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Happy Poetry Month!

4/14/2015

April showers bring May flowers, right? So, April's poetry month is a natural segue into May's teacher appreciation! Let's have some fun with this next post.
Check out the haikus I have here that honor teaching and learning in schools. Feel free to post some of your own haikus about teaching and learning!

Teachers are heroes,
who light fires for learning,
and wipe away tears!

Turning the pages
is the greatest exercise
of the growing mind.

Add voice to your craft
and your teaching will remain
yours in harmony!

Testing, oh testing!
Stop taking our time away.
Oh, just let us teach!

Children: the single
best part of a teacher's life.
Our number one kids!

Join me. Celebrate.
Add your own five-seven-five.
Sillier? Better!

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Rituals that Build Readers

4/3/2015

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When you do something once, it's an action. When you do something repeatedly to achieve something, it's a habit. When you do something many times, it's a tradition. When you do something many times and know that it's meaningful, it's a ritual! Today, I'd like to share some ideas for rituals that can help build habits and traditions of a literate learning life in your students and schools.

Start each day by reading something. If you're a classroom teacher, open up your day with a short read aloud. It can be a picture book, a familiar story, a poem, some nonfiction, a letter you received. Anything. In The Art of Teaching Reading, Lucy Calkins says that a reader's bill of rights includes the right to be read aloud to at least 5 times a day.

If you're a middle school or high school teacher, you might be saying you don't have enough time for this. It doesn't have to be long. Use that "Do Now" time that is so common to give students a chance to read something on their own or with a partner each day, or on predictable days of the week (once is probably not enough!)

If you're a principal, open up your faculty meetings or meetings with your colleagues by reading something...a piece of children's literature, an excerpt from a professional article, a piece of student writing. It will set the tone as a gentle reminder of something that your community believes in.

Highlight an author that you'll study. However, don't have a prescribed curriculum about the author. Make in an authentic exploration. Let the identity of the author come from the class. Maybe it's an author your students enjoy, or one who just wrote a great new book. Cynthia Rylant, Eric Carle, Patricia Maclachlan and the like are all wonderful writers, and you might choose them, but don't feel compelled, just because you've always studied them. In fact, only study them, if you yourself feel you'll learn more from the experience. This will keep the learning real!

Read their texts again and again. Pick apart your favorite sentences. This doesn't mean diagramming the sentences or overdoing any one thing. It means savoring them, posting them around the room for kids to enjoy and internalize during the day. Refer to their lessons throughout the day. Name-drop them as often as you can so that the students feel like they know them!

When studying authors, you really shouldn't use worksheets or store-bought activities. You should just read the author's work, try out some of their techniques, and live his or her lessons. If it feels too school-like, don't do it! If it feels like something you yourself would do to get to know an author, do it!

Make reading a part of your birthday celebrations. I did this when I taught 3rd and 4th Grade. Whenever it's someone's birthday, ask them to bring in something special to read to the class. Kids will bring in a poem that matters to them. Sometimes they'll bring in a nonfiction book about a topic they love. Others might bring in the picture book their parents read to them when they were babies, going to sleep, or the last book they got from their grandparents. Every once in a while, someone will bring something in that's written in another language, and kids can hear the music of the languages around the world!

You can also have the class choose something special to read in honor of the birthday person. We used to call this a literary gift. It allows kids to really be selective in what they choose, and teaches them that birthday presents are more than just the newest toy. It also builds the community of the class.

In the upcoming days, countless people around the world will celebrate Easter and Passover. These special days are filled with rituals that help bring a sense of meaning to who we are. Others who don't celebrate them are probably engaging in other rituals of springtime--cleaning, mowing the lawn for the first time, getting their gardens ready for new planting. When we engage in rituals, it strengthens our identity of who we are, often who we are together. Let's share some of our favorite rituals that we use with our students to strengthen their identities as readers and learners. This is perhaps our most important function as teachers.

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Happy Poetry Month!

Rituals that Build Readers

Tom Marshall

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