What Are You Reading this Month?

 

"It's always something." (Gilda Radner as Roseanne Rosannadanna) Every day that we show up at school, ready to learn, is a cause for celebration. "...and everywhere was a song and a celebration." (Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Woodstock, baby.) Seriously, teachers, we can find something to celebrate in class every single day. The biggest celebration, of course, is when the imaginary light bulbs flash with new learning, with a newly converted reader for life, budding author, artist, mathematician, researcher, or maker. As teachers, we are part of those amazing moments all year long. And yet, if we seek other celebrations to bring a learning theme to our students, the calendar is filled with them. Here's year-long resource for an author birthday focus every month.
                
Read Across America Day was originally conceived to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss. You might have been wearing out your "Cat in the Hat" striped chapeau for all the Marches for as long as you've been teaching. Maybe your school focuses on Dr. Seuss, or maybe you just enjoy that celebration in your classroom. Maybe your own teacher tied a red bow around her neck every March, and the memories are filled with warm fuzzies. Or...maybe...you are ready for a new idea?

Did you know that Leo Dillon's birthday is March 2 also?  With his wife, Diane, Leo Dillon was the author/illustrator of forty beloved children's books. Many of the books will bring the concepts of diversity and world peace into your classroom. What a beautiful segue from February is Black History Month! Why not celebrate March is Reading Month this year with a fresh focus?

A favorite Dillon book of mine is If Kids Ran the World. My students were so fortunate to have the chance to meet this gentle and lovely couple before Leo's death in 2012, when they visited our school.  The mentoring for our future authors and illustrators was off the charts! If Kids Ran the World was the book they were working on at the time of Leo's passing.

In addition to the beautiful illustrations and words showing how the world would be a better place if we all cared  for others in the way these children do, this book effortlessly becomes a mentor text. This ready to teach resource from Rainbow City Learning will show you how. Happy Birthday, Leo Dillon!

Some other authors whose work will make for great sharing and inspiration any time of the year: Patricia Polacco, Eve Bunting, and Jacqueline Woodson. These are a few of my favorites, and my students have enjoyed many lessons for reading and writing led off by the works of these writers. 

Try The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco to see how the author's own mother was encouraged to love reading!

Share a read-aloud of The Wretched Stone by Chris Van Alsburg to prompt a discussion of all the things we might enjoy if we give up a little screen time. 

Of course, no month-long celebration is complete without a few official school-wide or grade-wide or even class-wide activities. Some of my favorites:

Hold a Read-In

In no way should this be confused with a clean your desk, grade papers, and enter data day. Wipe that thought from your mind. It's tempting for sure, but a read-in day where you participate right along with the kids is a golden opportunity to encourage a lifelong love of reading (like yours!). Only you can be the role model for that in your classroom. Sleeping bags, blankies, jammies, and pillows optional! My kids always liked making little fort areas under the desks for uninterrupted reading bliss!

Who doesn't love a Parade?

Ask your students to bring in their Radio Flyer or Little Tykes wagons to use as float carriers for a Parade of Books! (Think Macy's Thanksgiving or Disney any day, or The Rose Bowl Parade, but with books!)  Kids work in teams to create a float display (think giant diorama!) of a book. The team members dress as some of the characters as they accompany their float in a parade for school and community!

Spotlight on Books

Create a display with a fun place to leave comments/reviews about a book that the class shared as a class novel, book club choice, or read-aloud. Place a book cover in the center of the display, and kids write comments all around. Examples of fun places to leave comments: black construction paper with colored chalks, small white boards with wipe-off markers, plexiglass with window markers, fabric with glitter pens. I know your kids can  help you think of more! 

Recommended in Rainbow City

That's what we called ours, anyway! Start a weekly or monthly newsletter or blog section where kids can review books they have read and loved. It's a great resource for your students to clip and keep on hand for when they are browsing for new books to read. 

Book Trailers

Use your technology (iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, your favorite movie creator, or just your phones) to have your students create exciting trailers to "advertise" their favorite books. So many resources, directions, and examples of book trailers for kids in this post. (Just click on the director below!)

I loved sharing ideas for March is Reading Month with my podcasting friends, Tracy, Deann, and Kathie. Tune in to "We Teach So Hard" Episode 28 to hear what we came up with!

Happy, happy March! Hope you get to read something you love this month, too!

Read more about it!

March is Reading Month

Great Books to Use with Your Social Studies Curriculum

Celebrate Reading Month!

3 Ways to Keep Your Sanity for March is Reading Month

For more great ideas for the month ahead, be sure to visit all the blogs of Teacher Talk!

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts

that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials (to make your teacher life easier) at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

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A Great Read Aloud for February

 

She climbed in my lap, her fluffy curls tickling my chin, and grandsweetheart #6 and I began to devour our latest new book, Have I Ever Told You? by Shani King. What a delicious and inspirational read for home, with your own precious babies, or at school with your also precious students. (No longer an affiliate. I recommend this book purely from the depths of my heart!)

As we turned the pages, each one beginning with the words, "Have I ever told you..." or "Have I told you...", and she answered in her sweet and bell-like voice, "Yes, you have!" or "No." or "Just now!", my mind was buzzing with the reach of this idea far beyond a bedtime story. What a beautiful read for February, the month of love, this month of remembrance, of honoring the achievements of African Americans, of looking forward to honoring the achievements of women in March. If I still had my classroom, I would definitely be dancing down the hall with this one this week, ready to share with my class! Yeah, I love sleeping late and not even worrying about snow days, but I would give it all up to share this with some kids! As many as possible, so teachers, please help me out with this!

Each page reaches deep within your soul and far beyond your own existence to all the possibilities that just being human can offer. It lets the child know that he/she is special, loved, can be anything, and should reach out to others on so many levels. It reminds with each new page that as teachers, as parents, and grandparents, aunts, uncles, caregivers and keepers of kids in any way that rings true for you. that we teach what we are.

We teach what we are. The kids are always watching and listening. The best things we can model are love and compassion for others. No fancy props or complicated lesson plan is ever necessary for this. You don't need to write notes or start your class valentines with, "Have I ever told you?" (although what a great mentor text lesson you might do with this book!). Some key management decisions that you might make for your classroom could easily send that message.

Simple things like letting your class plan the Valentine party and how Valentines might be distributed and shared would send the message, "Have I ever told you what great ideas you have?"

Establishing a class government system in which every child has a voice and a personal  stake says, "Have I ever told you that you can make hard choices and live with them?"

Infusing multicultural studies throughout the year, not just during a designated month or week or holiday, will be sending the clear message, "Have I told you how important it is that we all feel honored, loved and respected? All of us!"

Showing students the future career possibilities of work that they are doing right now will say, "Have I told you that you can be anything you choose as you prepare for life as an adult?" Letting your kids respond to lessons in multiple ways or to craft responses using their current strengths will tell them that you value their strengths and make them unafraid to try new things and respond in other ways as well.

This is a perfect time to stretch our wings with some additional modeling. If we are teachers who respect others, show compassion for all, and truly believe in our kids as learners now and citizens in the future, let's teach it through the opportunities we provide.  Love is in the air in the days ahead. Let's sprinkle in some positivity, compassion, belief in each other, and trust with what matters. The air has plenty of room and can hold all that and more! Start with a great read-aloud!

Click on links above for ideas from Rainbow City Learning on adding more to the air than love next month!

For more great ideas for the month ahead, be sure to visit all the blogs of Teacher Talk!

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts

that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials (to make your teacher life easier) at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

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Dreams for MLK Day

An oldie but a goodie, in my opinion. Back in case you missed it! It's January, and our annual celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is this weekend. Martin Luther King Day has not always been a national holiday, and during all the years when school districts were sorting through whether they would observe by having school or by not having school, Dr. King's family has always reminded us to "Make it a day ON, not a day OFF."

So what are you doing in your classroom to commemorate the life of this American legend? In case you are still looking around for a few ideas to add to your lesson plan, here are some you might like. The Martin Luther King unit has always been my favorite one to teach because it reaches my students at their core. I love watching them search deep inside of themselves for who they are and what they stand for, and then find a way to share that with all of us. Isn't that just what Dr. King did: reach deep inside himself to find what really mattered and then try to share it with the world?

Of course, my fourth graders know about the "I Have a Dream" speech long before they reach their year with me, but not many are aware that Dr. King carefully chose the Lincoln Memorial as the place to deliver that speech and why. The second line of this speech begins, "Five score years ago...", referring to the Gettysburg address, which of course begins, "Four score and seven years ago...", referring to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Wait.... What's going on here...could there be some connection across time and history between people who tried to make things better for all of us? Of course there was. Here's the sequence I present to my students:

1. Read the Declaration of Independence together. (You can even do a CLOSE READ of it if you must!)
2. Discuss how the Declaration was kind of like a letter from the Founding Fathers to England that "This is how it's going to be around here from now on."
3. Read the Gettysburg Address together. I use a beautifully illustrated picture book for that reading by Abraham Lincoln, of course, but with illustrations by Michael McCurdy.
4. Discuss how the Gettysburg Address was really a letter from Lincoln to the Founding Fathers on how it was going 87 years after the signing of the Declaration.
5. Next we get to the famous Dream speech. There are so many illustrated versions of this speech. Wasn't this speech meant to be a letter informing President Lincoln that we as a people had not really come as far along as his vision  for us?  That's precisely why it was delivered right in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.

For children (and many of their teachers!) who were not here when the Civil Rights Movement was happening, when Dr. King made his speeches, or when he was assassinated, I have found this sequence to be a pretty effective way of placing King Day in its proper historical perspective.

To add personal meaning to each child, I challenge my students to write a letter to Dr. King, telling him how we're doing today as the beneficiaries of his dream. How is that vision working for each of us?

My complete lesson plan, which adds a craftivity, poetry, literature and video resources, along with student samples and a rubric which makes grading a snap, is available by clicking here:

New for 2022: For a grounded approach to the "I Have a Dream" lesson, try this new resource which ties influential learnings to practical action in order to reach those dreams!

 

You might also like this inexpensive download to keep the love flowing through Acts of Kindness the rest of the year:

Who will make the difference to finally bring lasting peace to all of us? Those sweet children sitting in all of our classrooms right now! The dream lives as long as people believe in it and believe that their actions will make a difference!

Artwork at the top of this page by Maya, one of my sweet students, keeping the dream alive!

If I can do anything else to help make your job easier this year, please let me know in the comments below! If I use your idea for a new blog post, you will win a TpT $10 gift card. If I create a new resource for Rainbow City Learning based on your idea, you will win a free copy of that resource to use in your classroom! (Note: all comments are reviewed before appearing on my blog. It may take a few hours for your comment to appear! Thanks for your patience!)

For more great January teaching ideas, be sure to check out these Teacher Talk bloggers! 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

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