Favorite Professional Books

Today I just wanted to share a few of my favorite professional reads with you in case you want to add them to your personal library.  

This particular book, written by one of my favorite authors, is VERY helpful when teaching non-fiction.  It is easy to read with lots of great printable resources in the appendix.  The graphic organizers are amazing and help students understand exactly what you are explaining!  She outlines some very good lessons that I use every year.

This is a great, easy to read book also.  Jan Richardson has trained many teachers in my district and she also outlines some very good lessons that can be done at the guided reading table. There are lots of printable resources in this book as well.   See the pattern here.  Easy.  Good Lessons. Printable.

And you guessed it, the Tool-Kit has lots of great resources <all printable or copy-able> and helps you differentiate your reading groups!  It is expensive, but would be great to have in a school, or if you are like me and want to make sure you keep everything together, purchase it yourself.  I have been meaning to purchase this for myself for a while now, but we just got a kit in my building, so we will see how that works!

Hope you enjoyed this.....let me know if there are some other professional reading books that you would like to see on the spotlight!

My Shining Eyes

I told you yesterday that I had professional development on writing and I came home exhausted.  I exhausted today, too, but feel 'oh so better' because my kids insisted that I was too tired to cook and we needed to go out to eat for dinner.  I agreed with them and off we went to Olive Garden for lots of salad (their favorite thing at Olive Garden!--yes, my kids love veggies and fruits).


During the professional development I went to, there were two quotes that stood out to me that I wanted to share with you...I even turned them into 2 posters that you can download!

For part of our professional development, we watched a video about Ben Zander, a classical pianist.  He is absolutely hilarious.  Many of the things he talked about as a piano teacher and conductor applies to use as classroom teachers.  What teacher doesn't want their students to leave with shining eyes?  You HAVE to watch the video.  It makes you think very differently about music and teaching, too. 


We spent a lot of time today talking about conferencing with our aspiring writers.  Just like the quote, 'you catch more with honey than vinegar', our discussion led us to conclude that it is our job to find the things in a child's writing that we can compliment so as to motivate them to write more and more.  We know that practice makes perfect....so we need to compliment more.  Here is the quote that stood out to me today:

Jan Richardson is a 'reading guru' that has spent a lot of time in my school district training teachers in literacy and writing.  She, along with the 6 Traits and Lucy Calkins, has greatly impacted instruction  in many of our classrooms.


If you are like me, it will take a while for these 2 quotes to sink in.  You will probably have to mull this over for a while!!


Don't forget that there is only 1 more day for our Fishing For Ideas Extravaganza, which means there is only 1 more day for my store to be 20% off.  Go grab things at a discount while you can.  Also, there are LOTS more freebies there than what I have listed and shown here...so go.....download merrily!!

Here is the usual info about the blog and Pinterest....can you tell that I am encouraging you to follow both, still??  =)

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Jenn