To see a complete list of the reflection activities and for an explanation of the program, visit my Day By Day Main Page.

Mentors Cycle 2: Teachers as Mentors

Day 9: Publish alongside your students

Challenge: With your students, decide how you will share your writing at the next publishing celebration. Determine whether you will read aloud to them in the meeting area and elicit their feedback when you’re finished sharing, or whether you will read it when they’re sharing their pieces with invited guests.

How did your students react to your published writing?

When did you share your writing with your students?

Will you share in the same way next time or will you do something differently?

To see a complete list of the reflection activities and for an explanation of the program, visit my Day By Day Main Page.

Mentors Cycle 2: Teachers as Mentors

Day 8: Become part of a writing community

Challenge: Find a local writing community or become a regular participant in an online writing challenge?

What do you hope to get out of being part of a writing community?

How can you become the kind of member who will encourage other members to grow as writers?

What have you learned about yourself as a writer since you became a part of a writing community?

Two books received honors, two very different books, in my mind. The first honor book selected was:

Queen of the Falls by Chris VanAllsburg. I actually didn’t read this book to the class until the day before our first round of voting, but it just barely made it onto our 11-book short list. Students say they voted for this book because we were amazed by the story of a woman going down Niagara Falls in a barrel. The book pointed out she was an old lady and a woman, and we thought it was strange that people were disappointed that she was so old.

The second Caldecott honor book we selected was a write-in candidate that made it onto our short list:

Sidekicks by Dan Santat. Sidekicks made it as a write-in candidate because it was funny. Specifically, we liked when they fought the hippo that was eating fish and he sat on the pile of fish (one critter was talking). It was also funny at the end of the book because at the the end Vapor Man goes out to his car and sees that it exploded.

OVERWHELMINGLY, the winner of this year’s Mock Caldecott award is:

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. Despite the fact that Wonderstruck got no Caldecott or Newbery love, this book was by far the tops in our class. SPOILER ALERT: We liked that Ben never knew that Rose was his grandma. A lot of times books try to trick us but we figure it out before the end, but not this one. We enjoyed the part of the book where Rose escapes from her house and sends a note saying “HELP ME” across the water as a boat. We discovered that William was the brother of Rose — that helped us put together what the “Wonderstruck” book meant.

Congratulations to our talented winners!

I will point out that Twitter was basically my savior for the conference. I Tweeted a whole bunch, and I met some pretty rad people in person.

My brief overall impressions? The keynotes were excellent, progressive, compelling, and frankly more radical than I thought the Title I folks would be. The sessions I attended were largely awful and overpopulated by people straight-up selling a product. The people I met were pretty cool, and the colleagues I attended with were infinitely inspiring.

More to come. I’m slinking off to bed to finish It’s Like This, Cat.

To see a complete list of the reflection activities and for an explanation of the program, visit my Day By Day Main Page.

Mentors Cycle 2: Teachers as Mentors

Day 7: Organizing teacher-written mentor texts

Challenge: Implement a filing system for your writing that suits your personality.

If you have multiple texts per genre, how will you decide which piece to pull out and when?

If you decided to go paperless, then how will you share your work with students in a conference?

Will you print it off as needed, post it on an online classroom blackboard, or do something else?

To see a complete list of the reflection activities and for an explanation of the program, visit my Day By Day Main Page.

Mentors Cycle 2: Teachers as Mentors

Day 6: Process logs

Challenge: Find a local writing community or become a regular participant in an online writing challenge.

What do you hope to get out of being part of a writing community?

How can you become the kind of member who will encourage other members to grow as writers?

Videos are being posted from Ignite Seattle 16 every few days or so. You can watch me make giant googley-eyes here:

It was brought to my attention that I didn’t post this like I thought I did. My bad.

To see a complete list of the reflection activities and for an explanation of the program, visit my Day By Day Main Page.

Mentors Cycle 2: Teachers as Mentors

Day 5: Be the kind of writer you want your students to be

Challenge: Find time to write regularly when your students are watching. This could be during the first five minutes of writing workshop or during a separate time in the school day that’s solely devoted to independent writing. Regardless of when you schedule it, be sure to drop everything and write.

What is standing in the way of your writing with your students regularly?

How will you make sure you drop everything and write?

What’ve I been up to? Oh, a few things.

National Board entries. Lots of writing, lots of editing. I really don’t know how authors can stand to look at their writing by the time they get to the revising and editing stages. My goal is to get Entries 2, 3, and 4 done by the end of January.

I’ve been holed up creating Caldecott-related LOLs with the assistance/support of illustrators Julian Hector and Paul O. Zelinsky.

I HAVEN’T been fulfilling my duties as host of the Sibert Challenge, which is embarrassing, but I’m working to correct this.

Speaking of awards, TRAGEDY IS UPON US. Because we didn’t have school today, we didn’t have a chance to narrow our Mock Caldecott short list of 11 books down to OUR TOP THREE. PLUS, I will be at the National Title I Conference next week and won’t be back in class until WEDNESDAY. YARRRRR. I am formulating a plot.

Enjoy the rest of the day!

To see a complete list of the reflection activities and for an explanation of the program, visit my Day By Day Main Page.

Mentors Cycle 2: Teachers as Mentors

Day 4: Write in front of your students

Challenge: Make a plan to model writing in front of your students in an upcoming lesson. Be intentional about doing your best as a writer.

What did your students learn about being a writer from watching you write in front of them?

What will be the net thing you will write in front of your students?

What will be valuable for your students through the next demonstration?