World Read Aloud Blogging Challenge Week 3: Snapshot of my reading life.

This picture is important to me for a number of reasons:

1) The picture at the top is of our library shelves. Looking at our library shelves makes me happy. I love seeing the books we have in the library.....I often scan the shelves and mentally check off in my head the number of books I've read. Check, check, check! Chapters has nothing on us! (@chaptersindigo at Square One did adopt our school and is the reason why our shelves are so full this year. We are eternally grateful!)

2. Our school is running the Forest of Reading program. We are trying to spread the word about our reading to the world and have begun our own Twitter campaign. Check out the #valleysforest hashtag to see what we've been up to! We want to give our all students a chance to access  the texts and participate so we're running a part of the program as a read aloud. Every two weeks, each class gets a new book, which their homeroom teacher reads aloud. We've invited three Forest of Reading authors to our school for World Read Aloud Day next week....will keep you posted!

3. I think this generally sums up my life in reading. "Happiness is a new book". No matter how bad of a day I've had, I can always lose myself in a book. Books just make me happy. Period.

4. This is a snapshot of what's on my ipad. This also a pile of books that lies beside my bed that I have yet to read. Books are stacked all over our house - my husband is always saying "NO MORE BOOKS" (never, ever go into a bookstore with me)  - bah, books are like black pants. You can never have too many!  I read what the students at my school read. And I really, really enjoy it! I don't know who gets more excited about new books coming out - our students or myself. And that is just pretty darn cool.

World Read Aloud Day Challenge - Week 2

Ladies and gentlemen...welcome to the first two consecutive weeks that I have ever blogged in my life... EVER!

Again, I give thanks to @LitWorld and @MatthewWinner aka The Busy Librarian for continuing to provide my muse. (I can be so poetic when I want to be!) :)

Q1: I think everyone in the world should read....

Well, I think the students of my school are the best to answer this one for me. Of course it's THE HUNGER GAMES SERIES. Violence aside, this series really spoke to me on a personal level. These books basically are all about our humaneness and how important it is to value and treat everyone in the manner they deserve. I am still not over Rue. And Prim...WHY PRIM?!!? And I love Peeta. If I was a teenager, I'd totally want to marry him.

Q2: If I could listen to anyone in the world read aloud to me it would be.....

Mo Willems. I was familiar with the pigeon series so I bought them for my children at Christmas. The package I bought from scholastic also came with a DVD that animated some of Mo's work with him providing the voice overs.  I fell in love. I don't think I've laughed so hard. (Ok, well, I have to admit THE LEGO MOVIE was pretty good at this too). My children and I have just discovered the "Piggie and Elephant" series....I would LOVE to hear those read aloud too!

Q3: When I read aloud, my favourite character to impersonate is:

Well, any character from a Mo Willems book actually. They just have so much character! I can feel their emotions emanating off the page for heaven's sake! The man has a gift for bold, giant, italicized font!! What else can I say!?!?!

Q4: The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is:

Well...I just noticed that a lot of my sentences begin with well. I'll have to work on that. Well...HA HA...just kidding.

I'm a middle school teacher librarian so most of the books on my bookshelf are young adult fiction of the dystopian sort. World collapse due to unnatural disasters, man created world plagues and the zombie apocalypse also fill in a few of the available spaces. I'm a sucker for anything the kids at my school read. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em ....right? (YA fiction is SO much better than when I was young...and we had to read uphill BOTH ways!) (I hope people really get that joke)

Q5: My fav part about reading aloud or being read to:

I'd have to say (notice that I didn't begin that sentence with well) that my favourite part about reading aloud is looking at the looks of wonder on my students or my children's faces. I love reading their expressions to see if :
- they're enjoying the story
- they're getting what I'm reading
- I have to stop and explain (because they're looking lost or confused)
- we can make personal connections to the story
- I've spit accidentally on their faces. (Yah, it happens...sometimes I get excited when I read!)

I hope you'll join the world on March 5th and lend your read aloud voice to raise awareness for global literacy. More than ever, I am believing that words can change worlds.

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge - Week One

Ok, I admit. I've been really bad about this whole blogging thing. Then along came my colleague Mrs. Fernandes who introduced me to +LitWorld and World Read Aloud Day.

I am empowered again! And ready to blog it out for the next four weeks! Let my voice be heard in support of global literacy! Over the mountaintops, across the valleys....(ok, ok, I admit - I'm easily carried away)

We all have the right to learn, to read, to write and let our words change the world. I hope I can help empower any of you reading to do the same.

Week one's question asks: What is your earliest or fondest memory in which someone read aloud to you?

I'm sure my parents read aloud to me. I'm SURE they did. (but I don't remember it...sorry!)

What I do remember quite vividly however, is my grade 4/5 split teacher Mrs. Sudicky who read aloud to us every day. Why is it that I remember this most vividly? I'm sure other teachers read aloud to us, I'm sure my teacher librarian did. Why this one? Why, why, WHY?

Well, uh...for starters I remember being fascinated with the books she began reading aloud to us. I remember being disappointed when she would end a chapter and tell us we had to go on to our regular school work. I remember her asking the class if we had books we loved - we could bring them in to be read aloud. Maybe that's because I brought one of my own in and we read it out loud to the class. I remember it was about this boy - he was a redhead - who got into modeling. He was very sporty and was photographed for an underwear commercial - and everyone teased him for it. (While I may not remember my parents reading to me, I distinctly remember how readily my father would fork out money to buy me books. Our house was FILLED with books. As is my house today :)

I remember hearing her read "Call of the Wild" by Jack London. I remember "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl. Maybe I remember this one as well because I remember reading to the class from it. I distinctly remember some words in the book that didn't make sense. I stopped reading and told her this...I remember her saying back..."Now you know what it's like to read Justin's printing sometimes".

Looking back, read aloud time got us excited about stories and about sharing stories. Reading aloud gave everyone the  same opportunity to access texts no matter our reading skill or level. Reading aloud was just plain fun to listen to and helped shape me into the reader I am today.

So thank you Mrs. Sudicky ... wherever you are.

Now I'm off to read Captain Underpants (which I secretly love) to my son. I hope he remembers this 30 years from now.

...we are livin' in a material world...

...and I am a m-m-m-material girl...oh yah, sing it! Oh you know that we are livin' in a material world and I am a m-m-m-material girl...(Madonna, 1984)

Last week I was at a new school in Peel. Another TL friend of mine told me I should check out the library....and while I really didn't care to at first I did. I mean, it's a library, right? Whatevs...libraries all look the same right?

Wrong. There was one thing distinctly missing from this library from what I could see....and that was books.

Ok...ok...call me old school. (nothing to do with the fact that I'm singing Madonna songs from the 80's). I am also fairly tech savvy and certainly not technology resistant. I am perfectly fine with most non-fiction texts becoming purely digital ....access 24/7....ability to annotate, collaborate, share...blah blah blah. I am OK with virtually eliminating half the books in our own school library. Oooh... envision the space and the lack of growing mold spores!

But I DO have a problem releasing ALL texts to the digital world. (also has nothing to do with the fact that I have no idea where my kindle is after vacation...if anyone finds it could you please return?) Sorry, @gcouros, while I do not encourage my kids to "smell" their books...there are other components to keeping some of our physical texts alive.

Reason #1 - Have you people never read any young adult dystopian fiction? What good are our computer files going to be when the world has been ravaged by the zombie apocalypse, mutant plagues and general world destruction? You can't access a computer when the cloud breaks down!!! And with no electricity! Books are old knowledge and what keeps us together! (and they're always stored in really neat places). I'm reading way too many YA novels if this is the first thing that came to mind.

Reason #2 - Have you ever run on a treadmill? Have you run outside? I illustrate my point further in the next paragraphs.

Reason #3 -I know this is going to sound wrong, but I still crave that "physical" connection I have with a book.  It's my literary version of comfort food ..or books. While I don't "smell" them... turning the pages physically, listening to the spine crack when I open the book (not a good thing, but I still love it), turning over the page to mark my spot....and yes, I can do all these things with my e-reader, but it's still not the same. And my secret guilty pleasure ... reading a book while eating Ketchup chips...you know when you get your thumbprints on the pages? Implants a memory of me always reading that book....of course MY book...not library books :) Sometimes for me it's the physical connection I get from reading a book that just can't be beat.

Reason #4  - There's  sense of pride or accomplishment I feel when looking at our library shelves. I can physically see all our books .... and mentally check off in my head how we compare to the Chapter's bookstore (and how many I've read). It's like how I feel when I look at a bookshelf I've built from IKEA...yes! I did that! When I look at my kindle...I don't get the same sense of accomplishment.

But who knows...maybe it's a generational thing? After all, I am a digital immigrant (or whatever that's supposed to mean) I still read to my kids using "real" books, but will they consider this a thing of the past?

How close to reality is this?

While there is a completely sound rationale for letting all paper texts go digital, I really, really hope that we don't.

Next week's topic:

...why I love listening to my cassette tapes on my Sony Walkman.

HA HA HA...just kidding. 

Really. I'm just kidding.

WELCOME!

Here we go...here we go!

Goals for the library this year are the following:

1) Foster a love for reading, expand reading capacities and repertoires.
2) Build upon your information technology skills.
3) Model and instill good digital citizenship.
4) Knock all the other schools in Peel off their socks for participation for the "Forest of Reading" Program.

And of course...hold contests...initiatives....all that other fun stuff!

Two of my favourite reads of the summer:

1) Loki's Wolves by Kelly Armstrong and Melissa Marr.

If you're a fan of Percy Jackson, you'll love this book. It's basically the same idea as the Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicle series, but with Norse Gods.
Thor, anyone? I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it.









2) Rush by Eve Silver

Ever wish you were in a real life video game? (Sadly, not for me) Well, this is what Miki Jones finds herself in. She "dies" saving a young girl almost getting hit by a truck....wakes up and finds herself transported into a real life video game scenario fighting aliens that want to take over the world. Except she really isn't dead...once she completes her "mission" she's sent back to REAL Earth to live her life until she needs to complete another "mission". Of course there's a love interest, but it's tolerable. No "make me puke" romance like I AM NUMBER FOUR or TWILIGHT.




Well, that's all for today...until next week!