Treat Each Instructional Moment As a Precious Pearl

One quote from the summer that has really stuck with me is the reminder to "...treat every instructional minute as a precious pearl," (Hoyt, 2009).  Each moment that I get to spend with all of you on behalf of students is precious.  We never get those moments back and I'm aiming (though I'm bound to miss the mark from time to time) to make the most of each one.  I'm so excited to think and plan with all of you on behalf of your gifted and advanced readers, writers and mathematicians this year.  It is so exciting to think about the new Common Core State Standards and the rich learning targets that we will develop for those.

Nicole and I will be testing this coming week, but we both already have meetings scheduled to begin planning for groups and kids.  Please let us know what you need and how we can help you prepare.

Here's a fun quick tip (Also from Linda Hoyt's book, Revisit, Reflect, Retell) to start the year off.

Enjoy!
Angie

Book Reviews

This is a fun way to have kids think about and respond to books.  Remember it always works best to model this one first for kids, do one together and then allow them to do their own throughout the year.

First, you have kids create their own system for judging books.  This would be a great time to talk about why we read books and what we think about when we choose a book to read.  I've got Travis and Dane (who always come looking for my latest books) doing this for me so that other kids can see what they thought.

Second, bring in a read book reviews from the local paper or from a book store news letter.  Movie reviews are also good, especially the ones that use 4 bags of popcorn or some similar rating system.

Third, kids choose 1-5 catagories in which they will judge books that they read.  This can also change depending on the genre if you choose. Travis and Dane are working on their own system, but we tossed around categories like level of adventure, humor, difficulty of vocabulary, Attention Grabbing, and others.  We talked about determining their categories so they could be thinking about them as they read.

Lastly, when the students finish reading a book they do their "book review" on a sticky note on the inside cover of the book (primarily from your classroom library).  I wish I had a kid example, but here's a pic of a review for Mike Lupica's book, Hero, so you can see what I mean.  Let me know if you try this in your classroom.  I'd love to know how it goes.