Home... again!

We had a wonderful vacation in the Cascade Mountains. We stayed in a beautiful alpine-style timber home for eight sunny, warm days. The guys went fishing, we all enjoyed the river (every day!), and we spent time playing, talking, and reading together. I finished the book The Book Whisperer and LOVED every page! Donalyn Miller put voice to what I believe about children/teens and teaching reading by allowing them to just read! I've done this for years and years. I really refined it in Haiti while teaching 7th and 8th grade students for several years. The beauty of teaching there was that I had two class periods to teach these students, one for reading and the other for English/writing. Now... 42 minutes to do it all. It simply is not the same.

When I first took this assignment, I had five different sets of curriculum to implement: Bob Jones basal series (not a fan at all!), Write Source (I like it a lot as a resource for myself and for the students), Wordly Wise (love it - great independent homework), Houghton Mifflin Grammar book (a good one but really...), and four sets of class novels for each grade. I always start my class with silent reading. They come in, check the board to be sure they have everything they need for the class, put their stuff down, take out their books and read. Most bring books from home. Our library doesn't always have what they want, especially when we're talking about Harry Potter or the Twilight series. I don't really care about that. Kids will find a way to get those books anyway. One of the teachers spoke up at a staff meeting; she wanted to make it a rule that kids couldn't read some of these books at our school. I let everyone talk and then reminded one and all of the school's philosophy (that I don't always agree with but it worked well for me at that moment) that we are simply assisting the parents as they educate their children and that the decision was actually theirs. It worked. Later, when I grumped about all the material I was supposed to teach, it was suggested by the principal that I cut out the silent reading. That wasn't going to happen! So... I took it upon myself to send the grammar books to the library for storage, to put the Write Source books in the cupboards for use when we needed them, and to keep my reading time going! Everything is still a work in progress but I see myself simplifying as I go. My students must read and they must write. That's it. Along the way I want to make sure they understand the elements of literature (not just the definition of the terms) and know how to express themselves properly when writing about literature. Students must read outside of class as well as the time I give them in our classroom. They must do a lesson every week or so in their Wordly Wise (did I mention that it is the perfect independent homework assignment?). They must write about their reading in their comp books at least once a week. That's what we do in our 42 minute class period.

I also re-read Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie. I had never gotten around to reading that. It was a quick, sweet read about life and loss as opposed to Hemingway's darker version. Most important of all, I read with my granddaughter every day. I brought Roald Dahl's gift set with me and Kayla read seven of the eight books in the boxed set.(This link is a bigger set but I couldn't find the one I bought at Costco.) She loves the insane sense of humor and magic that Dahl uses in all his books. Plus, she wrote about every book in her journal... so now I owe her seven lunches out! That's fun for me too!

Well, laundry is calling. There's nothing like a vacation in the mountains by a river to make mountains of laundry! That's fine; it was totally worth it!