Celebration honoured. This is the loveliest of reasons to share. Join Ruth Ayres who shares a Celebration Link up on her blog each week.

This week I am celebrating my young readers and writers. They are learning to express opinions, celebrating writing they love and savouring reading experiences. Sharing a few moments here:

1. I am currently reading Rump by Liesl Shurtliff to my students. Students adore this book wholly and completely.

Proof #1: I have to reread parts aloud to students at recess, after school, during playtime, etc. if someone happened to be out of the room when we read aloud that day.

“I missed the last part of the chapter when my Mom picked me up early, can you read it to me this morning?”

Proof #2: I finished our chapter seconds before the 3:00 bell the other day and one child grabbed the book to her chest. “Please can I hug it now?!” she swooned.

Proof #3: Very little can cause silence in my classroom. When I start reading this book aloud, magical silence descends.

2. We often talk about what happens when we put the the right book in the hands of a reader. I realized this week that sometimes this magic also happens when we match the right readers together to share some great books. Every week, we have buddy reading with the K/1 class. While we assign buddies for the day, they might be different each week. This little moment captured in the photo below made me realize that sometimes, we can also find the right buddy match. I think I will be making this match again.

3. I often ask students for perspective statements when I know that anxiety might rise around regular things that happen throughout the day. Often when I booktalk new books, many children decide that their day will be ruined if they do not get to be the first one to read a particular book. When you are seven, eight and nine, big drama happens over many things. While I appreciate the book love, the upset does nothing for classroom climate or individual well being. So now I ask for perspective statements. It goes something like this.

Me: “Not everyone can be first to read these new books. Can anyone share a perspective statement?”

Student responses:

“Maybe you can be the one to read it next?”

“I can ask to read it after.”
“We have a room full of books.”

“We’ve got a whole year left to read everything we want.”

I smile with each little share. Students also do this to facilitate solving things:

4. I have a some major Shel Silverstein fans in my classroom. They have bookmarked favourite poems and read aloud to each other in Reading Workshop. I haven’t been sharing much poetry lately and certainly haven’t read Silverstein aloud more than twice all year. This is all about independently discovering great writing, being inspired and sharing the #booklove.

5. I read The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig to my class this week. I am working on a blog post to try and capture the insightful comments and the writing shared. It was a pretty powerful read aloud session. This picture below says a lot.

“Can I read it to myself now?”

6. Every week we write book reviews for new books that weekly guest readers bring in to share with us. We rate the books out of 5 and share our thinking. One of my little writers gave a book a 2/5 and told me she didn’t have much to say. I asked her to explain her lower than average rating and she gave me a little look like I had just given her permission for something she thought she wasn’t allowed to do. Here is what she then added to her review:

It was nice but not that exciting. The problem is too easily solved. I would like to read a story with not a really happy ending sometimes.

I feel lucky every week to be in a room of readers and writers that are growing in amazing ways.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week!