#BookaDay - Holiday Version

This past summer, Donalyn Miller (@donalynmiller on twitter) challenged people to try to read a book a day. Recently, Donalyn decided to bring back the #bookaday challenge, and proposed that she wanted to try to read a book a day over her holiday break and invited others to join in on the fun. I immediately decided it was an event in which I wanted to be a part!

Break and books - what is not to enjoy!! So, my task the past 2 weeks was to start gathering a TBR pile of books for over break. I am in school through this Wednesday, so I will be trying to read a book a day starting Thursday, Dec. 23 - Monday, Jan. 3. Eleven amazing days (not counting Christmas Day) to read to my heart's content.

My TBR pile is divided into 4 parts:

• Books that were recent Book Fair gifts from some of my students -- Smile, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, Human Footprint, Of Thee I Sing, Interrupting Chicken
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• Books recommended by friends: The House on Mango Street, Titanic (the first in a new series by Gordan Korman out May 2011), Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword
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• Books that I received at NCTE -- The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester (1st to read), the 2nd book in The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series (out March 2011), True (... sort of) by Katherine Hannigan (out May 2011), One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street (out April 2011), Junonia by Kevin Henkes (out June 2011)
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• Books that are the "hot buzz" when it comes to potential Newbery winners on January 10 -- The Kneebone Boy (this will be a reread), Dark Emperor, They Called Themselves the KKK, A Conspiracy of Kings
  

I'm so looking forward to my first book on Thursday. I'm starting with The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester. What a great start with many wonderful books to follow! As you can see from my list, there's no way I'll get everything read, but I'll sure have fun trying!! And I'm actually going to try to throw in some fun adult books as well. :)

If you'd like to follow what everyone is reading over holiday break in the Book a Day challenge, go to twitter and type in the hash tag #bookaday. People will be listing their books as they read them. I imagine there will be some great titles I will want to add to my already too-large TBR pile.

Twitter Meme

Franki (A Year of Reading) has done so much thinking and learning about 21st century literacy in the past year since the NCTE convention. That really seemed to be a turning point in her learning and her quest for knowledge. Franki, Mary Lee (A Year of Reading), and Katie (Creative Literacy) came back from the convention and started twittering because they had heard so much about Twitter from people at the convention. In the beginning, it was an opportunity to try out a new technology and see if it had purpose and meaning for them. Now, 8 months later, Twitter has become a way of further investigating ways to weave 21st century literacy into their students' lives.

These three ladies convinced me to try Twitter. At first, it was mostly a social thing for me; an opportunity to check in on people's lives in 140 characters or less. Was it necessary? I'm not sure about that, but I did enjoy the quick check-ins.

As time went on, I started to add more meaning to Twitter. Many blog friends became members, and using a site called tiny.url, we could convert our blogs to fit the character limit, and start to share out blogs that were meaningful to us. Now I was able to talk about literacy using Twitter.

But, this summer, I made an even bigger leap. I started to pay attention to my Twitter friends who would "retweet" (RT) a great tweet that they had read. And, as it turns out, these retweets that I'm following all deal with 21st century literacy in the classroom. It has been an amazing journey of learning and one I've just begun.

So today, when Franki asked me to be part of her Twitter meme that shows a mosaic of people who are my Twitter friends that I learn with and from each and every day, I was delighted to do it. So, with no further ado, here are the people who are helping my learning grow. It seems only fitting that since they are the ones that introduced me to Twitter that Katie, Mary Lee, and Franki are the first three Twitter friends in my mosaic.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

It would be interesting to see how this list changes throughout the next year. I imagine that there are several people who I will want to add to this list as I get more comfortable with Twitter.