December | 2016 | There's a Book for That

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

Each week I share a reading photo of the week. These photos are from when our intermediate Resource Teacher, filling in for the K teacher (who didn’t get a substitute) brought the class upstairs and performed Hooray for Hat for my class! Doesn’t get much cuter! Picture book to the rescue!

We have continued to explore themes for our #classroombookaday titles. We had a week of silly.

And then a week of serious.

Join Jen from Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki from Unleashing Readers and share all of the reading you have done over the week from picture books to young adult novels. Follow the links to read about all of the amazing books the #IMWAYR community has read. It’s the best way to discover what to read next.

On the blog:

Celebration: And then this happened . . .

Books I enjoyed:

The Sound of Silence written by Katrina Goldsaito and illustrated by Julia Kuo

Okay, so, wow! This book is just incredibly beautiful in its simplicity – the search for silence. One to own and share and share again. The illustrations completely captivated me.

Imaginary Fred written by Eoin Colfer and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

I found this title quite charming. The importance of friendship, of being needed and of spending time doing things you love with someone who matters – whether real, imagined or somewhere in between.

Leave Me Alone by Vera Brosgol

Sometimes we really have to go to great lengths to get the peace and quiet we crave. Incredibly amusing.

A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston

Those of us who have had a life seeped in literacy will find this love letter to stories very relatable.

Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis

The illustrations? Oh my! And the invented language – I can’t wait to try this as a read aloud. Such fun.

The Day I Became a Bird by Ingrid Chabbert and Guridi

I am utterly enamoured by the illustrations in this book about a boy willing to be a bird to attract the attention of the girl he swoons over.

Little Man by Elizabeth Mann

Albert is just plain short. After seeing stilt walkers perform on the Caribbean Island where he lives, he longs to be one of them. A lovely little middle grade read.

CaveBoy Dave: More Scrawny than Brawny by Aaron Reynolds and Phil McAndrew

Oh is this funny. I book talked this title in class and everyone wanted to read it! And . . . it’s a series. Lots of kid appeal here. And poop. There is lots of poop. I did say kid appeal right?

When Friendship Followed me Home by Paul Griffin

“What are you doing?” my husband asked as I cried out reading this book and threw it down multiple times. And then a few pages later, I was weeping. This book. Oh, this book. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and a must, must read. I adored these characters and rooted for them all.

Reading Progress updates:

2016 Chapter Book Challenge: 59/75 complete

Goodreads Challenge: 314/400 books read

Progress on challenge: 56 books behind! Yikes – worse than last week!!

#MustReadin2016: 22/30 complete

Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge: 43/100 titles

Diverse Books in 2016: 45/50 books read

Up next? Reading The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner. Wow, what a book!

Some weeks we can make a list of things that happen – often all in a day happen – that add to the already stressful end of term. It’s report card season. That is enough right there to put me over the edge. And then . . .

The heat in my classroom stopped working twice. 15 degrees celsius (that’s 59 fahrenheit for you in the U.S.) is too cold in a classroom!
A mouse was spotted in our cloakroom.
The upstairs printer stopped working and it was days and days before it was fixed (in “report cards are due and need to be printed week,” let’s remember)
I got phone calls like this, “T will be late. He just threw up in the downstairs hall.”
Our upstairs hallway had too much noise much too often. Upset kids. Kids not managing. Racing about. A few high pitched screams. Our door has to be constantly shut to keep our attempts at calm and learning inside the room.
Painters showed up and my door was painted and had to remain open all morning to dry (sigh, see above)
Pest control (bless him) showed up in the middle of a read aloud to close up holes. This involved a drill. But, still, bless him.
It rained basically all week. Sopping kids. Sopping socks. Sopping shoes. Freezing room.
There is more. I won’t reveal the details but there were instances that involved pencils in the ceiling, smushed oranges in the hallway and a day of no substitutes for two teachers.

Yup, it was a week.

And then, this happened:

I read a week’s worth of books on grief, loss and the cycle of life and students loved them deeply. Voting for favourites involved discussions like this:

“I don’t know what the word is . . . that feeling when you didn’t cry and you feel so much and oh, it was just so good.”

“It’s sad. But it’s happy. Oh, wow, I loved that book.”

Our intermediate resource teacher taught kindergarten all day when no substitute was available. He found me at recess with an insistent plea: “I need some books!” I passed him a pile including Brian Won‘s Hooray for Hat and suggested he make hats with the kids.

He did one better. A hat parade arrived at our door in the afternoon and the K class performed the book and charmed my Grade 4 & 5s. 🙂

Hooray for Hat!

Math looked like this. Everywhere I turned.

I bought the third book in a series and passed it to the reader who had been waiting.

“You really are that Book Woman,” he told me.

I had to rush downstairs Friday p.m. to deal with a discipline issue. I returned later to find the pile of papers that had been scattered all over the carpet piled up and the white board erased. Oh, my lovely Emily!

Report cards are handed in. The heat is working again. I woke up to sunshine and to gratitude for the fact that teaching children means that the little moments they give us will outweigh everything else that might be going wrong. Always. Guaranteed.

What better thing to celebrate?

Thank you to Ruth Ayres and the #celebratelu community!

Being part of a community that regularly shares gratitude and celebrations truly transforms my weeks.

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