Treasure Chest of Thoughts

Last year I completed one online book study; this year I have signed up for two!

On the English Companion Ning (have you joined this Ning yet?), Kelly Gallager is leading a discussion of his book Readicide.  The study starts this week.  Membership is growing!  I was member 70+ to join.  Now have 104 members involved in this online study!

Thanks to Jim Burke (click here for his blog and here for the Ning) for creating this opportunity for us this summer.  This is the Ning’s second book study (just finished a study of Maja Wilson’s Rethinking Rubrics on the English Companion NIng).

Within our 21 CLC team, we are reading Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind.  On day two of our summer group meeting, Daniel Pink will meet with us online.  Exciting!   (Prior to this, we will complete and discuss the novel via our 21 CLC wiki.) Thanks to peer and project director Lisa Huff for her energy and initiative in creating this professional growth for us.

I encourage group book studies.  Much like reading the Bible, one reader gets one concept, while another grasps another.  Through sharing, though, we highlight the many nuggets contained within that literary work.

Interested in being a part of such a group?  Please check out the Ning (for many valuable insights and resources)!

So far this Spring Break, I have written two of four book reviews for my latest good reads.

1. Night by Elie Weisel ~ a horrific glimpse into his Holocaust experience:  may we never forget.  A required read by all juniors at our school.
2. A Question of Honor  by Dana Huff ~ a journey to another country, another time.  Very enjoyable!  May click here to purchase.

I would appreciate reading more by both authors (read comments in my book reviews linked above). 

If you have not read these, please consider going on the adventure that each provides!

Invite Dr. Suess into your classroom for the National Read Across America Day on March 2.

Better known to most readers as Dr. Seuss, Dr. Theodor Geisel was born over 100 years ago today. Mark his birthday with NEA’s Read Across America, the largest reading event in the United States, by celebrating with read-aloud, read-along, and reading marathon activities. (ReadWriteThink website)

To review several sound devices for our state-mandated end-of-level exam, I have chosen “I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!”  What a fun way to sneak in a review!

If interested, please check out these websites:

• ReadWriteThink
• NCTE Inbox  (Scroll down for embedded resources)

Enjoy!

A novel about hope, The City of Ember held my attention until the very last page. When I completed the novel (during my lunch today!), I asked several students if they had read the first in this series, and several of them had, and all said they, too, had enjoyed reading this now-being-portrayed-on-the-big-screen hit, except they had read it several years ago, when they read it on grade-level, as this is a young adult novel for grades 4-7…let me comment on this little later.

Hope Springs Eternal?
Lina and Doon, each twelve-year-old graduates (and the main characters), assume their new assigned jobs of messenger and pipeworker and begin to learn that hope exists through a bean seed and a worm. Strange places for hope to spring, but spring hope does. Through these two forms of life, Lina and Doon also realize that life begins some other place than the city of Ember; something exists within. As a Christian, I will be interested to see where author Jeanne DuPrau goes with these interesting perceptions in the following three novels in this series.

Allegorical Move?

I also wonder if DuPrau might be establishing this novel as an allegory of sorts.

• City of Ember = a country under attack
• Unannounced light outages = bombing attacks
• Mayor and the guards = oppressive forces
• Lina and Doon = Savior-figures

Published in 2003, I wonder what thoughts DuPrau might have had about the war in which our country was/is fighting. Just a thought. (Not sure that fourth to seventh grader would analyze this novel quite like I did…so maybe Amazon might include English teachers with nearly 18 years of experience within their descriptor? Maybe?)

A DuPrau Insight

As an English teacher…and sometimes writer…I appreciate the following borrowed from DuPrau’s website:

Jeanne DuPrau spends several hours of every day at her computer, thinking up sentences. She has this quote taped to her wall:”A writer is one for whom writing is harder than for other people.” ~ Thomas Mann

This gives her courage, because she finds writing very hard. So many words to choose from! So many different things that could happen in a story at any moment! Writing is one tough decision after another.

But it’s also the most satisfying thing she knows how to do. So she keeps doing it. So far, she has written four novels, six books of non-fiction, and quite a few essays and stories.

Need a good dose of hope? Sit down with a cup of coffee and enjoy this quick read. Take that journey down the river with Lina and Doon and Poppy.

 

 

“The reflection upon my situation and that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep.  Few people know the predicament we are in.”
                                     ~ George Washington
                                        January 14, 1776

Interesting.

Was this man also prophetic?

In a recent discussion with my students concerning our current economic crisis, one student commented that she had heard this situation could be worse than the Great Depression.

My response:  “Not for a while, for so many do not even realize what is happening today here in our country.”

Then as I began reading David McCullough’s 1776, I discovered George Washington’s quote (page 1) that so eerily echoed our current “predicament.”  Yes, go back and read it again!

I will be interested to read more about  President George Washington’s part  in the dramatic unfolding of the year of our Declaration of Independence.

Why am I reading 1776?  My goal:  to read a biography of each of the US Presidents.  A goal that initiated this summer as I strolled around Mt. Vernon, a place steeped in history and motivation.

Please share any suggestions for other biographies.  I have also purchased David McCullough’s John Adams and Mornings on Horseback and John McCain’s Faith of Our Fathers.

Why this sudden interest?  One, I had really hoped to read 1776 before teaching my “A Pioneer Never Quits” unit for all the background information I might obtain (well…we are completing the unit this week, so that is a one sub-goal that I will not meet). Two?  History was my weakest subject area in high school and college, so since I love to read, why not use this activity to overcome a huge hole in my education?

Never fear, though, I have discovered another means to use this novel:  1776 will be one of my mentor texts when teaching my students how to embedd quotes.  McCullough’s extensive use of research is clearly reflected throughout and will provide this teacher with another novel on which to do a book talk.

In English 11, we have been reading Ben Mikaelsen’s Touching Spirit Bear, not a hard-read, but a definite good read.  Why teach this book at this level, a book taught by so many teachers at a lower grade?

Last year, when I read this soul-stirring novel in one night, it captivated me, and I decided then that this masterpiece would be the class-read for my A Pioneer Never Quits unit.  The pioneer in this novel, though, is not Cole Matthews, the main character, a punk, a bully, a young person in definite conflict with himself. 

The pioneer is Garvey, a parole officer.  He never quits…even when he sits down and refuses to help Cole rebuild the cabin that this rebel intentionally burnt to the ground. (Yes, cutting off his own nose to spite his face.) Sitting down, though, in this case, is the best example of not quitting.  Imagine that.

Garvey pioneers by not giving up on Cole.  This man, a promoter of the Circle of Justice, is the constant that Cole has never had in his life.

Does Cole like Garvey?  No.  An understatement.  Yet from day one, a respect is there.

Sometimes…well, sometimes, that is all one needs or can expect out of such characters.

So a note to teachers out there who have Coles in your life who do not like you.  That’s okay…just make sure they respect you.

Then read Touching Spirit Bear to further understand why you and Garvey truly are pioneers…pioneers that never quit.

And, by the way…thanks!