Touch Blue Provides Another Succesful Grand Discussion

It really never gets old! My friend and colleague Joyce and I always leave the Grand Discussion with a sense of pride and satisfaction. We both agree that it is one of the high lights of our teaching, watching kids and parents get together to enjoy a good book. This time we chose Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord. The story of an island community that took in foster children in order to keep their school open provided engaging and interesting conversation.

Two points of real pride for us, we had between 70 and 80 people at our first discussion of the year, and two other schools have begun having discussions as well. My blog partner Karen wrote about the GREat Discussion at her school, and another school in our district, Wright Elementary, home of Mary Lee, recently hosted their first discussion. I've written about our discussions here several times even providing a "how to" guide which actually has led to a visit from Kirby Larson in the spring! If you've been inspired by posts to start a similar event at your school, let me know, I'd love to hear from you.

In honor of my friend James Preller's efforts to encourage boys to read, I took a picture of all of the dads who came, some with daughters, some with sons. It was great to see so many men there, hopefully our numbers will keep increasing! Reading, it's a guy thing!