Pushing Through

My bones are creaking this morning, from too many days in a row of getting up and down ladders and hefting books and heavy boxes and crawling around on my hands and knees picking up random detritus, all in an effort to get the school library ready for academic prime time.  It was a mess, and now it is much better, but my body is much worse for the wear this year.

After the last year and a half of breast cancer treatment, my muscle tone is shot and my body has, unfortunately, gotten used to a much lower level of activity.  My usual ability to push through is still there intellectually:  the spirit is definitely willing, but the body is way, way too weak for what my mind thinks that I can do.

Irritating.

The good news is that I could still get things done, and my room looks wonderful and is almost ready for students.  I still have some shelves to clean and books to reorganize, but overall it is looking really good at the moment.

Today will be a partial rest day.  There is laundry to do and kitchen cleaning to catch up on, although Mr. ReddHedd helped tremendously yesterday by doing dishes and a lot of laundry while The Peanut and I were at school working on my room.  The day to day doesn't stop while extra stuff gets piled on, but this year we have managed to muddle through it without too much impact at home.

We've begun making more healthy food choices in earnest, and I can feel it making a difference in me, even with the achy knees this morning.  So that's a good thing.  I have eaten more veggies this week than I have in a long while, and it has made a difference in mental sharpness, even though it hasn't shown up on the scales just yet.  Can't expect an overnight miracle, but I am happy with the direction we're going at the moment.

As in most things in life, the key appears to be pushing through whatever barrier decides to throw itself into your path on any given day. 

More Fun With Library Signage

After several requests, it became clear to me that there was interest in more of the library signs I put together yesterday.  Above is the one with Katniss from The Hunger Games.  The rest of the signs will follow.

I like to mix these up over the course of the school year, so there is something fresh every couple of weeks as they come in to class and to check out a new book. 

For each of the ones featured here, if you click on the picture, it should take you to a larger size that you could print off for your own classroom.

As I make more of these for my library, I'll try to share them for other teachers to be able to use them as well.  Am trying to come up with signs that will work for a broad range of ages -- from preK-3 to 6th graders -- and will also catch their interest in reading. 

I would like to come up with more literary-related ideas as well, so if you have a book character you'd like to suggest, I'll see if I can put something fun together in terms of a reading promotion sign.

Having Fun With Library Signs

This morning, I've had some serious fun playing around with new ideas for library signs.  Every year, I like to add a little new spice to the mix, to keep things fun and fresh for the kids.

So far, I've created the one above with Anna and Elsa from Frozen, a minion going bananas for books from Despicable Me, a photo of Katniss being hungry for books from Hunger Games, and a "kneel, puny human, some of the best books are on the lower shelves!" Loki sign from the Thor and Avengers movies.  (Thank you, Pinterest!)

There will be more to come, I'm certain, but that's enough for one day.

My plan is to do more with children's book characters, when I can think of something pithy to make a pun or elicit a giggle.  Anything to interest the kids in reading more, right?

In any case, if you click on the sign above, you can get a full sized sign to print out for your own school library. 

Any ideas for future signs?  Please do share in the comments!  I promise I'll try to share what I make as I get new ones done.

Teaching History Through The National Parks

As a year-end, wrap-up social studies unit, my class is about to embark on an exploration of America's National Park system. 

My plan is to use this to talk about the expansion westward before and after the Civil War, a bit of Native American history, immigration, the Industrial Revolution and the environmental movement that grew in response to it.  It is a LOT of ground to cover for an end of the year discussion, so I'm trying to wrap it in the cloak of something really interesting for the kids by using the National Parks as my bait on the history and geography hooks.

After scouring the internet, I have found some lesson plans and materials available online through the Library of Congress, PBS and the Ken Burns' National Parks documentary series, and on the National Geographic website as well.

Most of the material, however, is not quite what I wanted.  So I'm having to cobble together an entire unit plan, pulling all the disparate pieces together into a more coherent whole, and adding my own material to them as I go along. 

Why, oh why, do I get these ideas and then do this to myself every single time? 

It's a gift and a curse, I suppose, but I do think the kids will learn a lot about American geography and history and even get to see a bit of beautiful scenery and wildlife (on film and in photos, at least) in the process. 

A Moment of Gratitude

Just a note to say thank you to everyone who has used the Amazon search link in the right-hand column to order anything.

Your generosity in orders, over the course of this past year, has enabled me to get several mythology books for the unit that I have been teaching to my 5th and 6th grade library students.  It has also helped me to get some materials for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for my current 5th grade class.  AND 4 new books to read for fun for the library collection as well.

So thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

Please consider using the Amazon link on this blog for future purchases.  It really does make a difference for my classroom!

Pottering Around

Toward the end of the school year, the kids get a little restless:  the weather warms, the sunshine beckons, and keeping a classroom full of pre-adolescents engaged can be rough on the best of days.  This year, after so much snow and ice and arctic blasts of deadly frigid air and cabin fever, that is proving to be true already.

They simply want to be outside in the fresh air.

Frankly, I can't blame them, because I feel the same way.  This winter has been brutal, and we are all longing for some flowers and leaves and fun.

So, in anticipation of this summer break antsy pantsy-ness only growing as the calendar moves forward, I am planning a bit of fun for the end of school that will, I hope, keep everyone engaged while we attempt to still learn a little something.  If nothing else, I'll have some fun with it, but I do hope the kids do as well.

We had planned on having a Harry Potter party for The Peanut this year for her 11th birthday.   While we were at Universal on vacation, we picked up some fun items to use for invitations that you can only get in Hogsmeade, and had planned a surprise way to deliver the invitations by "owl post."  (Bless you, people on Pinterest, for your genius ideas!)

Rather than let all my pins and internal planning go to waste, I've decided to use it for the amusement of my class instead.  Will be posting some ideas as I firm them up, but I wanted to throw out to the crowd the fact that I'm looking for some great, educational ways to use the Harry Potter theme in the classroom over a two week stretch.

Figuring the last two weeks of the year will be a lost cause, am trying to come up with a way to make that not be the case.  Perhaps it is naive of me to think this can be accomplished, but you can't blame a girl for trying, can you?

Any thoughts on ways to do actual lesson planning in a Harry Potter context?

Am thinking about setting this up so that they have "wizarding" classes each day instead of our regular ones.  But I haven't quite figured out how to morph our regular classes into the wizarding ones just yet.  Things I have contemplated thus far:

Finding Your Voice Is So Important

One of the movies I truly love is The King's Speech. The universal humanity of the film -- the quest to find your own voice, whatever the odds or obstacles -- is so compelling, and the vulnerability and determination that Colin Firth injects into his character is perfect.

All the major performances in the film are wonderfully done, and I highly recommend watching it.  That is especially true if you have a stammerer or a shy, non-verbal child in your midst.  Or if you know someone who was that child at some point in the past.

They get it right, down to the inaccurate assumptions and outright nastiness of the people around Bertie who have no patience for his verbal pauses.

The above YouTube shows a similar awakening for a student in England, whose teacher had seen the film and tried the method of playing music via headphone while his student was trying to speak.  The results are nothing short of miraculous for the student, and the end is guaranteed to make you sniffle a little bit.  Well worth watching this.

What struck me was something the teacher was saying before the boy goes down to speak in the auditorium, that he had ended up at that particular school, the one where he found the help he needed to find his voice, because he had been so severely bullied in his prior school.  That out of a bad situation was this miracle made.

Serendipity often has a way of finding us when we need it to the most, doesn't it?

A Thank You Of Mythic Proportions

We have begun our Greek mythology unit for the 5th and 6th grades, and it is thus far pretty exciting for the kids.  Any time I can get 10 to 12 year olds this revved up about reading classical literature in any form it makes me really happy.

You know what else makes me happy?

Being able to buy some classroom materials through the Amazon money generated from this little blog.  So a HUGE thank you to everyone who has used the Amazon link at the right hand side -- here's what I got with your help:

- Oh My Gods!: A Look-it-Up Guide to the Gods of Mythology (Mythlopedia) -- this has "10 to 12 year olds will love this!" written all over it. Can't wait for the kids to dive into this.

- Greek Myth Plays: 10 Readers Theater Scripts Based on Favorite Greek Myths -- can't wait to do the one on Atalanta with the kids before the winter olympics begin this year.

So thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, to one and all for any purchases you have made here.  It really does add up for my classroom and I am incredibly grateful for your support.

I am also very happy to report that my horrible cold/bronchitis/ick has finally begun to diminish, thanks to a hefty application of various prescription medications and an attempt to actually get a little rest.

A special note of thanks to the reader who sent me a box of English tea from my wish list when I was in the throes of chemo -- it really has been the gift that keeps on giving, and has been an enormous comfort through this ick as well.  You are a sweetheart!

Library Lesson Plan: Kevin Henkes And Chrysanthemum

Today has been a big project on Kevin Henkes wonderful book, Chrysanthemum. I have wanted to do a library unit on this book for a while because it is such a wonderful read

It also presents a lot of opportunities for in class discussions for younger and older kids alike, opening a number of intriguing avenues for kids to stop and really think:  about actions and consequences, about their own feelings and those of other people as well, about the incredibly clever use of language that Kevin Henkes incorporates in this book in terms of description and action, and all sorts of other interesting bits and pieces.

For my younger students, I found a wonderfully put together discussion packet on story elements and construction that we'll use.  You can download it for free at Teachers Pay Teachers, and print it off to use for your own classes, too.  (Don't you love the word "free"?)

I am also working on a poster-sized drawing of Chrysanthemum, which I will use to talk about Henkes' wonderfully descriptive language and about good and bad behaviors and choices of the various characters in the book.

An example of something similarly done can be found at Pencils, Glue and Tying Shoes -- loved this poster, and am doing a similar one for my classroom.  But I'll be using some post-it notes that I found that are already die-cut in the shape of flowers to show "good" versus "bad" words from the story, in some form or another (still working on just how I will do this).

But for my older students, I wanted a discussion that was more in depth.  Since I couldn't find exactly what I wanted anywhere online, I created my own little lesson bits and pieces.  Thought they might be a useful jumping off point for others out there as well.

Monsters University Rules

The movie is certainly a hoot for the younger set, but I'm talking about actual rules and regs.

After a couple of years of vacant stares and blank faces at a straight up discussion of rules for the school library, I've taken some liberties with stills from Monsters University and crafted a slide presentation on my school mini iPad themed to pix from the movie.  The Librarian in the film was just too fun.

Today is the debut of the newly presented rules.  We'll see if they are more enjoyable to discuss this way.

Part of me is looking forward to the giggles from the kids, and part of me is wondering if the fun of this will ruin the whole "rules" portion of the rules discussion due to said giggling.

Guess we'll see...it's always a fine line between finding a way to teach in an entertaining way and just entertaining without actually teaching, isn't it?

A Grateful Thank You

Taking a moment to say a grateful thank you to all of my readers who have helped me to get a number of new books and materials for my school library.  You guys rock!

Every time you use an Amazon link in one of my posts, or use the Amazon search feature in the right-hand column, to order books or other items, I get a small percentage of your purchase price in my Amazon account.  This has helped me to get a number of the mythology books and materials I will be using this coming school year, as well as several books for story time and for the kids to check out of our library.

It is such an enormous help to me to have a little "pocket change" for extras.  It hasn't been a huge amount, but it has certainly made a difference for my students nonetheless.

So thank you, thank you, thank you!

If you like any of the information or writing you have perused here, please consider using my Amazon search in the right-hand column to find your purchases.  Every little bit helps with my little library!

Library Reading Promotion: Adorable Westie "Hot Reads" Sign

Putting our adorable westie to work for my library, this is my latest reading promotion idea.  If nothing else, it will get the kids to ooh and ahh at the adorableness of the westie and perhaps take a peek at the books on either side of the sign.

Here's hoping!

Am planning on placing a couple of books out each week -- one for early readers, one for older ones -- on book stands that will showcase the books for the kids, along with the adorable pooch sign above.  As much as possible, I want to use books that I have read, so if the kids have questions I will be able to talk from my own reading experience.

I do genuinely try to make an effort to read as many books as possible in our library so that I honestly can speak from my own reading experience with the students.  I find that an authentic, personal recommendation always works better than an "I've heard it is good" variety, especially with the older kids who like to talk about the book as they are reading and find it annoying to have to catch me up.

By switching the recommended books out weekly or bi-weekly (depending on how much time I have to throw together book talks on the fly as the school year gets rolling), I am really hoping it will allow for a bit more interest from the kids about the books that are highlighted.  Because it will allow me a short book talk about the books with my classes as well, we can also discuss information about genres, authors, series, and all sorts of other assorted goodies along the way.

I got the sign idea from the wonderful Igniting a Passion for Reading: Successful Strategies for Building Lifetime Readers by Steven Layne.  There are so many great ideas for reading promotion in this book, and I find myself referring back to it often for another spark of inspiration in a classroom activity or to try to help a reluctant reader find some enthusiasm.

Thought this might be a fun idea for others to use, too.

Pondering Chrysanthemum

Kevin Henkes, one of my favorite children's book authors, wrote a wonderful tale about a little mouse named Chrysanthemum that I absolutely love.  In the book, there are great examples of teasing which open up an entire avenue of discussion with kids about how they feel when they get teased or bullied, and what behavior is and is not acceptable and why.

It is a short story, filled with lovely little pictures, and a lot of meaning built into a very simple little storyline:  Chrysanthemum loves her name until the other kids start to tease her about it being different, and then she feels badly and hurt and ashamed, until her teacher tells her how wonderful it is to have a unique name...and then things get better.  It is the sort of short story that makes for a wonderful start to the year, if the kids all take it to heart, because you can then refer back to it when a student is acting badly in a "remember how that made Chrysanthemum feel" sort of way.

I have been thinking about using Chrysanthemum as my beginning of the year story for my classes for that reason. 

But how to use it effectively is the question, as a lead in for the classroom rules and as a larger discussion about making smarter choices in and out of school.

Conquering The Dust Bunnies?

Another day, another attempt at conquering the dust and decorating as long as my legs will hold out.  Chemo has sapped my will to be the Energizer bunny of room readiness:  I just can't go forward through the tired like I used to be able to do.

Am certain it will come back over time, but, wow!, is it inconvenient at the moment.

In better news, my room is actually beginning to look like a functioning library again.  Today, The Peanut will be helping me decorate and there will be much, much more dusting in my future.

With Open House looming tomorrow night, it is going to be an all out sprint today, I'm afraid.  Hope your day is a wonderful one!

Another Day, Another Slog

Lots of dusting, cleaning and straightening to do today and the whole of the week.  With, perhaps, a smattering of decorating if I can get time to spruce things up with a little more color.

School begins on Friday with an Open House.

If you need me, I'll be wiping down a dusty bookshelf or twelve...

Caught Between The Scylla And Charybdis

A little Sting is a good way to start the day...

Lots more library lesson plans to do today.  I have planning mostly done for the older kids for an extended unit on mythology, and completely done for the little ones who will be learning basics like ABC order and library procedures and behavior, in and around getting loads of fun story time reading from me.  (Did I mention that I have dug up a pretty pink sparkly crown to wear for story time?  Here's hoping it doesn't pop off my wig...)

Today's work will be to firm up the first nine weeks lesson plans for the kids in the middle.  Hopefully, by the end of today, I'll have the entire first nine weeks mapped out well and ready to go.

Sometime this week, I promise to take some pictures of how I have redone my lesson plan binders and to put up a whole slew of ideas for other folks to use if they need them. 

The way that I have done my planning this year allows me to easily move things around week to week if the kids need an extended lesson on a particular topic. 

Am trying to make certain that we cover a lot of ground so that all of my curriculum requirements are met.  But I am not willing to sacrifice comprehension for speed, so I've built in the ability to go over the same ground if I need to do so by using interchangeable notebook pages that I can move around as needed to reinforce areas where I see that the kids need that.

The awesome part of doing things this way is that I will have a complete set of lesson plans for the year by the end of this, which I can then tweak as I go in the years to come.  It is a lot of work at the front end, but that is going to pay off in the best way as I move forward.

So far, I am really loving this set-up.  Only time will tell in the teaching on how it works for the long haul, though.

Mythology Morning

Feeling pretty proud of myself this morning: woke up and put together a card matching game of mythological monsters from Greek myths, complete with illustrative pictures.  Have been working on lesson plans all week and trying to come up with fun ways to get my students excited about this mythology unit.

I also plan to put together a Jeopardy game using a cheapie shower curtain liner, some 3x5 cards and ziploc baggies.  But that may have to wait until after I have gotten my room ready for Open House next week.

Dusting, organizing and decorating my classroom have to take priority for the moment. 

It is the final sprint to the start of the school year.  It is going to be so great to see all the kids and get back into my normal routine after this summer of chemo.  I miss what used to be normal, and it is high time I reclaimed some of that equilibrium that I used to take for granted.

In the meantime, though, I'll be putting together some more ideas for teaching my 4th, 5th and 6th graders about mythology.  Thank you, Rick Riordan, for your brilliant Percy Jackson series.  

If I play my teaching cards right, I'm going to have a whole lot of kids reading it this year.  That would make me very happy indeed.

Radiation Begins Today

It begins.  Again.

Radiation treatments will start for me this morning and I have the temporary tattoo markers to show for it:  they use them as guides so the targeted beam hits the right spot every time.   Oh yeah, I'm a rebel, I have three tattoos.  (You have to squint to see them, but still...I want the street cred.  I think I've earned it at this point and then some.)

Looks like I will have a series of thirty-three treatments in total, five days a week, every single week for almost seven weeks until they are completed, with weekends off to heal a little.  Each treatment should last about twenty minutes.

Oh joy.

It could be a whole lot worse, so I am grateful to be here and not in hospice.  Let me just say that up front.  But this has been an exhausting slog and it is not done yet.  How do parents of small children ever explain all of this to them as they go through treatment?

The staff at the UHC Cancer Center have been fantastic all the way through this.  Am so glad that they had great facilities near our house, so that I didn't have to go far away for treatment -- that would have been incredibly rough on The Peanut and she's been through enough this summer with me as it is.

But life goes on, even if our summer has whizzed by in nothing flat and not been all that relaxing.  For us, school begins again next week.

Where did the summer go, seriously??!!??

We still have school supplies to pick up and a few assorted school clothing items to snag, so somewhere today I will be taking The Peanut to shop if at all possible so we can avoid the weekend insanity of the back to school frenzy.  Somehow, in the next week or so, I also have to get my classroom ready for the kids to return.

Or, at least, as ready as I can under the circumstances.

Library Lesson Plans Begin Anew

It's that time of year again:  the library lesson planning has begun anew, and I am knee deep in plotting our path through the upcoming school year.  A lot of the planning is already done from the last two years -- two years already! -- but there are tweaks and improvements that I want to make before school begins next month.

For example, I've decided to put all of my planning into four individual notebooks, divided by nine weeks sessions.

Each notebook will contain all the lesson plans for the nine weeks grading period, and be segmented by grade level work:  Pre-K through 1st grade have one section; 2nd and 3rd grade have another; and then 4th, 5th and 6th grade together have the last segment.  In this way, I can plan story times for the little ones, beginning activities for the middle learners, and more difficult skills development and use activities for the older ones.

The first three weeks will still follow the basic outline that I worked with from last year.  But I'm debating tweaking it, potentially, with some new books and new perspectives.

A new book I am considering:  Kevin Henkes wonderful Chrysanthemum, for its lessons on manners, respect for others and the impact of bullying.  The story may end up coming later in the year, but it is such an adorable way to get an important discussion going.  Am trying to figure out how to work it in at the beginning instead of waiting until later.  We'll see.

Last year, near the beginning of the year, I did a lesson on taking care of your books by talking with the kids about why animals should not check out library books.  It was a fun way to talk about what to do -- and what NOT to do -- with your books from the library:  no drinks, no tearing pages, no leaving it open to crack the spine, etc., but told from the perspective of porcupines, dogs, cats, and messy rhinos.

The little kids especially loved it, and spent weeks afterward telling me stories about animals that they kept away from their books.  It was too cute, and it helped get my point across in a giggly way.  We don't have much of a budget for our little library, so taking good care of our books is really important.

In The Planning Stages

Last summer, I spent hours upon hours piddling around on Pinterest, pulling ideas from all over the place for activities and learning tools for the school library. The problem for me was finding time to make all of those ideas into actual worksheets or activity bins for the kids.

That takes a lot of time and effort:  translating a random idea into a practical, hands on item for kids at varying age and ability levels doesn't just happen automatically.

The good news is that there are a lot of ideas floating around on blogs, pinterest and elsewhere that are really helpful springboards to coming up with great ideas for the kids that I teach.  But how to organize those ideas into real, working, teachable units is a work in progress for me.

My goal is to just work through them, bit by bit, over the next few weeks, and see where I end up by the time the start of school arrives. 

One of the things I am hoping to revamp this summer is my lesson plans.  What I learned when I was diagnosed with breast cancer last spring is that I am not nearly prepared enough for someone else to take over library teaching duties, and that my lesson plans need to be clearer and more organized for that reason alone.

But I also stumbled across something incredibly useful:  by putting plans and worksheets/printables together in a week by week format for the library, all together in individual pocket sleeves in a binder, my life became infinitely simpler.