focused link up every Monday. 

This is my first time linking up to #IMWAYR and I cannot be more excited! Last week, I read some fabulous books. As a third grade teacher, I am always on the lookout for books appropriate for third graders. This can provide tricky at times, but I definitely read some great ones last week. These are some of my favs (in no particular order). 

I absolutely LOVED The Chicken Squad. I thought it was the perfect short chapter book with awesome picture support for some of my struggling readers. And could the topic be any more engaging?! I'm always a chicken book fan. If you are interested in reading more about my love for this book, head over to my blog post about it. 

I have been rather IMpatiently awaiting the third installment of the LULU series so I was so excited to grab this book Tuesday! Judith Viost did not disappoint in the newest book, LULU's Mysterious Mission.  I did struggle to get used to the new illustrator in this book, but after adjusting, I fell in love with the story. Lulu goes on a mission to get rid of her new babysitter and along the way finds out a secret that has her scheming again! A great addition to our classroom library. 

Everyone has that author/illustrator who they would walk on hot coals to meet. Well Dan Santat is that person for me- which is why this is one of my favorite moments:

Or maybe this....

This is why I was beyond excited to get my hands on his new story. I knew it was going to be a favorite even before I got it. Dan Santat's inspiration for this book was his son, and you can feel that in the text and pictures throughout the book. The Adventures of Beekle is the beautiful story of an imaginary friend who goes in search of his person. And if loving the book wasn't enough, my students went WILD when I showed it to them. (They may have inherited a little of my crazy when it comes to Dan)

Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald was my surprise book of the week. I had ordered it after hearing about it at MRA this year. I had had it for a few weeks, but hadn't got around to it. Finally, this weekend, as I was lazily lounging in the gorgeous weather, I grabbed it mostly because it was close and I wasn't about to go hunting. Well that was one of the best decisions because I fell in love with this book! I immediately felt attached to the main character, Theo, who was such an eccentric little girl with a resilient spirit. Then I fell in love with the story, which has roots in World War II. The history nerd in me just about fell over when I realized what the story was actually about. I have heard this book described as Chasing Vermeer meets From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Check it out- it does not disappoint!

This Weeks Reads:

 

 

  

So, what are YOU reading today??

Celebrate: March Book Madness

                           

                      

I love Twitter for so many reasons. One of which is the ability to have 1 min PD from a community of brilliant educators any time. So when I saw this tweet from Tony Keefer, I was very intrigued:

                                     

 I have always been a huge March Madness fan and a huge book fan. The combination of these two had my mind blown! I couldn't wait to get started. Well this week we had out championship vote. Here is my list of celebrations for March Book Madness 2014: 

1. My classroom is across from the bathrooms. The books we chose had maximum exposure and even some students coming in to ask if they could read them. Many times, I would walk out of my room to kids staring at the books or having discussions with other about them. 

2. After our initial seeding, some books were ranked low because students judged by their cover. Those were some of the books that went the furthest. Hopefully a valuable lesson!

3. The students became so invested in the books they wanted to win. Both a good thing and a bad thing. When their book lost, they took it a little to hard!

4. The deeper thinking the kids did about the books never ceased to amaze me! They would try to reason against popular books being up against other popular books. Their excuses ranged from genres not matching, to the same illustrator going up against one another, to a "think and feel" book up against a funny book. When they are trying to passionately convince others of their opinion, their thinking becomes so much deeper!

5. The noise level in the classroom at the time of the championship vote was out of control! I have never felt a quiet room was necessary and the louder the better in certain cases. This was one of those cases. People walking by couldn't help but stop and stare. 

6. Though there could only be one winner, I know all the books were winners in each child's heart. 

These are just some of our celebrations. I can't wait to make this an annual tradition in my classroom!