#IMWAYR - Feb. 2

 I so love reading #IMWAYR posts from others on Mondays - it gives me yet another window into book titles that might have missed my radar or ways those books might be embedded into the classroom. I learn so much. Thanks to Jen Vincent for hosting the #kidlit version of this meme. Be sure to head over to Jen's blog to see what others are reading!

First, what a great day this is!!!! ALA awards are announced - as I write this post on Sunday, I am so excited to think about all the possibilities of winners, and which authors/illustrators will be receiving "THE" phone call early Monday morning. I have read an incredible amount of wonderful books this year, all deserving of attention, but a few will be recognized further today.

One of the possibilities is El Deafo, by Cece Bell. I read this book in January and loved everything about it. Laurel Snyder, an amazing author herself, wrote this wonderful Facebook post about El Deafo.  NPR did a great interview with Cece Bell. I'm not sure what else I can add to these two pieces of writing except to say - this is a book that needs to be read - it needs to be on the shelves of classrooms and teachers should be reading it aloud to students. It's just that good! (*****Just saw the ALA Newbery awards - this is an Honor Book - yay! Talk about timing!****)

Three picture books I revisited and read aloud with students this past week were:

• Walk On! by Marla Frazee
• The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
• Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney

We were focusing on looking at a similar theme across several texts, and then doing a compare/contrast of those themes. Some of the themes students noticed were:

• don't give up
• perseverance
• keep trying
• when you encounter roadblocks, figure out how to get around them

As I shared these stories, it was wonderful to have the students connect these themes to their own lives. As I think about the instructional shifts Common Core has required like supporting answers with evidence, reading over multiple texts, and writing about your thinking, these three books that we read together allowed us to do all of that.

It is fun to not only reread texts with students, but to listen to their perspective on what the texts mean.

I hope you have a wonderful week of reading! If you're anything like me, you might be reserving books after hearing the #ALA announcements in the morning! :)